Charcoal Grey

Charcoal grey is my newest colour. A grainy semi-transparent black with a blue tinge, this makes an excellent blue black or glazing, better than ivory black or the opaque warmness of mars black. I wonder how long it takes to dry. I'm currently overpainting my entry for the eclectic art portrait competition. The eyes need attention and should have been checked way earlier than now. The imagined mountains were a challenge but I've identified the problem as a lack of direction during their design. When I write music, I tend to summon the appropriate emotion or idea and then the music tends to write itself but with painting I've not done that consciously. If I had done this earlier, this would have avoided any ambiguity in the form of objects and an eidetic image of the end result would make the painting experience easier and the result more powerful. This particular composition was as laboured as the brushwork so it would have been the perfect answer. Ho hum, painting number 30-ish and another lesson learned.