Drawn Feast Teal

Old English dragan, to draw — past-participle of draw. As a color modifier, drawn implies a clear-and-line-and-mark quality, the crisp color of Old-Master-and-Modernist hand-drawn studio-and-life-class observational-drawing graphite-and-charcoal lines. Sits at the crisp-and-incised end of the grid, parallel to etched and drafted in usage.

Latin festus, festal-day. As a color modifier, feast implies a celebratory-and-feast-day quality, the visual register of Christmas-and-Easter-Feast celebratory-and-feast-day liturgical-and-secular ceremonial-and-festal-banquet surfaces under feast-day candlelit-and-ceremonial-banquet light. Sits at the modifier-and-time end of the grid, parallel to yule and easter in usage.

Anas crecca, the small dabbling duck whose male in breeding plumage sports a chestnut head crossed by a glossy green-blue stripe. The color refers to that stripe — the iridescent panel just behind the eye: a saturated, slightly muted blue-green with the optical depth of structural color rather than pigment. Cooler than cypress, warmer than cerulean, with the ornithological specificity of a color named for one feather of one bird.