Monthly Archives: December 2012

More from the Circle of Six

Posted by Aline on
Artists and Model

Artists and Model

I completed this painting last Friday, and there seems to be universal agreement that it is one of my best, knocking last June’s  “In the Artist’s Studio” out of the top spot.  What makes it best is, I believe, the additional interest contributed by the figures in the background, and I surely do hope I did not go overboard in depicting them.  I was acutely aware of the need to not compete with the central figure of the model, and I therefore had intended to be much sketchier with the artist figures.  But, as happens so often to me, the painting wrested control from me.  So far, no one admits to thinking the background figures are too prominent.

As I laid it out for you last week:  Tony is still the one on the far left, and Steve is the one across the room from me.  Both of them started over on new works this week. Here is Steve’s, and after it is Tony’s–in paint this week (hurrah!):

Steve's drawing

Steve’s drawing

Tony's painting

Tony’s painting

Continuing around the room counterclockwise, next is Fletcher’s painting, then Nita’s.

Fletcher's painting

Fletcher’s painting (awesome knee!)

Nita's painting

Nita’s painting

Heather was not with us this week; she was a casualty of the snowstorm we had the day before.  Elizabeth couldn’t make it either, a worrisome thing; I hope you will eventually get to see some of her work.

I’ll keep it short and (hope-you-agree) sweet this last day of the year 2012.  Happy New Year!

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester (Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway;  at the Soo Rye Art Gallery in Rye NH; at her law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

Circle of Six, Sometimes Seven

Posted by Aline on

Gentle readers, particularly the artists among you, are  you wondering at the many opportunities I get to paint from live models?  How does that happen when there is no way could I afford it on my own?  It happens because I am  lucky enough to have friends who are just as obsessed as I am, and another friend slightly less possessed but able to offer us the hospitality of her studio.  With the advantage of so much practice since last Spring, we have been progressing as artists. One by one, each of us has turned from drawing to painting.   Suddenly, two weeks ago, I looked around the studio and discovered sights amazing and inspiring.   Since then I have been collecting as many images from the stalwarts as I could, to share them with you.

So this week I  celebrate the team, the Circle of Six (sometimes seven) who  show up week after week, sometimes twice a week, each week producing better and better art, and now producing it better with paint.

Heather Lord was the original painting fool among us.  I remember her years ago, bringing her paints to the Saturday Life Group, trying desperately to capture those short poses with oil paint.  Daft, but the results were vibrant.  It was her desire for longer, painting-possible poses that last April, led to our Tuesday morning experiment with 3-hours-as-default programming.

This Fall, with the consent of Peter Clive, our Friday workshop instructor, we continued with 3-hour program.  Lately, for both Tuesday and Friday sessions, we have enjoyed double sessions on the same pose. We have just come off two straight weeks with  Becky in one pose, and started on another pose that will continue next week.)  I was lucky enough to get photos of Heather’s paintings of both poses, the second one still a work in progress.

From Heather, week 1

From Heather, pose 1

Heather's painting of Rebecca [Work in Progress} week 2

Heather’s painting of Rebecca [Work in Progress} pose 2

My own portrait of Becky in week 1 of pose 1 was in last week’s blog, “Painting Faces“.  Week 2 of pose 1 is toward the end of this blog.

After noticing what fun the two painters (that’s Heather and I) were having, the others decided to give painting a try too.  Nita Van Zandt was one of the first to brave the new frontier of painting, and right away–way too quickly we first adopters carped–she began creating  bold, vivid images, experimenting, of  course, because painting is  all about experimentation.

Nita's, week 2

Nita’s, pose 1

Elizabeth Peck–no one works harder than Elizabeth to perfect her art.  She takes countless workshops and can quote some famous artist on almost any point.  However, she was too busy to furnish a photo this time.  I hope we can catch her later.

For years perhaps, Fletcher Taft had been drawing with pencil or Conte crayon.  He produced small, delicate images, quite lovely, but not “bold” or “adventurous”.  Look at him now!

Fletch's, week 1

Fletch’s, pose 1

Fletcher's week 2

Fletcher’s pose 2

Nancy Healy has  been at this longer than any of the rest of us.   Her artistry was and is already mature, so “progress” is less striking and unnecessary for her.  She favors painting with pastels,  despite its drawbacks.  (Pastel paintings are very fragile.)   Like the rest of us, Nancy doesn’t worry about selling, and she is a master with her pastels.

Nancy's pastel

Nancy’s pose 1

The sometimes-seventh member of our circle is Tony Fiore.   Tony is a man  “who knows a lot”.  About everything.  But not in an obnoxious way.  He entertains us with random knowledge on those days when his sailing does not interfere with his art-making.  Like most of us (except Nancy), he is a frequent student at the Institute of Art (the “Tute”, he likes to call it).  He was the last of us to try painting, possibly because he refuses to paint in oils, but eventually he could not resist, and for week 1 of pose 1, he brought his acrylics to give it a go.  Unfortunately I did not get a picture of his painting from that week, and he reverted to charcoal this week.  For the time being, we’ll have to settle for  his drawing.

