I am addicted to drawing live, nude humans. This addiction is not unusual. Every Saturday morning, when we could otherwise have been sleeping in, ten to twenty of similarly afflicted addicts meet at the NH Institute of Art to get our weekly fix. It’s rough when the sessions are suspended from April to September. But in May the weather becomes conducive to playing outside, when plein air painting fills my time.

Because of all those plein air activities, I did not get to the Saturday Life Group until late in October this year. October 24 I tried using compressed charcoal, with disappointing results. Harsh, undifferentiated black, impossible to erase. But I had lost my box of regular charcoal and didn’t realize what a big impact the compressed would have on my drawing. No photos of those results–sorry.

The October 31 SLG session starred my favorite model, Jonathan. For that reason perhaps, I was inspired to bring out my fat colored sticks–a cross between chalk, pastel, charcoal–made by Cretacolor in Austria. I also had a new charcoal sketchbook, with pages of varied different shades. I started on gray paper with a short pose of about 20 minutes, and perhaps I will go back to it someday to finish the background, clean up edges, etc. Here’s that one:

For the second, hour-long pose, I retreated to my comfort zone — just black charcoal — but added white shadings:

But the full glory of color found expression when I turned to a page of green paper for our second hour-long pose:

I’m still running about a month behind, and I’ll probably never catch up. Unless you are waiting with bated breath for each installment (really, is anyone out there doing that?), you don’t care, so I can forgive myself and stop worrying about being timely.

But as a reward for those reading to the end, here’s a bit of timely news: I just signed up for a workshop on painting au plein air in the SNOW, with Stapleton Kearns. Can’t wait for the snow now! Alas, I am giving up one of my Saturday life drawing sessions for this workshop.

The first October plein air painting expedition was to Tamworth, NH, at the Remick Country Doctor and Farm Museum. This was my third year participating in this annual fundraising event by the NH Plein Air painters for the benefit of the Museum. The museum is a working farm featuring lots of live animals, which is more fun than Canterbury Shaker Village. Alas, it rained all day. Only five or six artists had the persistence and fortitude to show up, and the wet paint sale at the end of the day drew few buyers.

The painting at the top of this page (“Rocky Pasture”) was painted from just inside the chicken barn, where gusts of wind would regularly splatter me with spray from the rain. The painting below (“Chicken Alley”) was more obviously painted inside the barn, looking down a hallway by rooms of chickens, who were also huddling inside, but you will have to take my word for that. That lovely sunlit opening at the end of the hallway? I lied.

The following Friday, we (NH Plein Air) headed to Holderness for a repeat visit to Tannenruh. Here is my take on Squam Lake from Tannenruh in the Fall.

Mid-October found us trekking up to Bartlett for the semi-annual Artists Getaway Weekend. My artist friend and high school classmate from Rhode Island and Florida, Mary Crawford Reining (still no website to link you to) bravely accompanied me. I say bravely, because the temperature was plummeting and the makings of a snowstorm were heading east. But given that forecast, we were very fortunate, and on our first day painting enjoyed the unusual vision of white-capped mountains rising out of brilliantly colored forests.

Above: View from the scenic overlook in Intervale–Mt. Washington Valley with Mt. Washington itself as the backdrop.

Above: Another view of Mt. Washington from a spot on Route 302 just inside Crawford Notch State Park, in a field where I have it on reliable authority lupines bloom in June. The purple flowers in bloom on this day are asters.

Above: Suspension bridge on Davis Path, off Route 302 in Crawford Notch.

Above: Another view from the Intervale scenic overlook. I believe that is Cathedral Ledge [now identified as Humphrey’s Ledge by more expert observers] in the upper left quadrant.

Above: View from Bear Notch Road overlooking the Route 302 valley. Mt. Washington is out of the frame to the left and the buildings of the town of Bartlett are behind the trees left of center. This small (6 by 12) painting was snatched from icy winds in only one hour–by far the worst conditions that we had to endure the whole weekend.

Before October would be over, I made two more painting trips to the Arboretum in Boston. More about the Arboretum project later.

Continuing with the tale of the marathon workshops, I had a very different experience with Stapleton Kearns, whose plein air landscapes embody classical techniques. I struggled to adjust, without surrendering my newfound Griffel sensibilities.

All three days we would be painting in the middle of a large field in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. On Day 1, I obediently brought out a 16 by 20 panel even though the few times I had painted en plein air on a 16 by 20 canvas I had been disappointed. My brushes aren’t big enough, my easel not big enough, my tubes of paint not big enough. I never finished that Day 1 opus, so I have not yet photographed it. Someday, maybe.

