Spindles and Spools (11 x 14) $150

I love the Mission Mill Museum and we often take visitors there.  We took my parents over the Christmas holiday and I snapped some more photos inside the mill.  Neither flash nor tripods are permitted inside, so photography is a challenge.  But the dark photos have a genuine feel since there was very little electric light in the mill when it was operational.  Bulbs were few and far between and they were all under thirty watts.  Without it’s numerous windows, the mill would have been dark indeed.

The machinery in the woolen mill fascinates me.  It was made before modern safety rules and much more of the moving parts are exposed than in modern factories and many of the moving parts are wooden.  Worn wood has a special appeal and contrasted with meta, it’s warmth increases.

When the mill ran, it ran continuously, and it was important that there be no more interruption in the looms than absolutely necessary.  Therefore, the yarn awaiting the loom was arranged on separate racks awaiting attachment to a loom as soon as one became free.  The foreground of the painting is such a rack.  The rear shows the huge spools on which the yarn was stored.

I began by reserving the highlights and yard strings with removable mask.  I washed the yarn on the white spindles first with raw sienna and then added the shadows with various combinations of raw sienna, dioxazine purple (yellow’s compliment and therefore a good gray for shadows when mixed with raw sienna) and cobalt blue.    For the blue yarn I used cobalt blue dulled  with its compliment burnt sienna.

For the green metal rack I used various combinations of phthalo blue, raw sienna and burnt sienna.  I began by painting the grooves in light phthalo blue and then painted the background around them.  Finally I accented the grooves with dark green made from phthalo blue and raw sienna.

I painted the spindles and spools in various washes of burnt sienna, burnt umber, raw sienna, cobalt blue and phthalo blue.  The spindle tops and spool buttons are cobalt blue and raw sienna.  For the rims and deeper shadows I added dioxazine purple.

Finally I removed the mask and greyed down the yarn strings.

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