Drawn Spire 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.

Old English spīr, blade-of-grass / point. As a color modifier, spire implies a tall-pointed-vertical quality, the visual register of Salisbury-Cathedral-and-Chartres-Cathedral hand-built tall-pointed Gothic-and-Romanesque cathedral-spire architectural surfaces under tall-cathedral-spire-against-sky light. Sits at the modifier-and-architecture end of the grid, parallel to tower and turret 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.