Soft and bold

We had a break in the clouds yesterday afternoon around 4 pm and these ragged clouds broke up in the eastern sky. The soft, dark compressed Conte charcoal and soft vine charcoal creates a rich texture especially when I worked back into it with chamois leather, a blending tortillion and an eraser. I find the tortillion rather a grand name because when I was in art school we called them stumps.


The two little soft clouds in the upper left were vague and puffy to the point of fading away. I think they are more examples of fractus clouds above and below the large irregular stratocumulus.