Magnolia leaf AKA golden green

My color for the ROY G BIV color challenge, which is blogger's choice this month, is a sort of natural/neutral goldish-green, inspired by the magnolia leaves that accompanied some pale roses I found at the plant market recently. It feels like the right balance of nature with a nudge toward quiet "celebration" (at least this is what I am in the mood for in these pre-solstice days). The image at the beginning of the post shows a few similarly-colored things I gathered from around the studio & the kitchen, and the next one shows the original bouquet... (Magnolia leaf closeups momentarily.)



Over the last several days, the vase has traveled between the adjacent living room & studio, and I have had plenty of time to study the beautiful shapes of the magnolia leaves & those running along the stems of eucalyptus. I have long been a fan of eucalyptus——for its scent...for the way the leaves can appear blue or green, depending on the light...for the blush of pinkish-purple that tinges the stems & the edges of the leaves.

 
But I don't think I ever realized just how gorgeous magnolia leaves are. They are so sturdy, and I love the contrast of the smooth, shiny texture on the top, with the comparatively rough, matte one on the underside. The variegation/patterns that develop over time are so appealing...and those edges——you can feel the tension & the strength of the gorgeous curves, and their thickness catches the light wonderfully.

 
 

I had some fun experimenting with the leaves yesterday..."blind" typing on them (the magnolia leaves took the impressions of the letters beautifully well), cutting them into book "pages," and translating the spines into the spine of a book. I love how the thick edges, with their slight waviness, will lend a lovely presence to the book's profile. The leaves stood up to quite a bit of handling, and now I am minimally pressing some to make a book using my newfound knowledge...

Next are a few more details of some of the other "golden-green" items seen in the first image of this post. The golden-green Zespri Gold kiwis will also likely be of a similar color inside; I'm looking forward to finding out when I slice them (it's my first time eating anything other than the more usual, rather obsequious, ones!). And I'm hoping the pears will be perfectly ripe for our Pear Tarte Tartin to celebrate the winter solstice...

 





Well, this officially concludes what I think may be a four-year run of ROY G BIV with Jennifer & Julie. It's been great fun, Ladies! I have appreciated the encouragement to be present in Blogland semi-regularly.

On that note, after a considerable absence on Blogger mid-year, I had every intention of spending more time here, but Instagram seems to be taking my online time lately. I hope you will visit me over there if you get a chance——and please let me know if you have an Instagram account as well. I will see the rest of you here next time... And happy holidays to each of you!

Considering pink fondly

 

This month's color for the ROY G BIV photo challenge (details at the end of the post) is pink. It's not a color I am particularly drawn to ~ or especially fond of ~ but I can't tell you how happy I have been working with these cheerful, bright peony images. After that horrible night in Paris last week, pink & all its associated "innocence" suddenly feels quite welcome.

The peony photos date to last May. I had taken them with this month's ROY in mind, but then completely forgot they existed until I stumbled across them a few weeks ago...a nice surprise in these ever-shorter days of fall. A miniature bouquet of peonies would have been perfect on the table with the dollhouse-sized china tea set (below), which we rediscovered when retrieving my daughter's dollhouse for my three-year-old niece recently. I must admit that I had an inordinate amount of fun arranging the furniture (as some of you may have seen on my Instagram page)...

Participants in the Corri La Vita run/walk event (devoted to raising awareness/money for breast cancer research & patients), wore a gorgeous, vibrant shade of pink this year...

And here are mockups for a few designs I've been working on in the studio...these were created with spring in mind. {The back-right one is also (hot) pink, but the color did not "translate" very well.}

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My daughter's eighteenth birthday is tomorrow, and I have lots to do yet, but I will look forward to seeing everyone's pink over the weekend. Wishing you all happy pinkness in the meanwhile!

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A few details in case you are not familiar with the
ROY G BIV  photo challenge ~ Artists Jennifer Coyne Qudeen 
& Julie Booth started this project a few years ago; each month
is devoted  to a different color of the rainbow. Since we have
already explored the seven "official" colors, we are spending the
rest of the year searching for some bonus colors. Everyone is
welcome to join in the search. Please visit Jennifer &
Julie's blogs for links to each month's participants.
 Guidelines are here.

