Queen of Spades / How to draw a court card

Gina is the Queen of Spades in all my regular Black Roses decks. She was one of the first persons I met on Instagram, seven or eight years ago. Our contact became less frequent as time passed but her card is a nice memory for me of how it all began.

I'm so happy about her new court card that you'll find in the Black Roses Lavenders.

As you can see in the image the card looks completely different. For some reason I thought that long hair on a court card would look great. Me personally, I still think I've drawn the hair in a way so that it still fits to the court card design. But I also know today that there is way too much customization on these cards.

I must have drawn already over 200 faces on court cards in the past six years. At the beginning, of course I had no idea what I'm doing. I've just made something and I've added it on a playing card. The result is visible in the very first Black Roses deck (card on the left).

Today I know how important specific details are. Details of the eyes, nose and mouth. On the original court cards, these details look all the same because it's only one specific style. So it's not like you can do what you want. If you do it differently the card looks weird compared to the other ones.

To be fair, this really is a very specific topic and I'm pretty sure nobody else in the world put so much time and energy into custom faces on a court card as I do. But I don't know anyone who has completely understood how to draw a face on a court card. The worst excuse from other artists / designers is that it would be their "own style".

There isn't even any room for discussion. Yes, if you draw a completely new court card, then you can do what you want because it's "your style". Doesn't matter if it's ugly or not :D But if you draw a face on an existing court card you can't mix two different styles on one playing card. You need to follow the "guidelines" otherwise it just looks wrong.

In the second image you can see how I followed the original design elements. It starts with the eyelash, the extra circle around the pupil, the way how the nostril has been drawn and the shape of the lips - even the wrinkles on the chin.

These are all important details and I've put absolutely no importance on in my first deck. So of course people told me my decks would look better with standard courts. But instead of doing what they want it just motivated me to make it better.

Only two details are different - the hair over the eyes and the eye bags. I also need to be honest to myself here, if I wanna do it 100% correct I need to draw these details as well. But I decided to draw the hair how I have done it because that's how her hairdo looks like and eye bags make Queens look older than they are.

At least in this very moment I don't see any room for improvement anymore on the Queen of Spades that's why I'm so happy with the result.