Oils on the Portrait

This is the first layer of paint, not that I'm planning on adding many more layers as I want to keep it thin and translucent like the work of Augustus John and Eugene Carriere. I purposefully didn't prime the canvas, just sized it with a layer of slightly watered down PVA glue. I did this for a few reasons.
Firstly I wanted to keep the texture from the canvas grain (it's heavy weight canvas with two threads woven in each direction) as this adds flickr to the texture of the paint, a bit like the texture of watercolour paper, where the paint doesn't sink into every part of the paper.
Secondly I wanted the more natural colour of the canvas to show through, as opposed to the clinical looking white primed canvas. I thought this would add to the skin tones, and also I've been inspired by the work of Augustus John who purposefully didn't paint every single part of the canvas or board, which I find interesting.
Thirdly, inspired by the later paintings of Gwen John, I wanted a dry matt finish for the paint, as opposed to glossy and shiny. There is a painting by hers called Girl in Profile which I'm slightly obsessed by. It's on display in the Museum on Cardiff and the texture and dryness of the paint fascinates me. Finding out from information in the Museum that she created her own chalky ground to paint on, which absorbed the oils from the paint, was really interesting.