During his time at the Fulton Street studio, Rauschenberg began to depart from making spare monochromatic works, like the black and white paintings, with his series of red paintings. Determined to work with red—which he called the most difficult color to work with—he brought together a wide array of "real objects," including comic strips, postcards, magazine clippings, fabric scraps, flattened umbrellas, and sometimes even mirrors, many of which were gathered from around the studio. He described the elements he integrated as a way of "getting the room into the picture."