Tribe – Portrait with Lip Plate

A woman carrying a woven basket on her head, wearing a decorated lip plate and hoop earrings. Original charcoal on paper, signed, framed and ready to hang.

She fills the lower half of the sheet, emerging from near-total darkness, with a large woven basket balanced on her head.

The basket is the brightest thing in the drawing. Its ribbed coils are lit hard from the front, each round of weaving picked out in white against the shadow inside the rim, and it sits weightlessly above her — no hands raised, no visible effort.

Her face is handled with the most restraint. The brow is furrowed, the eyes steady and slightly narrowed, the expression neither warm nor hostile. She is looking just past the viewer rather than at them.

The lip plate is drawn in the greatest detail in the picture — a wide disc incised with a curved geometric pattern, each groove rendered individually, the surface catching light along its upper edge. Large hoop earrings hang either side of the jaw, and below, the folds of her shawl disappear into the dark.

Almost everything else is black. The background is unmodulated shadow, and the clothing is lost in it. That decision is what gives the drawing its force: three lit things — the basket, the face, the plate — and nothing else to look at.

Charcoal is the right medium for it. Laid down soft for skin, lifted with a cloth for the highlights on the weave, then driven hard into the incised pattern of the plate.

It suits a study, a hallway, a reception or a collector’s wall, and holds a room on its own.

Original charcoal on paper, signed by the artist. Supplied mounted and framed under glass with a certificate of authenticity. One of a kind — no reproductions of this drawing are sold.

Specifications:

• Subject: Portrait with Lip Plate
• Medium:  Charcoal on 300 GSM paper
• Genre: Portrait realism
• Type: Original, one of a kind
• Size: 26 x 32 in
• Orientation: Portrait
• Framing:  Mounted, framed under glass
• Signed: Yes, by the artist
• Included: Certificate of authenticity