This, I emphasize, is a sketch - rapidly done in oil, when I was preparing to paint an acrylic version of Mr Corbyn.
I would have hugely preferred to paint him from life - painting portraits from photographs is a mug's game which is almost impossible to get right. But this was technically interesting to me, in that I used Cremnitz White, a lead carbonate which made a massive difference in being able to mould the shapes of (sorry Jezza!) ageing flesh.
I'll show the acrylic portrait eventually, but I feel now that I ought to repeat the bigger portrait in oil - again with lead white, because Titanium (a very useful, opaque, clean white though it is) just doesn't hold a candle to lead white in painting flesh tones.
