Red Roses King of Hearts

When I first started drawing faces on court cards, I thought the more extravagant, the better. It wasn't until later that I realized subtle changes have a much greater "aha" effect - especially when they're only noticed at second glance. That's when I began replacing all the heads I had drawn with the standard ones, focusing mainly on changing just the face itself. The King of Hearts is one of only two cards where I've always kept the entire head as it is - simply because the person believes he wouldn't be recognizable otherwise.

For the Red Roses Gold Foil Edition, I'm using my redrawn 1885 Bicycle faces - slightly optimized to give them a more modern look.

When I started placing the head onto the card, I noticed a funny little problem - one that also exists in the standard court cards. The left shoulder sits way too high, making the King of Hearts look like he might be related to Quasimodo.

To fix the issue, I had to completely reconstruct the card. Unfortunately, I don't have all the steps documented as screenshots anymore - but as you can probably imagine, it was a very time-consuming process.

For comparison, I pulled out the design from my very first USPCC deck from 2017 and put it side by side with the Black Roses V1 2022 reprint. I think I changed it quietly and secretly without ever having written anything about it.

So much for that - but when I looked at the King of Hearts from 2017, I could barely believe how I had drawn that face… 😄

So here's a little illustration of how the face has changed over the years:

There are a few people who are bothered by custom faces on court cards - and I totally get that. A lot of them just don't match the rest of the card design. As you can see, I didn't get everything right from the beginning either, and maybe in a few years, I'll be laughing at my latest version too. But drawing faces for court cards has become something of a personal art form - one I've poured a lot of time, thought, and care into.

The King of Clubs is gone but you still have the chance to become on of the Jacks in the Red Roses Gold Foil Edition:
https://blackroses.cards/products/red-roses-gold-foil-playing-cards-court-card

Thank you so much for your support!

Much love

Daniel