Dirtyhands

They called him Dirtyhands because there was no sin he would not commit for the right price.

Guess whooooooo. Tired of me yet? I did issue a warning, and either way, I am doing this for myself. Because of the feeling, his story and character, and perhaps rendering him on a piece of paper is a way to convert the exploration of it into a physical action.... Okay, let's break down that obscure philosophy. Faces contain emotion, something that reflects a person's essence, and that can be captured in an image. Then in order to draw it - not just render the structure and shading, but actually capture the essence of the person - I dive into that emotion, I explore how the features reflect it, how it actually shapes the features, the shades, the miniscule details. I seek the details which convey the presence and essence of a person - and I strive to recreate that. I know when I nail any one detail because the face on the paper then suddenly feels more like the real person. Sometimes it's a incredibly small, subtle, pixel-sized detail. Especially in eyes, this happens all the time. And yeah, some of that you learn in art school, they teach you which features are key to the typicality of any given face, but beyond the pure technicality, most of it is down to feeling. Then I often find myself altering small details of the shading to convey the emotion that I perceive, the way that I see it. So it is an exploration. An exploration of the soul.

That's how I do it, how I strive to do it since all those years back, when I first started drawing my friends from the university. It's why even when I fail to pin down the face features perfectly, I believe I still capture the feeling of the person and their presence. A friend of mine, I will never forget it, used to say I steal souls. I liked hearing that. I like to think I haven't lost it. Even if it is, arguably, more difficult and doesn't exactly work this way with people I don't personally know.... but then again, this is, strictly speaking, not Freddy Carter, heheh, but Kaz Brekker, instead. Hell, it is Kaz Brekker we're talking about, and I dare say, I've come to know Kaz Brekker rather well............

It is to marvel, of course, that the soul of a character is so well conveyed in a film, by an actor. I know I mention this with every drawing, but the way I see it there cannot be enough praise for Freddy Carter for this role. Kaz captured me in the book. Reading certain moments of it feels.... I cannot put it in words adequately. But the only reason I can experience the same depth and intensity of emotion with his portrayal in the series, is that said portrayal is brilliant. I said he brought Kaz to life. He didn't just do that - he gave him character, small details and mannerisms that flesh him out and make him all the more believable, real, a beating and breathing person. I realize that I probably appreciate his work so much because I am completely captivated by Kaz in the first place. But that actually means that my personal criteria for such a portrayal must have skyrocketed, effectively making it more difficult to meet than normally - and yet he lives up to it to the fullest.

Aaaand here I am, carrying away again. Never mind. I have all that to say, and if anyone has the patience to read my ramblings, I most sincerely thank you. I want to draw some more frames from the film still.... and maybe with some of them I tell part of the story why Kaz Brekker got so very successfully under my skin. Why he is a comfort. (Yeah, I know.) Why he came to mean so much. I might want to tell that despite how very personal it is.... but not right now.


For now, enjoy Dirtyhands in his dark and (here) quite noire glory. Noire paper poses its own challenges though. I struggle nailing the face features the way I do on regular paper, because essentially here I have to work with the negative space. Black paper flips the process from dark to light, and it also flips the perceptions because usually the most natural approach is to use dark lines for sketching and outlining.... but here I am forced to outline and sketch with the light lines instead. So.... yeah, it's trickier. I have less experience too, by far less. Colors are likewise trickier. I usually end up simplifying them at least to some degree because no matter how you play it, pencil colors don't work the same on black paper as they do on white. But the payoff of it all is that it's rather easy to achieve quite striking, dramatic effects.... and it takes soooooooooooooooooooooooo much less time to render dark scenes. Like, it's at least twice as fast as it would have been on regular paper. At least.
Oh one last thing. I used black pencil this time to enhance some of the darkest shadows. I don't usually, it doesn't easily come to mind to use the one color that would seem invisible on black paper. But it isn't. The paper is not all that black. So it works. Is why some of the shadows are especially deep. (Although the scanning is imperfect and never does the black paper drawings full justice.... I still struggle with getting the darkness and colors right as I process a scanned black paper drawing.)

So yeah.... anyway.... so this is a quick drawing. Relatively. I am rather happy with it though. I am especially happy with the expression. As usually, he is looking straight at you because I'm always, always hunting that magical angle that makes it feel as though the eyes on the drawing are following you, trained on you no matter the angle from which you look at it. Been practicing that subtle art since long long long ago.... I like to think that I got it, too.

And I gotta say it fits Kaz so very well. And so....

Kaz Brekker was gone, and Dirtyhands had come to see the rough work done.


Reference: frame from the film series.
Color pencils on 20 x 30 cm black paper.
I'm guessing about 4 hours.