The color of frustration (!)

Don't get me wrong...I love a strong, slightly warm charcoal-y gray (sewing an entire wardrobe's-worth of clothes from a bolt of charcoal wool is a dream of mine)...but the gray skies & lack of light lately seem to be conspiring to drive me crazy when it comes to photo-taking. White becomes gray, warm whites come out cool, and the usual gorgeous, rich shadows are nowhere to be found; everything seems dull to me without the sunshine. And just when I finally started instagram-ing!

I could have simply pointed the camera at the sky at any given moment this week and ended up with a vast collection of images for this month's installation of the ROY G BIV photo challenge, but decided instead to take a journey through my photo archive. The first trio shows the light-play/shadows of glass tealight holders on a nicely textured paper...I liked how the resulting marks almost could have been created with a water-soluble pencil or paints.

The next trio features the Venetian lagoon on a sun-less day. The overcast sky created a distinctly gray effect/feeling; yet, compared with a "standard" gray, you can make out shades of blue, green & various neutrals mixed up in there. I suppose it's actually quite rare that a color is indeed pure, i.e. unaffected by the influence of its surroundings. And of course our different computer screens further impact how we interpret colors...

This last trio is of the paving stones in Piazza Pitti, just after a storm. There are few things more glorious (in my opinion) than the moment the sun emerges after a rainstorm, when shadows return and the city is clean & refreshed.

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A few details in case you are not familiar with the
ROY G BIV  photo challenge ~ Artists Jennifer Coyne Qudeen 
& Julie Booth started this project a few years ago; each month
is devoted  to a different color of the rainbow. Since we have
already explored the seven "official" colors, we will spend the
rest of the some bonus colors. Everyone is welcome to join in
the search. Please visit Jennifer & Julie's blogs for links
to each month's participants. Guidelines are here.

Hydrangea Blues

 
Once again we have reached the third Thursday of the month, AKA time for the latest edition of the ROY G BIV photo challenge. May's color is blue, so it seemed like a perfect chance to get to know my blue hydrangea better. For years I've been writing about how I purchase one each spring, to place on the windowsill of our kitchen. But the current hydrangea in residence has also spent some time in the studio, where there's more light for photographing and space in which to explore & play a bit.

While blue is my "least favorite" color, I've come to realize that I do appreciate it—immensely—in nature...a sparkling blue sea, the thousand watercolor-like degrees of blue at twilight...and blue hydrangeas. I always marvel at just how many shades of blue the petals of a single hydrangea plant can display, especially as it "ages"...some blooms deepen to violet and ultimately they will take on a green tint. And in doing a little "dissecting" with the X-Acto knife, I realized how even the delicate stems that that support each four-petaled blossom are beautifully nuanced with blue & violet (you can see a smattering in the ceramic palette in the photo above).

I have also been working on a new collection of typography prints recently and thought I'd try out something inspired by blue (though I'm not sure that "hydrangea blue" is among the blue-tinged rainbow created by the colors I fixed at either end of my spectrum—it proved impossible to capture all of the blues that do exist!)...

On the note of varying shades of blue, by chance I came across the following quote in a book I was reading the other day. The observation was made after Earl Shorris drew a connection between a butterfly he had seen in the Mayan jungle a few months before coming across the entry for "blue" in a dictionary of the Maya language:

There are nine different words in Maya for the color blue in the comprehensive Porrúa Spanish-Maya dictionary but just three Spanish translations, leaving six butterflies that can be seen only by the Maya, proving beyond doubt that when a language dies six butterflies disappear from the consciousness of the earth.

 — Earl Shorris

"The Last Word"
Harper’s Magazine
August 2000

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And now, back to the hydrangea... Here it is in the studio, where I have recently reorganized the studio tables to form a luxurious three meter-long working space (thickly covered, as you may be able to make out below)...

I also had fun taking apart some recycled organza tea bags from my stash and filling them with fresh hydrangea flowers...

And here are a few closeups... I especially like the layering of the edges of the petals—like sheets of wavy paper (Image 1), the effect of a flurry of "wings" (Image 3), and the way the overlapping of the petals seems to form extra petals between them when they're seen against the light (Image 4).

