Reclining Boy Leaning on His Elbow 1917

Egon Schiele made this drawing of a reclining boy leaning on his elbow using pencil and some color. You know, I’m looking at the nervous energy of the lines, how they sort of vibrate on the page. I can almost feel Schiele’s hand moving across the paper, trying to capture the boy’s pose, his gaze. He's a master of the suggestive line, of the emotionally charged contour. It reminds me of my own process—that constant struggle to pin down a feeling or an idea, only to have it shift and change as I work. The way he uses color here, just a hint of it, makes me think of other artists like Klimt, maybe? There’s this conversation happening across time, with artists riffing off each other. Schiele’s kind of baring his soul here, like all of us painters do, I guess, with every mark we make.