maiji: 説経の講師の顔 Sekkyou no koushi no kao (The Face of a Sutra Lecturer/Buddhist Preacher)

[image set: 1) Digital ink brush-and-watercolour-style illustration of the Buddhist monk Byakken from Nubatama wa Oujou Shinai in ceremonial robes. His lifted head, hooded eyes and slightly open-mouthed expression give the impression that he is in the midst of giving a talk. 2) Same illustration, but with only the lineart. 3) Byakken with a variety of facial expressions, looking serene, shocked, stressed out, annoyed, etc.] 説経の講師は顔よき。講師の顔をつとまもらへたるこそ、その説くことの尊さも覚ゆれ。- Sei Shonagon, 枕草子 (Makura no Soushi / The Pillow Book)  “A priest who gives a sermon should be handsome. After all, you're most aware of the profundity of his teaching if you're gazing at his face as he speaks.”[translation by Meredith McKinney (2006)] "A preacher ought to be good-looking. For, if we are properly to understand his worthy sentiments, we must keep our eyes on him while he speaks [...]”[translation by Ivan Morris (1967). Morris’ full translation of The Pillow Book is available at https://archive.org/details/the-pillow-book/mode/2up] I chuckled at this quote from The Pillow Book (and the entire story built around it) in Nubatama wa Oujou Shinai. (If you’re unfamiliar with The Pillow Book, it very much is like reading the blog of a thoughtful, witty court lady from the Heian era! Sei Shonagon can be quite tongue-in-cheek, even sarcastic, and in a lot of ways it’s amazing to see how little humanity has changed over a thousand years.) I also thoroughly enjoyed drawing Byakken-sama in ceremonial robes! On the topic of faces, one of the many reasons I love Byakken is because of his extremely relatable facial expressions. Kuze Banko gives him a lot of these perfectly serene expressions, but also has no problems pulling him in extremely over the top directions too - usually from shock or stress, he seems to get into those kinds of situations very easily lol. I feel his emotions one hundred and ten percent! Because of the well-done range and writing, it really gives you the impression that even his serene expressions have something more behind them (like exasperation, resignation…). For example, the (very minor early story spoilers!) context for “That was a BIG FAT LIE” (smiling outside, dying inside) is that Nubatama happily tells all the sobbing wailing people in her household that she decided to become a nun because she was so profoundly moved by Byakken-sama’s preaching and decided to leave the material world behind. Which as we know is a complete fabrication especially since Byakken spent most of his time with her arguing with her about why she shouldn’t become a nun. But everyone who hears the story is like hmm yeah!! That makes total sense!!!! And thus The Amazing Tale of How Princess Nubatama Was Inspired To Become A Nun gets around. The panel that cuts to Byakken standing in front of a bunch of people talking about this, with his beatific Mona Lisa smile that somehow manages to be really flat at the same time, captioned with a giant USO (“lie”) kanji, is pitch-perfect. The entire setup and background gives him this impression of “Ah, yes… that familiar feeling… of THE DESIRE TO COMMIT MURDER”. Every time I look at it, I laugh.It was a good challenge attempting all the different faces while still trying maintain a sense of consistency about the character, especially thinking about how I would render him differently relative to all the other Buddhist monk characters I also draw. I tried to manage that through his eyes - his very expressive eyebrows, heavy lids, and the little lashes at the corners of his eyes and his lower lids, and some of the dips/head shape near his temples. It’s also interesting to click between the colour and the ink/line-only versions and see how the effect of an image can change subtly, yet noticeably once you bring in shading and colour.