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A few details in case you are not familiar with the ROY G BIV photo challenge... Artists Jennifer Coyne Qudeen & Julie Booth started this project a few years ago. Each month is devoted  to a different color of the rainbow, and once we explore
all of these we will move on to other colors later in the year. Everyone is welcome to join in the search. Please visit Jennifer & Julie's blogs for links
to each month's participants. Guidelines are here.

Spring-green

An impromptu photo session with these cicorino verde "blossoms" coincided well with this month's ROY G BIV color: green. Looking to try something fresh & spring-like, I had chosen them as part of my latest grocery delivery, but wasn't quite sure what form the greens would take since there are so many varieties. I was delighted by what I found; nestled together were more than a dozen green "roses"...so out came the camera, before I even thought about how we'd be eating them...

Now I'm curious to visit Florence's rose garden to see if the roses there have started blooming...with the above-twenty (Celsius) temps we've had lately, I wouldn't be surprised!

Wishing you all happy surprises in your kitchens & gardens...

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A few details in case you are not familiar with the ROY G BIV photo challenge... Artists Jennifer Coyne Qudeen & Julie Booth started this project a few years ago. Each month is devoted  to a different color of the rainbow, and once we explore
all of these we will move on to other colors later in the year. Everyone is welcome to join in the search. Please visit Jennifer & Julie's blogs for links
to each month's participants. Guidelines are here.

Yellow/Moon

 

This month the ROY G BIV photo challenge brings us to the "Y": yellow. If orange symbolizes joy for me, I would say yellow is the color of celebration and sunshine-filled hope. And what perfect timing... We began the day with a new moon and, just before midnight, spring will arrive in Italy. The solar eclipse, which I followed online in the company of scientists whose enthusiasm was as entertaining as it was contagious, brought yet another celebratory note to the day. In Florence the morning merely dimmed for an odd spell, but Svalbard & the Faroe Islands both experienced a total eclipse (though the latter had to contend with clouds for mcuh of it).

When trying to put together a random collection of photos highlighting a single color, I always find it surprising just how many different shades there are. Everything from subtle to strong and, in the case of yellow, from warm and golden to chilly or verging-on-chartreuse-y.

The squash blossoms above (which we like to quickly dip into a simple batter of flour & water before frying in olive oil) are a shade of the yellow that I gravitate toward. I'm also drawn to the pale (and sometimes bold) yellows that characterize the majority of Florence's buildings. The image below shows a glimpse through our living room window yesterday morning. While I seem to be having problems getting Blogger to portray the intensity of contrast & color of my photos yet again this month, that shadow of the streetlamp against the yellow wall always gives me a moment of delight.

These next two images are from a recent excursion to the rose garden. The rose bushes had all been sharply pruned, and the garden was at its most stark & bare before growth will resume——with the exception of these small yellow blossoms that couldn't seem to hold themselves back (first image), and the mimosas that always bloom in time for La Festa della Donna/International Women's Day on 8 March (second set of images).

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And here are——surprise!——some obsequious yellow: lemons... I had been hanging on to the yellow string bag that held the lemons in case it inspired me for this month's ROY, and found I quite liked the threads caught between the light and the darkness, and the shadows cast by the net.

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And next, the Wallace Stegner book whose orange spine featured in my last ROY post, remains relevant again this month when the cover is revealed. The daisies on the bookmark my daughter made for me years ago are a bit difficult to make out, but each time I would sit down with the book I noticed how their yellow centers echoed the wildflowers "growing" on the cover. (Despite the sadness/cynicism of the story/narrator, I very much enjoyed reading All the Little Live Things, and have just moved onto The Spectator Bird, a sort of sequel in that it continues protagonist Joe Allston's journey——this time literally as well as figuratively.)

 

After examining & photographing the lemon slices, I realized I much prefer lemon-rind yellow to that of its cool/paler/shinier/juicy insides...which led to these photos of a short stack of lemon slices (which, alas, do not display as warmly golden in Blogger as they do in Photoshop)...
 

