Egon Schiele workshop and experiments

Egon Schiele was an artist

For those who do portraiture in the class, we had to focus on loosening up our existing skills and exploring new ones; to do this we looked at Schiele's work as it would enable us to do so.
The exercise consisted of us doing a continuous line drawing using various materials; such as pencil, biro, charcoal etc. And holding them by the ends. This then allowed us to apply less detail and precision to the drawings that we created. 

For this experiment we used charcoal and sealed it with water. This spread the tone on the piece, which was difficult to control to start off with. However when I experimented with this technique again later on, I found that spread of tone can be used to your advantage, it is less time consuming and therefore cover areas in tone quicker and can be used effectively to create more layers.

This experiment involved a biro pen and hair spray; this simple technique creates a a blurred/smudged effect on the piece which creates more tone and marks. I thoroughly enjoyed this technique as it allowed you to keep adding layers of tone and detail.
When I continued this technique further on different studies of portraits, I found it more difficult to control when adding the hair spray as it would disperse the ink into areas where I did not want it to go. I quickly adapted my technique by spraying the hairspray on to my fingers and then applying it to the study; this created more precise smudging of the ink.

This technique just involved creating a simple continuous line drawing in pencil. The simplicity of this technique captured me and made me want to develop it further.

I have not developed these techniques as they did not seem to relate to my style and artists, and they did not interest me as much as the others. The first involved quickly sketching the image with a pencil and then applying different colour pastilles that related to the picture. A thinner was then added to blend the colours and spread them. I then added charcoal to contribute to the detail and the tone of the piece.

 During the experiment, when I added the thinner to the piece, I discovered that the thinner had already been used and was not clear; this then added a light nude shade to the piece which I had to persevere with and use to my advantage. Adding the thinner also caused the piece to be seen from the other side, and whilst wet, it made the paper surrounding the piece translucent.

This experiment involved using the some of the techniques we had previously discovered, all together on an white matt emulsion background. The image was quickly sketched in charcoal and coloured pastilles were then added, this was then blended with thinner and the charcoal was sealed with water. This piece could be improved in many ways, however I found it difficult to balance all of the mediums, as they all disturbed one another when applying and blending them. If I repeated this technique, I would take more care in finding the correct balance of materials and choose a better composition.