Most months, I start with the stone and work my way toward a painting.
This month begins differently, with a simple roadside scene in northern Michigan.
What I Actually Saw
I'd just returned from the tip of the mitten, and along the hillsides there was this soft, muted mint-green and almost blue-gray coloring running through the grasses. Scattered through it... young sumac already turning fire red, and milkweed gone golden yellow with the season.
It stopped me. That soft, quiet greenish gray sitting next to those bold fall colors, it was genuinely beautiful, and I couldn't stop thinking about it.
When I got home and started planning October's painting, I realized that color I kept noticing was essentially Opal, a soft, light mint-green and blue-gray shade (hex #A8C3BC, if you're curious). This month's painting is going to cross into abstraction, built from that landscape memory. I'm using that quiet grassy hue with flashes of red and gold moving through it.
I hadn't originally planned to start with a dark background this month. But once I found this color, I realized a dark ground is exactly what will make it glow the way it did against that Michigan hillside, both soft and luminous, with color flashing through it rather than sitting flat.
The Stone That Won't Commit to One Color
Here's what drew me to Opal as October's color to begin with, before the trip even happened.
Opal is the only gemstone that doesn't have a defining color. Depending on the angle and the light, it can flash red, then green, then blue, then gold — sometimes all within the same small area of stone.
That's not a flaw. It's the entire point of the stone.
Opal is amorphous silica with trapped water, completely unlike almost every other gemstone, it has no crystalline structure at all. Its "play-of-color" happens because microscopic spheres inside the stone diffract light as it passes through, splitting it into every color of the visible spectrum. The stone genuinely looks different depending on where you're standing.
A History Worth Knowing
The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder wrote that opal held the beauty of every other gemstone combined, "the sparkling fire of ruby, the rich purple of amethyst, the sea-green of emerald... a splendor of them all glittering together." A Roman senator named Nonius reportedly chose exile over surrendering his opal ring to Mark Antony.
In Aboriginal Australian Dreamtime legend, the Creator came to earth on a rainbow bearing a message of peace, and everywhere his foot touched the ground, the stones sparked to life in every color, becoming opals. Australia still produces about 95% of the world's opal supply today.
The Middle Ages called it the stone of hope, purity, and truth… even "the eye stone," believed to sharpen both literal and intuitive vision.
And here's a little detail I think is important: opal's reputation for bad luck largely traces back to a piece of fiction written by Sir Walter Scott in the 1829 novel Anne of Geierstein, in which a character's opal changes with her moods and she dies shortly after. It was a story. But it damaged the opal's reputation for decades.
The stone did nothing wrong but the narrative killed its reputation.
What This Means, Beyond the Painting
I think Opal is gifting us something special this month: permission to stop being just one thing.
We're often pushed toward a single identity… one brand, one role, one simplified version of ourselves that's easier for other people to grasp. Opal refuses that. It holds red and green and blue and gold all at once, and every version is equally beautiful.
That felt like exactly what I was sensing from that hillside, the quiet mint-gray sitting comfortably next to the bold red sumac and golden milkweed. Nothing there was competing to be the "main" color. They were just all true, together.
Painting Technique This Month
Since Opal isn't really a single color but a phenomenon, this is a different technical challenge than usual. Here are some suggestions:
- Use a dark ground first — deep charcoal or a blue-violet, which makes lighter colors flash rather than sit flat
- Thin glazes, layered rather than pre-mixed, let the mint-gray, the reds, and the golds sit near each other, not blended into one hue
- High-key light values against that dark ground, echoing the way real opal's color-play reads against its own internal darkness
For this piece specifically, I'll be leaning on that landscape memory. Its soft muted green-gray as the quiet foundation, with sumac red and milkweed gold moving through it in flashes, the same way they moved through that Michigan hillside.
The Artist Mindset Connection
I think there's a real lesson here about where inspiration actually comes from.
I didn't plan this palette in the studio. I found it on the side of the road, paying attention to something most people would drive right past.
This ties into something I talk about constantly with the artists I coach: your actual visual voice isn't something you invent by staring at a blank canvas. It's something you notice, already present in the world, if you're paying attention. Something that resonates deep within you. Something you see, feel, and believe about it that will help others experience in a new way because of your very unique perspective.
Opal teaches the same thing about identity that this landscape taught me about color… Nothing has to be simplified into just one note to be beautiful. Sometimes the richest work comes from letting several true things exist side by side.
Where To Learn More This Month
I'm going deeper into the use of Opal this month. The technique, the symbolism, and the strategic application all inside my YouTube Channel.
I think you'd especially like the Color Symbolism Series Playlist:
You don't have to pick one version of yourself. Opal never has!
— Tonya
P.S. — This month I'm also sharing more on having an artistic vision inside my Patreon. There's a 7-day free trial available at the lower support tier, which includes the full Keys framework and quarterly live sessions! Join here.