On Day 2, I abandoned the large format and reverted to 11 by 14. Life improved. The 11 by 14 is displayed above. Three silos. My original intention had been to focus on the tracks and shadow in the foreground, and keep the silos as background. But the silos and the shadow on one of them are so irresistibly interesting. (By the way, to use the bathroom on the farm, as we were invited to do, one had to follow those tracks back to a farmhouse that is not even visible on the horizon, negotiating two mysterious (to me) and heavy gates–I ended up slithering under them until I was shown how to unlatch them.)

In the afternoon I started a smaller painting on 12 by 9, one with a view of Mount Monadnock in the background because you can’t just ignore the presence of Mt. Monadnock. This time, though, I kept the focus off the mountain and I daresay you wouldn’t even notice it if I hadn’t told you.

My Day 3 inspiration was a distant view of farm buildings in a different direction, and I tried to translate that distant view into a closer one on an 11 b y 14. I am still fussing with it, and may eventually give up on it, or accept it and photograph it. But meanwhile, I had taken a close up photo of the original inspiration, on our way into the far away field, and from that photo I have recently, in studio, rendered a smaller reproduction of the vision in my head. Here that is:

Stape was incredibly energetic and devoted to us. We literally worked until the sun started to set. He gave long individual critiques, which took him hours because we were spread out all over the farm, long demonstrations, and at least one long formal lecture. He was so full of information, opinions, and advice, and so totally willing to give it all up for us, that I am sure we each were ready to give it all up for him at the end of those three days.

To get a feel for the man, visit his blog, which I try to visit each day. He is so diligent about posting every day that even during the workshop, when he had a long drive to get back home after eating dinner with us, he never missed a blog entry. In fact, if you go back to mid-September, you can read about us in his blog–his assessments of us for the public were consistent with what we heard on the farm. But I make him sound merely diligent, which would be so boring. NOT BORING! Go check it out.

In early September, when I launched myself on my marathon of workshops (12 out of 13 days), I started with the 5-day workshop with Lois Griffel. Hard to sum up in a single phrase, but Lois finds shapes and values within competing colors. You MUST follow the link above to understand how exciting, how vibrant her paintings are.

This workshop was unlike any other I have ever taken (ok, I’m not exactly an authority) in that it was structured and progressive. On the first day, we were not to concern ourselves with composition, drawing or any other distracting details. And throughout the workshop we all (including Lois) painted the same scene (from slightly different angles, of course).

We started by laying in the general shapes in underlying colors (burnt sienna, yellow ochre, viridian, pink) that would glow through later. My painting of the tree above represented our first day. Then we practiced layering over without blending, and working in at the edges. Here is the shadowed path that resulted from the second day. (Both days were on Lake Massabesic in Manchester.)

By the third day, we were getting the hang of it. Slowly. Here is my take on the dam in Contoocook on a cloudy, gray day.

Day 4 we stayed in Contoocook but moved over to the gazebo. There were moments of sunshine, but in fact I had to fake the light in order to make this painting come alive. I also took liberties with the setting.

Our last day was a half day. We spent it at Tiffany Gardens, the same bed and breakfast in Londonderry that was a site for the International Plein Air Paintout just a week before. Lois split us into two groups because of the tight spaces, and the subject of my painting was actually the house next door, framed by the garden.

When I finished up at noon that Friday, my white house was a patchwork of bright yellow and blue, and the blues (shadows) were not convincing. Except for the too-light shadows, Lois liked this painting–then. Lois would not approve, but I later toned down the yellow and the blue, proving that I am a slow learner and not quite eligible for the label “impressionist painter”. In my blog tomorrow and subsequent days, I will be talking about the other workshops, and maybe producing a few paintings now and then that reflect what I learned from Lois Griffel.

I belong to an organization called “Women’s Caucus for Art”, which doesn’t roll too comfortably off the tongue but which does bring me into contact with a whole new set of eclectic and individualistic artists. Annually, WCA presents an exhibition of works of art created on plaques that are 6 inches square. Each member is entitled to buy a set of four panels and decorate them for the exhibit. The panels are then exhibited together and offered for sale. The price of each panel is $66. This year’s exhibit is being hung now, at The Paper Tree in Manchester NH (865 Second Street–www.thepapertree.net), and the reception takes place on Friday, November 13, from 5 to 7.

My four plaques, pictured above, are oil paintings from photographs that I took in Rhode Island at a lotus pond in Warwick, situated right on a busy highway–all the easier for people to stop and gawk and take photos. I wasn’t the only one doing so. The size and beauty of these plants was unusual. The leaves were particularly fascinating, and dominating, which may explain why my paintings are more about the leaves than the flowers.

I am hoping my 6 x 6’s will catch the eye of another lotus-lover and all four go together to their next home. This was a fun project for me–something new for me too. I can now add flowering plants to my list of favorite inspirations, right up there with dogs and cats and trees. Next thing you know, I will be succumbing to the challenge of painting oranges. (No, no, I won’t, I’m determined I won’t!)