For the last canvas of 2020 in my ‘Erebus’ series, I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone and focus on the improvements I had made to my last canvas. I especially focused on composition and perspective as I felt that some of my previous pieces were too flat. By not only adding texture through different styles of painting but also using more elongated and foreshortening movement, it allowed for a much more interesting composition. 

In this newest canvas, I have used scratching, palette knives, thick appliance of oil and different use of brushes to create a multitude of techniques and processes into my piece. Overall, I am a lot happier with the outcome of this piece compared with my last, as I focused slightly more on the composition but equally on the way I applied the paint too. I have included some close up images below to highlight this…

Creating a mixture of smooth and textured brushstrokes was something I felt made this piece more successful. A problem I found in my previous canvas was it was too vertical, as a lot of the limbs featured proceeded upwards. For me, this is where the composition went wrong, so with this canvas I included different angles and marks in all directions to achieve a more fluid painting. In addition to this, following on from my inspiration from Egon Schiele, the limbs featured are all slightly elongated or stretched. This is something featured in most of my pieces but I wanted to exaggerate this in particularly, as it adds to the unsettling awkwardness of my work. Again I focused on the black background wrapping itself around the foreground whilst still having some of the coloured limbs disappearing into it. This ‘Erebus’ addition is one I am most proud of as it shows my development from the beginning of this project in September to now. I never thought I would be producing work like this but I love where this project has taken me and will continue to work on my confidence with the application of paint and its processes. 

  • Egon Schiele
  • Egon Schiele