Thank you everyone. And Thomasin, your watercolour studies are exciting. I trust you will do more. All of us should! By the way, your remarks were insightful. The forearms were indeed challenging.

I bought the Edwardian Linen slip at a shop on Kings Road when I was living in London. It has a monogram of stitched initials and it is one of my treasures. However linen doesn't drape very well and I don't use it very often.

Although that's true about linen, I have to say I love the way the irregular draping quality works in this painting, Bill.

Beautiful. How do you manage such detail in such small paintings?

Mr. Whitaker--

Thanks so much for this gem, and your previous post. There's a year's study for me in all of them--especially regarding surface. Appreciate your generosity!

All of you say such nice things. This forum is like a refuge from the asperity we get in the world.

Julie,
I'm blessed with a steady hand, I have a good mahlstick, I have some high magnification closeup glasses and I use small new watercolor sable rounds on the details. I also use high end paint without fillers to get the maximum paint strengh in thin applications. Sometimes I grind my own Titanium White which is super intense. I also like working small.

Tom,
I too love to get in close and examine paintings. I think the biggest drawback in displaying paintings on the Internet is that we can't get in close enough to see technique.