My Korean friend in Tokyo 1998

Alfred Freddy Krupa made this portrait, My Korean friend in Tokyo, using a delicate line. The lines are sparse and descriptive. But also, the thing that is so great about a line drawing is that it's economical. It's enough to describe a person. It’s enough to capture someone’s essence or feeling at a certain moment in time. The color of the line is also really interesting. It is not black like you’d expect in a pencil drawing. It is more of a reddish-brown, like a sanguine conte crayon, which is a very old way of drawing, so that makes me wonder what he was thinking when he made it. It's so simple, and yet so knowing.