Let’s start with sir Juffin, shall we?..

Fine. I was almost going to write some long, long, looooooong entry, which could explain all “why is this thing here” stuff, but I won’t do it anyway.

I’ll better get straight to painting stuff.

I must admit that this one is certainly one of the strangest things I’ve painted. Ever. I tried to paint Juffin Hully from Max Frei’s “Stranger” and other books of the sequence. So, for those who’s not familiar with the subject – let me quote Wikipedia first:

The books making up “The Labyrinths of Echo” describe how Max, born in our world and having lived his first 30 years here, ends up in the city of Echo in another world, having been called there by the chief of the Secret Police, Sir Juffin Hully.

Now let me tell you “my” part of the story.

Sir Juffin, step by step: click to enlarge.

The mentioned sir Juffin Hully (born in the town of Kettary [Germans spell "Kettari" and "Halli", Russians spell "Кеттари" and "Халли", dunno why I had to make this note anyway], Shimara county, about 400 years old) is a weird magician, who is about 1/4 or so a kind of – how do I put this correctly? – some peculiar were-fox. Before his becoming the chief of the Secret Police, he used to be quite a notorious criminal, who used to be called “The Kettarian Hunter” or “Chiffa” (by the name of the fox species of Shimara county, which is [fox species, not the county] famous for its being enormously curious). His real young face is remembered by most part of Echo citizens, so he has to look older and funnier in order not to scare common people. He’s quite a… character. The most interesting thing about him, as Max Frei says himself, is that you cannot actually say if he’s good or evil; he’s “just DIFFERENT”. The author also describes his younger face, as strikingly beautiful, but extremely cold in his cunning eyes’ expression. Sir Hully seems to be funny (especially in the first books of the sequence), but he just hides his might underneath his nice joker’s masks. That’s why I decided to paint his “real” face, ever-smiling, but a bit predatory.

Juffin Hully, younger version, full-painted.

The trick about painting this one wasn’t only… huh… technical one.
Max Frei’s books often disturb people by the slight scent of nice madness and certain feeling of TOTAL escapism in them. People of the city of Echo, which is described in the sequence, wear weird stuff, count by dozens, don’t have weeks, etc. Add to this some specific Russian proverbs (like, “I’ll step on the throat of any song”), some non-existent, but very convincing phrasal forms (like, “Sinning Magicians!”), some odd (from the Earthian’s POV, of course) traditions, and you’ll get the result – which is awfully picturesque, but magnificently difficult to portray.

The very image of sir Juffin’s younger self appeared, as a rough pencil sketch. Then I had to scan it, spend a challenging hour in Corel Painter IX, working on Juffin’s face, have 24 hours of rest (meaning: to spend them on actual NORMAL job I do to fulfil my daily need in money)) and finish this in 2,5 hours with same software and a little help of Photoshop CS2. Take a note, that I painted the character in shades of grey first, and added colours and patterns only afterwards (Photoshop allows some nice effects, like “Overlay mode” of brushes or layers – that thing works really good).

P.S.:
The books of Max Frei are now being translated into English, German and Spanish, so I guess if you have too much of chiffa’s blood in your veins are too curious about this, you can easily find out the rest of the story.)

P.P.S.:
Mind, that men of Echo can allow themselves to use makeup, so - yes, I worked on his eyes to show that effect, too.))

~ by Erebus Odora on June 18, 2010.