Look above at the featured image for this blog post. What do you see? Is it teal or turquoise?
Last week I told you the story about the green x-ray gloves at my dad’s office. Writing that story made me think about my favorite color family: green.
I have always loved green and especially the “cool” greens. In painting we often describe colors as either warm, neutral, or cool. On a basic level, warm colors are reds, oranges, and yellows. And cool colors are blues, greens, and violets. However in painting, versions of these colors can lean towards warm or cool.
For example: Remember that Ziploc commercial? Yellow and blue make green, right? Yellow is considered a warm color and blue is considered a cool color. You can mix your green using more yellow to make the green more warm. As well, you can mix more blue to the green to make it more cool.
Teal and Turquoise are considered cool greens and are my absolute favorite. Its why I use them in most of the packaging material you may have noticed when receiving one of my pieces in the mail. Simultaneously soothing and invigorating, these cool greens have been burned in my brain since I was a kid and fill my heart with joy. It’s mostly nostalgia from the Miami Vice logo (yes I mentioned it again!) and from the color of Dad’s x-ray machine (a 1950’s model he got from army surplus when he started his practice-more on this later)
Want to know the difference between TEAL and TURQUOISE?
Here’s a quick rundown:
TEAL:
The name teal comes from a bird known as the common teal that has a similarly greenish-blue stripe on its head. It tends to be dark in nature and cooler (more blue) than turquoise.
TURQUOISE:
Aside from teaching, my wife is a lapidarian (someone who carves precious stones) She knows all about turquoise and the color turquoise is taken directly from this precious stone. The word itself is from the Old French adjective turqueise meaning “Turkish”. In pierre turqueise (Turkish stone) so called because it was first brought to Europe from Turkestan or some other Turkish dominion.
Pretty cool, right? So what do you see in the image: TEAL or TURQUOISE? Send me an email and let me know!
