Color of the Year excitement!

So, you may have heard...this is Pantone's new "Color of the Year" for 2015:

Image courtesy of Pantone

It's called Marsala...I would call it "brick red, but snazzier," or a "warm dusty wine red" maybe.  And you know what?  I'm actually really psyched about it.

I had an adjustment period for Radiant Orchid...sure, I ended up painting my craft fair booth sign that color, and that looked nice...

...but on me, Radiant Orchid would have made me look seriously ill.  And it didn't combine well with a lot of other colors, it was more of a statement in itself.  It would also have been overwhelming to use as a whole-room color scheme.  Bleh.

Marsala, on the other hand...this is a color I could get into.  It would look smashing on lots of different people...it's one of those colors that goes well on many different people's skin tones.  It would make a room look sophisticated but welcoming, as a main color or an accent color.  It's the color of garnets, red wine, red velvet cake...these are awesome (and aesthetically pleasing!) things.  What's not to love?

In fact, looking through my art, I realize it's a color I have gotten into before...

Lucy's background was sorta marsala-esque, and La Caterina's blouse was too...

...and so was this papier-mache W I painted for my living room, as I pointed out in my previous post.

Here's some other marsala-flavored artworks I found while browsing Pixels, the site that supplies my art prints...

Sunhorse, by Pat Erickson

Marsala makes a great background color for portraits, since it sets off so many skin tones so well...and that applies to horses too, evidently.

Happy Friday by Fabrini Crisci

Goes well with different blue shades, too!  The red color of the guy on the right's outfit really gives this piece a decadent feel...and I just love this style, very unique.

Bob's Chili Parlor by Craig Shillam

Marsala is a good color for evoking that classical Americana feel too, as evidenced here...it's a color that reminds me of vintage soda ads or wine ads.

Roses Rolled in Newspaper by Minaz Jantz

Love this photo - you have to click on the link and see it bigger, because the little thumbnail I was able to pull from the website really doesn't show all the gorgeous colors and textures, or give you a sense of all the rich red colors.  Marsala paired with other reds is just delicious.

La Jungla Rossa by Guido Borelli

Again, you really have to click on this and see it full size...I hadn't been expecting to see a landscape where marsala was the dominant color, but I saw several, and I love this one!  Like this painting I did, it's an interesting challenge to try and use no blue in a painting, and make the sky some other color.

Shoot, now all this talk about marsala is making me crave chicken marsala...maybe I'll have to figure out how to make that sometime this week...

What do y'all think of this Color of the Year?  What would you like to see in Marsala - cars, rooms, clothes, artworks?  Comment about it!