Moonlighting - step III... Firming up the color scheme... and the title!

I dedicated an hour and a half to this third pass, attempting to get closer to a final product...

I still need to resolve certain aspects of this composition, particularly the bottom of the boat. Also another color pass will be needed to get out of the dirt... a necessary evil after using charcoal as an underpainting.

Note: I couldn't resist slapping a new title to this one... just for laughs! "Moonlighting" means having a second job... this painting is now a good candidate for my "smoke and mirrors series"!

In parallel to this, I decided to put my money where my mouth is...and proceeded this afternoon with my experiments on chimney soot...

The tightly knit raw cotton canvas on the right gave the best results (it has little texture)... I couldn't tell the difference between canvas and rice paper! In that respect, the raw cotton/linen, not shown here, was not bad either.

In a nutshell, it looks like soot will suit me... for the second phase of my "smoke and mirrors series! On the long run though, I may need to take my chimney to the cleaners... or become friends with chimney sweepers!