Mirror mirror

Oh yes firstly:
Expressionism - an artistic style in which the artist attempts to portray his emotional responses to objects and events.
Allegorical drawings use real objects to represent something that is abstract, like an idea or a principle.
I don't get it I must admit, at least not just yet.

Egon must have often been quite hungry when he drew these he's always so skinny in his self portraits.
Am I being cynical if I ask whether he was suffering for his art or did he contrive this look to mean something else. It can be difficult sometimes and you can go round in circles asking these sorts of questions.
Staring into a mirror for hours on end must affect you in some weird ways . I've only done one self portrait and I look so serious and sad, but when I was sitting there it did my head-in seeing myself staring back every time I looked up.

Egon's Self Portraits

Ben said I should turn on the anti-shake function on the camera, so after playing about in the menus I found it. I hope these are ok.
Egon Shiele was brought up in Austria at the end of the ninteenth century, he was an ambitious, arrogant and awkward person who caused problems for everyone around him. Tim said he was an expressionist painter who's work was mostly allegorical.
I really like his style of drawing but find his subject matter difficult to look at. Not these though, these are his self-portraits.

Sketches from some of Schiele's drawings

Ok it's a bit blurry, but my hands shake when I hold the camera.

A Start

In school I used to read as many old Marvel and 2000 AD comics as I could get my hands on. I wanted to be able to draw the characters and be able to get what was in my head down on paper. So I drew stuff every day, I'd go down the art room, put on Mrs Fuzy's old records and sketch, draw and scribble.

One day I stopped drawing.

FFWD to 2003

I'm an engineer. I went to college and happened to meet Stephen Jo, a man with a passion for old hollywood photos, and who is one of the few people I know who can explain in layman's terms why something is art and why something else is not. A few years after that I met Anthony Green who was giving a talk in Cambourne at the council offices and who said that he had wanted to draw because of the comics he'd read as a child.

FFWD to 2010

Jennifer persuaded me to study life drawing at Barnfield College. It didn't take much I, sort of, wanted to pick up where I left off.

I'll try to post sketches and studies when I can.