I realized that first of all, I need to turn to folk culture, to folklore. It is known that faces were never made in folk toys, as in the first images of spirits and saints. The story is about him - about the spirit, the angel that leads the main character-writer through life. The faces are, as it were, crossed out with a red cross; in fact, this image is taken from a folk doll in the southern part of Russia and Ukraine. Often this cross was oblique, sometimes it was straight, as in the illustrations. And this is a thread. Fate.
Secondly, I combined the plastic possibilities of ink and dry materials, with a minimum of color.
Thirdly, I myself chose the key points for illustration. The fact is that the Author does this in a completely different way than the reader. Here I acted as a Reader and was able to highlight the highlights for the image.