Master copy WIP (updated, May 4)

 See latest stage here (September 4): Ingres copy almost finished

May 4, working on background and details 

We're having a drawing and painting course where we need to copy some piece of art. I chose The Valpincon Bather by the French master Ingres in order to practice the very difficult nude painting genre, particularly depicting skin, as an arguably logical continuity for the intensive life study workshop I attended and also because figure painting and drawing is a classical measure of artists skills and some videogame, film and animation studios may ask for references of figure painting for evaluation of the concept artist or animator candidate's skill level.

Here's the initial charcoal drawing, then the underpainting stage where I have drybrushed titanium white on earth green. Then on to glazing and background.

Friday May 20 I added some glazing and worked the surroundings further. Sorry for the bad cell phone photo, the flash light reflects from the wet surface unfortunately. It was difficult to find decent reference images of the painting, some were obviously taken at close range, giving a bit fish-eye effect which explains the strange wide shoulders. This is 120x80cm, 80% of the original's size and I have to speculate the colors between several reference images, thus, I'm putting my expectations to 80% success for the time being.