EGON AMADEO SCHIELE MODIGLIANI

I am so pleased with myself!  Yesterday morning I decided I had to stop doodling for the moment and try to get back to something a big more demanding.  So Assignment 5.2 of Lisa Wright's e-course beckoned me (and forgave me for temporarily missing out a few tasks in between).  This the first 'work' I've done since the operation, and I was surprised at how much my hand was shaking, but I persevered.

This assignment really made me think - which of course is what Lisa intended - and it took a lot more thinking about than I expected.


Firstly, it really needs two very contrasting styles - like the Vermeer/Picasso Lisa showed as her example, so I decided on Modigliani and Schiele.


Modigliani is one of my favourite artists, his lines and shapes and colours all so 'wrong' and yet so 'right'.

Egon Schiele is such a different 'kettle of fish'.  I love his lines and his use of colour - again so seemingly 'wrong'.  This painting of Walli, his model, is lovely.  The number of times I've tried to copy her face and capture the sad expression of her eyes and lips and never managed it.  (I think she's taking her pulse, actually).  No wonder she was sad, when after doing everything for him he upped and married someone else.


Now, as you know, Schiele was a bit of a weirdo, and definitely not the kind of man you would invite home for coffee or accept his invitation to pose for him.  Not that he was the only artist with peculiar artistic interests - try Rodin, for example, and I have a vague feeling Picasso too.

So this was the Modigliani painting of Juan Gris that I chose, partly because his head was already as a slight angle.  And this was the Schiele painting.

I chose this because it was not quite as bumpy or knobbly as many of his drawings.  I thought that if I went too much in the direction of Schiele there might be nothing of Juan Gris left.

To start off I did a quick sketch of Juan to provide me with a basis.

Not too clear because the pencil lines were quite faint.  So here's Juan by Egon Amadeo Schiele Modigliani.  I was fairly limited with colour because I am still using just the Inktense pencils.

I can't say that I'm particularly pleased with it, and would have liked a little more of Schiele in it, but Juan would have got lost.  In spite of that I'm happy that I made myself do it: I enjoyed the thinking, the process and the discipline of it.  So it has achieved what Lisa intended.


Just to finish I thought I would include one of my own sketches from my sketchbook, done towards the end of last year, of a gallery attendant in one of the Liverpool museums.  A lovely chap with thick spikes of hair sticking up, I don't know how but not with gel.  He said everyone wanted to photograph him, and I'm not surprised!

Feeling much better now and improving every day, and glad to be getting back to the real world.  Dev made scones this morning, just had one with coffee and it was gorgeous.  Eldest grandson (27) just rang and said he and his brother and sister are all home from down south and are about to come round.  Life is certainly not boring!