Clay Model

When you model in 3D it is always tempting to achieve some realism as soon as possible in the modeling process. This can be a problem however, because as you start to add textures and materials to your object, render time and screen redraw time tend to increase dramatically.

This starts to become a vicious cycle with the modeler ending up not finishing the model citing lack of patience or slow processor speed as the problem.

The industry standard method is to avoid using any textures or materials, keep your model a pure light colour that shows any faults with your model, until you are fully finished with the modeling.
The non reflective white many artists use is referred to as clay modelling because it looks like you object has been constructed from white clay.