Kvindehoved med kasket i profil mod venstre 1923

Harald Giersing made this head of a woman with a cap in profile using what looks like graphite on paper. You can really see how he’s working out the form, almost tentatively, trying to find the shape within the lines. The paper itself is a warm grey, and that provides a sort of middle tone for the drawing. The marks are dense in some areas, creating a dark mass of tone, which thins out to almost nothing as the lines feather out. There's something so vulnerable about a drawing, it's like you're seeing the artist thinking and feeling with a pencil in their hand. Look at that shadow under the cap: the diagonal hatching gives it a real weight and three-dimensionality, but it's also just, like, a bunch of lines! This reminds me a little bit of some of the portrait drawings of Paula Modersohn-Becker – that same kind of frankness and empathy. Drawing is such a direct and intimate medium, and it's a reminder that art doesn't have to be slick or finished to be powerful.