Little orange houses (+ other orange things)

I've been having some fun with this month's color for the ROY G BIV photo challenge*: orange. It's hard for me to name a favorite color—I like specific shades of red, orange, yellow, green, blue & purple—but orange is probably the one that makes me happiest. Again, it's certain kinds of orange—mainly natural, earthy shades, like terracotta, rust & copper...but just the right intense, bright orange also has the power to absolutely make me swoon.

The image at the top of this post shows a few of the little houses I started working on just last night (only the one at the front has been glued together); they are modest structures of just 4x4x5.5 centimeters each. These first ones all fall within the 'orange' family; one is a bright 'color wheel' orange, another terracotta, and a third iridescent copper. I hope to keep going (though I'm not really sure where I am going), and create one of these in each of my favorite colors of Canson Mi-Teintes. I tend to spend so much studio time planning/experimenting/pondering that it was nice to just run with an idea without over-thinking it. After all of my work with cubes in the last several months, creating a 'net' for a cube-based house was fairly easy, and there's something satisfying about seeing all of those squares & triangles piling up on the paper while preparing it to score/trim. In fact, I almost got distracted by the geometry of the drawing, and seeing where that might lead...

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This month's challenge also inspired a still life of sorts, composed of some items made of copper & terracotta. They are not very representative of the color orange, especially in their patinaed state, but rather of these materials that are closer to orange than any other color found on the color wheel. Equally fascinating were the undersides of the copper items—the tray with the fabulous circular verdigris pattern, the round plant dish, and the 'pencil holder' (which I see now is barely recognizable as being made of copper)—but the short bursts of sunshine we had today made even this one shot below nearly impossible...something to try the next time we have a proper sunny day.

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And next are my usual quartets of images grouped together—a little of this & a little of that, with quite a bit of terracotta & copper. As my daughter commented, there's also a lot of purple. I do find it curious how often purple seems to accompany orange, especially in natural materials like the roof tiles & paving stones found throughout Florence. And sunsets, of course.

 
And here's a little traditional orange...

And one final splash of orange, intensified by a quick moment of sunshine...

* In case you haven't come across mention of the ROY G BIV photo challenge in past posts, it's inspired by artists Jennifer Coyne Qudeen & Julie Booth. Each month is devoted to a different color of the rainbow—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo & violet. This is the second year, and all are welcome to join in; guidelines are here.