Franz Dobusch 2016

Gazmend Freitag's 'Franz Dobusch' from 2016 is a portrait rendered in reddish-brown pencil or crayon, with washes of diluted pigment giving the paper an aged, almost sepia-toned feel. You can see the process here; it's right there on the surface. The lines, kind of scratchy and raw, trace the contours of the face, with some areas left deliberately unfinished, almost like a map of the subject’s character. Check out the way Freitag uses hatching and cross-hatching to create depth and shadow. See how the lines converge around the eyes and mouth, giving those features a real intensity. Then, look at the tie; the artist creates the appearance of light on the silk with just a few gestural strokes, and by leaving bare paper to stand for white. It reminds me a bit of some of Alice Neel's more raw portraits, where the personality of the subject shines through the somewhat unforgiving lines and the honesty of the medium. In the end, the sketch is about seeing, feeling, and recording. It shows art can be an ongoing conversation, a dialogue between artist, subject, and us, the viewers.