I am participating for the first time this weekend (November 6 and 7–Saturday and Sunday) in NH Open Doors. To find out more about this statewide event, go to www.nhopendoors.org. where you can get a list of all participating artists (under the “Crafts” category) in this region (Merrimack Valley) and a map showing how close (or far) they are from each other. My participation consists of throwing open the doors to my home, wherein can be found my studio and all my artworks that are not hanging elsewhere as part of an exhibit or private collection.

If you are a rummager, you will have much to explore: boxes, browse racks, and just leaning against the wall, lots and lots of drawings, watercolor paintings, prints, framed and unframed oil paintings. Framed and hanging on my walls, amongst my own collection of art by other people, are many of my oil paintings. Practically any of it can be bought for the right price.

For fun and also out of necessity, I will be working on my homework for Cameron Bennett’s course on painting portraits in the style of Sargent, Sorolla and Zorn. Pictured above is last week’s homework, a partial copy of Sargent’s portrait of Lady Agnew. Here is a very poor photograph of the print I was working from. The glare is terrible on both my painting and this print. I tried to angle my painting so as to catch less of the light on the glossy surface, and I think you can at least judge the likeness or lack there of between the two.

Although not so obvious in Lady Agnew’s face, I seem to have a problem with noses. I often make them longer than they should be. I have a hard time seeing and correcting the discrepancy before it’s pointed out to me. I have resolved in the future to strive to make all noses shorter than I believe they should be. Then maybe they will come out right.

Below is an example of my long nose syndrome imposed upon a Zorn portrait, which is interesting for another aspect: Anders Zorn, a Swedish painter, liked to limit the colors on his palette to white, black, ocher and cadmium red, so in copying him, we too used only those colors. Green results from mixing black and ocher. I think Zorn snuck in some blue for the stripe in that scarf though. Zorn is on the left and my copy is on the right.

The hours of my Open Studio are noon to five on Saturday, noon to four on Sunday. But Saturday morning, from seven to noon, is a new garage sale to benefit Honey (see previous post here), so come early for a real rummage and stay on for the more artistic and gentile exploration of my studio and gallery inside the house.

Directions: First find Salmon Street in Manchester, then find its intersection with Hawthorne Street (east of Elm Street). My house is on the Southwest corner, and the entrance to both garage and studio is from the Hawthorne street driveway. Frankly, the Salmon Street front door is no longer accessible to normal people: — because of the dogs, we have fenced it in with an extremely cranky gate which only the most determined visitor will mess with. And I don’t bother giving you the street number because no one notices it on the boulder next to the front walk anyway. Oh, okay–the number is 227. That might help your GPS find the right corner.

Last but not least, for those of you who are interested in Honey’s welfare: The surgery has been scheduled for November 10, and we have about $2,700 toward the cost of $3,000 ++. Thank you to all who have donated. And may you be blessed in turn when you are in need.