Tonal study on white ground

I did this exercise in the life drawing class I am taking this term. We normally do short time poses in our sessions, not portraits, but my tutor kindly agreed to a longer pose so I could do a portrait – a 90-minute pose with a 20-minute break in the middle for the model to rest.

I used A3 oil paper and neat water mixable oil (WMO) – but didn’t use a medium because even though those available for WMO have less odour than those for normal oils there is still a smell, and I didn’t want to disturb the others in the class. Without a medium however WMO lacks fluidity, though I did my best to blend the paint with a rag and a brush.

I prefer to use a support with a coloured background because it’s less intimidating than starting a painting with a white background and more difficult to achieve skin tones but the exercise required me to use a white ground. I am nevertheless reasonably happy with the result, given that I had only 90 minutes. It’s a fair likeness and I think it looks quite modern - I wish I had had longer to enable me to put more detail in, and unfortunately couldn’t add the detail later either, as photos are not allowed during our sessions.