Started on the bottom part (yay!) of the plastic part today. My goal is to make the bottom edges a bit rounded - flat on the bottom, but a more sloping corner. I’m having issues keeping my whites white and my grays gray. I’m currently using titanium white, cadmium red hue, and erm…. something yellow, and all of my paints are from the brand Utrecht. It’s a bit hard to make the texture look like plastic, but I’ll fix those issues later and get the general idea of the shading now. Also, I really need to work on taking these pictures from the same distance. I’m having a few problems, but generally, the whole process is going swimmingly! Oil on canvas. 2’ x 3’.

Not much progress, because time was limited today. I tried to lighten/blend the top of the spool and take out some of the drastically darker values. It looks darker than the previous picture, because the lighting in the basement room is funky, so it looks a bit different from picture to picture. I used mineral spirits with it today, something I haven’t used in a while. Also, I’M RUNNING OUT OF WHITE PAINT. EEP. Well, I guess I’ll have to get some soon. Anywhoo. Happy New Year to all of you, and I’ll keep sharing my progress! Oil on canvas. 2’ x 3’.

So I’ve lightened up the top of the spool, but I think I need to make it a bit more white rather than colored. Almost finished the shading for the top plastic (need to lighten it up still) but I  have a ways to go on the bottom. Despite the bit  to go, I’m getting closer and closer each day! Oil on canvas. 2’ x 3’.

YAY SHADING. As you can see, I’ve started the shading for the top portion of the plastic. I need to round the shading on the back plastic portions, because right now it looks flat on the inside. I’m using burnt umber and my ultramarine blue for the greyish shading on the plastic. Also, my photography skills still suck. The entire photo is tilted. Sorry guys, lol. Oil on canvas. 2’ x 3’. 

I’ve increased the amount of the off-white. I had less time during the class period, so I couldn’t get as much done as I had wanted. The ellipse on the bottom of the spool was funky at the beginning, and it didn’t match the top. I went back and created a new ellipse for the bottom of the spool with an almost pure white. It’s ocassionally difficult because I’ll accidentally mix the partially-wet red paint with the white to create a pink, which I don’t want. Not too happy with today’s work, but oh well. Oil on canvas. 2’ x 3’.

Rightso. I’ve added an off-white. It’s not the paint that I was going to use from my art teacher, but it’ll work. The only difficult part will be consistently mixing it to be the same color. I think it looks more purely white in the photograph than it does in real life, but that’s a result of the funky digital pictures and my iphone’s camera quality, from which I upload my pictures. I’m pretty happy about the progress of my painting, and I’m so excited to see where the picture will go. Oil on canvas. 2’ x 3’.

EVEN BRIGHTER. Once we get access to a color for the plastic portion, I’m going to start the top and bottom. I don’t think it would be easy to mix a color that matches the ivory-esque color in reality. Using a white and any other color would just become a light version of the color. Oil on canvas. 2’ x 3’.

I brightened up the highlights today to match the new color tone. It’s going really really well! I do have to blend a bit more on the left side, and maybe work on fixing the gradual changes in values. Oil on canvas. 2’ x 3’.

Much brighter? I think yes. I’ve still got a lot to blend, but I’ve made the color of the red much closer to the actual spool’s tones. Keep plodding onward! Oil on canvas. 2’ x 3’

I cleaned up a lot of the lines on the red part of the spool. I accidentally put some sort of a funky shadow on the top left of the red part, so I think it kinda look like it’s crumpling inward. Life is tough for a spool. Oil on canvas. 2’ x 3’.