Sometimes one looks on at an object far away, perhaps you have done so too, in a museum you have never been to, through a black-and-white photograph, in an old book on ancient roman portrait busts – and you see your grandmother, her marble skin glowing as it does on the black-and-white photographs of her youth, her cheeks cool, rounded, and smiling, very still. Because black is actually a very dark blue (you know it to be so whenever you mix black and white on your palette, and place a brush-full of it next to an orange tone on your painting), you choose a cobalt blue pastel stick, and softly draw her lovely head.