This tourmaline color palette brings out an array of colors, from deep teal to warm rose, in a new take on a range of watermelon hues.
I've always been fascinated with gem stones, from my earliest memory of standing in front of a mineral exhibit at my local natural history museum. So when I set out to do a series of color palettes based on semi-precious stones, I knew I wanted to explore some of the lesser known stones, like tourmaline.
It turns out tourmaline isn't just one stone, but a family of crystals. If you want to know more about the actual mineral family, check out this post from the Natural History Museum of Utah.
The ones that have always intrigued me are the watermelon tourmalines, for their range of colors within the same crystal. That seemed unusual to me since mixing colors from red to green is really hard to do well on a paint palette. But in nature, it seems to work just fine!
Tourmaline Color Palette
When designing a room, I would never use green and red as complimentary colors. But when I see their variations here on this color palette, I can see how they might compliment each other when their more muted cousins get together.
To me, tourmaline is just another example of how hard it is to translate nature's perfection into human interpretation.
It's like trying to paint a sunset, or take a picture of a lake. Seldom can you capture the actual purity and evanescence of the moment on canvas or film.
The beauty of creation slips through our hands, despite our best efforts at reproducing it. But we keep trying.
As artists and designers, our job and our passion is to reach out and try to claim a little bit of that beauty and make it part of our everyday lives.
That's why I love semi-precious stones. They take a tiny slice of the world, cut and polish it, and make it available to wear on our fingers, wrists, or ears. It's like a tiny little foray into eternity, all in a little chip set in gold or silver and worn like a reminder.
A reminder of where we come from, and where we'll return, and a glimpse of the perfection that awaits us in heaven.
If you're interested, you can read more about that in Revelation 21:18-22. But for now, I'll just content myself with a stroll through the natural history museum and see which gemstone needs a color palette next.
Leave a Reply