Tough Egg is a deep blue grey with a cool undertone and a very practical temperament. It looks simple in the pan, but on paper it creates real atmosphere. It’s one of those colors that immediately makes a painting feel more grounded and more intentional.
In a light wash it gives you a cold, misty grey blue that’s perfect for distance, shadows, and quiet background layers. In stronger concentration it becomes dark and weighty, almost stormy, without tipping into flat black. You keep the blue character all the way down into the darker values.
The wash behavior is controlled and clean, with subtle texture and variation depending on paper and water. It layers well, and it’s excellent for glazing if you like building depth without losing clarity.
This is the color for skies that actually look like weather, for stone, metal, winter light, and any painting where you want a dark that still has color intelligence.
