Over the last few months I’ve been thinking about the layering of washes, tonal gradations and subtleties of colour change. In order to experiment I’ve been thinking of painting skin tones as this will show immediately when washes are too dense, abrupt or muddy.

I selected a model for her tonal contrasts, relatively simple composition and subtlety of skin tone.

This picture shows that I have a long way to go in achieving a creditable result. I’m attending a watercolour course on Thursday, which will last 12 weeks , and I am thinking that at the end of it I will post a similar picture and see if there has been any improvement!