smudge colors - OneLook

Literary analysis:

In literature the term “smudge” has been employed as a vivid descriptor of color to evoke fleeting, imperfect marks or patches on various surfaces. Authors use it to suggest both atmospheric and emotional textures—such as the slight smudge of blood on white plaster [1] or the dark-blue smudge defining an escarpment against the sky [2]—while in other instances it marks personal details, like a delicate black smudge under a woman's lashes [3] or a white smudge on a coat [4]. The range extends to hues of brown [5], red [6], green [7], and even a blur of gray [8], each usage reinforcing a sense of transient imperfection and the interplay of light and shadow in character studies and landscapes alike.

"You see the slight smudge of blood upon the white plaster.
— from The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
To the east, the escarpment was a dark-blue smudge against the pale-blue burnished sky.
— from The World That Couldn't Be by Clifford D. Simak
Her olive complexion was thickly powdered and there was a delicate smudge of black under her lower lashes and even on her eyelids.
— from Black Oxen by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
That white smudge on Carlson's coat glowed in the darkness.
— from Hooded Detective, Volume III No. 2, January, 1942 by Various
"Wait a minute," begged Grace, looking for something on which to cleanse her hands of the brown smudge of chocolate.
— from The Outdoor Girls in Florida; Or, Wintering in the Sunny South by Laura Lee Hope
They had gone but a few hundred yards; yet the fire was already merely a shapeless, red smudge on the foggy blackness behind them.
— from Cap'n Eri by Joseph Crosby Lincoln
His eye was caught by the green smudge on her pink sleeve.
— from The Incomplete Amorist by E. (Edith) Nesbit
Far out across the gulf you see a stain— Follow my hand—a smudge, a blur of gray; That is the world.
— from Florence on a Certain Night, and Other Poems by Coningsby Dawson

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