Engraved Umber Teal

Old French engraver, to dig in — past-participle of engrave. As a color modifier, engraved implies a clear-and-precisely-cut quality, the crisp color of Albrecht-Dürer-and-Hogarth hand-pulled engraving-print fine-line incised-image. Sits at the crisp-and-incised end of the grid, parallel to etched and inscribed in usage.

Latin umbra, shadow. As a color modifier, umber implies a shadowed-and-Umbrian-earth-pigment quality, the visual register of Caravaggio-and-Rembrandt-umber hand-shadowed-and-Umbrian-earth-pigment Caravaggio-and-Rembrandt-and-Vermeer-Dutch-Golden-Age umbered-and-shadowed-and-deep-glazed surfaces under Caravaggio-and-Rembrandt-and-Vermeer chiaroscuro-and-tenebrist-and-glazed studio-window-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to shade and gloom 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.