 

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And now, to conclude this post, is the inspiration for its title, Yellow Moon, a song from Pearl Jam's latest album (Lightening Bolt).

 

 

Wishing you all a sunshiny weekend, wherever in the world you may find yourself. And I'd love to hear what yellow symbolizes for you if you'd like to share it in the comments section below...

 

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A few details for those of you not already familiar with the ROY G BIV
photo challenge... Artists Jennifer Coyne Qudeen & Julie Booth started
it a few years ago. Each month is devoted  to a different color of the
rainbow, and once we explore each of these we will move on to other colors
later in the year. Everyone is welcome to join in the search. Please visit
Jennifer & Julie's blogs for links to each month's participants.

 Guidelines are here.

Orange joy

 

Once again, it's time for the ROY G BIV photo challenge, and this month we have been looking for "orange." For January's edition I let paper inspire me, so I thought I'd continue with a paper theme again this time. As is often the case, other tangents tempted me, and I must say that it's the most fun I've had for a while (things are still not the same around here since the beginning of the year).

Orange is my favorite color, so the hardest thing was probably deciding what to photograph. My day is full of orange: I brush my teeth with an orange toothbrush, my hair with an orange hairbrush, use amber shower/hair products and orange towels. Orange curtains frame the windows, which look upon terracotta roof tiles, blankets & wraps in shades of orange keep me warm, I pour tea from an orange pot into a cup with a sliver of orange rind. And since it's citrus season, the fruit basket is inevitably bursting with the delicious blood oranges that are at their best right now. However, I opted not to catalogue my orange life here (at least not visually).

In the image at the beginning of this post you should be able to just make out some letter forms for one paper project I'm working on, belatedly: the "place"-themed alphabet for A Letter a Week 2014. Originally I had planned to include several more photos at the end of this post, but have since decided to create a separate entry——so this post is less paper-y than I had first envisioned.

Here are some notes on the photos that have remained...

First is an image of the confetti (known locally as coriandoli) I made in honor of carnevale this week. When I emptied the hole punch of the orange and copper circles I had cut, out fell the remnants of a long-ago project, adding some other colors to the mix——certainly more in the spirit of Carnival. 

After the confetti is a picture from this morning...it's not the first time I have posted an image of the early sun falling on the roof tiles and so beautifully highlighting their curved edges, but this "crescent"-enhancing moment delights me each time I catch it.

Next is a selection of my favorite orange-spined books. The one on top——All the Little Live Things——is my current read from Wallace Stegner, an author whose writing I savor. Not page-turners, but rather stories with a painterly sensibility, told at a pace that invites on-the-page reflection, I have been taking my time working through Stegner's collection. You may notice that Witold Rybczynski's books compose a good chunk of the stack...I've always enjoyed how he writes so engagingly about the multiple facets of architecture/building. (I only just realized he has a blog, which I have yet to peruse.)

And then are some chili peppers that have been slowly drying (shriveling!) over the last several weeks. They began as a bouquet of bright oranges, reds & greens, but had changed considerably by the time I rediscovered them when making a pot of chili earlier this week. (In fact, they are perhaps even more photogenic now——definitely more patinaed——though I will spare you the dozens of photos they inspired me to take).

 

I thought I'd finish with this photo of an orange freesia that I took a couple of years ago, against the temporary "garden" of freesias that popped up on the studio table during a photo shoot. I liked the image so much that I gave it a title——OrangeJoy——and offered it in my Etsy shop for a while (plus have sent many post card versions as thank you's). It remains one of my all-time favorite pictures, and fills me with joy whenever I come across it.

 

Here's wishing joy for everyone, in whatever shape, form or color

that happens to be. I'd actually love to hear which color symbolizes
joy for you if you'd like to note it in the "comments" section...

And Happy Year of the Goat/new moon!

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For those of you who are not familiar with the

ROY G BIV photo challenge from past years, it was first begun

by artists Jennifer Coyne Qudeen & Julie Booth. Each month is

devoted to a different color of the rainbow, and once we do each

of these we will move on to other colors later in the year. All

are welcome to join in the search. Please visit Jennifer & Julie's

 blogs for links to other participants. Guidelines are here.