The unfinished portrait (Lilian) 1998

Alfred Freddy Krupa made this "Unfinished Portrait" in 1998 using sanguine pencil on paper. It's all about the layering of marks, right? That's how the drawing builds up this face, this person, from nothing. And isn't that what a portrait is really doing? Look at the way the pencil strokes around the eye socket define that gaze. It's not about getting a perfect likeness, it's about catching a mood. You can almost feel the artist searching for the right lines, the right angles, to capture something real. I like how the strokes feel like they are mapping the contours of the face. The layering and hatching of the pencil strokes give the skin a subtle texture, hinting at the underlying bone structure. I'm thinking about artists like Lucian Freud, who also used drawing to search and probe, to get under the skin of their subjects. Art’s always a conversation, isn’t it? And it’s never really finished, is it?