Tony's drawing of Becky

Tony’s drawing pose 1

I had a particularly good week myself.  I completed one on Tuesday that may be my best yet, and started one on Friday that I will be finishing up next week.  Here they are:

Seated on Red Drape (Tuesday)

Seated on Red Drape (Tuesday)

Seated on platform, WIP, Pose 2

Seated on platform, WIP, Pose 2

I accidentally smudged the first one in the course of getting it home, but decided not to repair.   I took a photograph at an angle to the second one so as to avoid glare, so that’s why it off kilter to the camera.  But no glare!  When finished, there will be a suggestion of the two artists painting in the background, and one of them is Tony.  The other is Steve, who comes so rarely that despite his role as model for this painting, is getting no glory.  Yet.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester (Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway;  at the Soo Rye Art Gallery in Rye NH; at her law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

Painting Faces

Posted by Aline on

Lately, in a change-up from the nudes, I have been trying to paint faces.  I suppose in the back of my mind I had been harboring some hope of getting good enough at painting faces to paint portraits.  The master of portraits is John Singer Sargent.  I’m beginning to realize that I will never ever be good enough to paint a portrait that I could even show to JSS for a critique.  No, of course I’m not aspiring to paint as expertly as JSS, but there is a continuum, let’s say of 100 points.  JSS is 100.  I had hoped to reach 80.  And for a while, it had seemed doable, as I gradually captured more and more of the likenesses of my subjects.  But OMG, it dawned on me between this and that stray thought, almost casually, that capturing a likeness is simply putting the correct shape in the correct spot, sort of like the police artist who renders the likeness of a suspect from the selections of a witness.   A likeness is only the beginning of a portrait, a toe in the water of portraiture.  I did two likenesses this week.

Close up of Becky's Face

Close up of Becky’s Face

Close up

Close up

Neither of them qualify as portraits.  Let us compare JSS’s portraits.

First, his portraits are full length.  I can’t think of a single JSS painting of a face.  (He did do many smaller charcoal or pencil drawings of facial likenesses, which I love to copy.)  “Portrait” signifies so much more than facial features.  “Portrait” suggests that attributes of the subject’s disposition are revealed.   The posture of the subject, the objects held by the subject, all contribute toward conveying what the subject holds dear and what attitude the subject takes toward life.

Second, consider the monumentality of effort that JSS put into his portraits.  Despite the fact that he was superbly accomplished and experienced, he would not complete a portrait with fewer than eight sittings (according to Wikipedia) and rumor has it that in at least one instance, the unfortunate subject had to submit to something like 80 hours of sitting.  And by the way, again according to Wikipedia’s source, he usually got the likeness right away, in the first sitting.  The rest of the sitting time, the bulk of his efforts, had to do with everything other than the likeness.

So in conclusion, I have not yet completed a real portrait, or even come close.  And if I were good enough to get so far as to complete one in my lifetime, which is alas limited to another 30 years at best, I should have by now received some inkling of the possibility.  I continue to make progress, but I will never arrive.

But hey!  I’m having a wonderful time.  Here is the lovely nude that escaped my camera last week, and a few more from this Saturday’s session:

Attitude in 20 minutes

Attitude for 20 minutes

10-minute pose

10-minute pose

5-minute pose

5-minute pose

35-minute pose in charcoal

35-minute pose in charcoal

You might like the 5- and 10-minute short poses better than the longer 35-minute pose.  That 5-minute pose is the best pose–wish I could have had an hour with it.  (The 50-minute pose was too horrible–I won’t even look at it, much less photograph it.)  The photos this week were, by the way, brought to you by my phone, pitch-hitting for the digital single lens reflex made by Nikon.  Not too shabby for a camera phone.

After our grueling session in the morning, a few of us SLG-ers got together for a party that night, and someone else’s camera phone caught this totally unposed candid shot of a few luminaries in attendance.  Not.

Members of Saturday Life Group at Xmas party

Members of Saturday Life Group at Xmas party

From left to right:  Marion Hazelton, Joey Pearson, Bea Bearden, Larry Christian (yes, THE Larry Christian), and me.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester (Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway;  at the Soo Rye Art Gallery in Rye NH; at her law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

Slacker!

Posted by Aline on

I only painted thrice last week, and it’s  thanks to my Tuesday and Friday morning life drawing sessions and the Saturday Life Group that I accomplished that much.  It made me realize how little time I have been putting in on studio projects, and on painting in the great outdoors.  I used to be a pretty decent, very enthusiastic plein air painter.  Without actually counting, I would bet I produced over 50 plein air paintings in 2011, compared to 25 this year.   I miss it.  But so much of my artistic energy has been absorbed by the figurative and portrait sessions that I haven’t been carving out time for plein air outings.  Now the weather is getting nasty outside.  My New Year’s resolution, adopted early, is to find more opportunities to get outside to paint–starting with our first ever Bartlett Artists Winter Getaway in January, followed by a visit to Mary on Marco Island, probably in February.

Meanwhile, the story of this week:  Since our Tuesday model and our Friday model and our next Friday model is the same person, those of us who do both Tuesday and Friday decided to make it a repeating pose, enabling a total of 9 hours on one pose for those who wanted it.  I will probably the only one of us who will use all three sessions on a single painting, although I expect not to use the entire final session on this painting.

"Huis Clos" ("Inside closed doors" or "no exit"?) WIP after 2d of 3-session pose

“Huis Clos” (“Inside closed doors” or “no exit”?) WIP after 2d of 3-session pose

One of the more interesting aspects of this painting is the background architecture.  I had recently watched a video, part 1 of Dan Thompson painting a figure, in which he recommended painting in the background, at least temporarily, in order to use it as a roadmap.  It works.  Before I drew in the Exit door on the left of the painting, I had drawn the figure’s arm too close to his body.  By situating the frame of the door where it intersected the body, I uncovered the drafting error in the arm.  The cubicle on the right (it’s the bathroom) helped me with sizing the figure’s left leg (leg on the viewer’s right).

Because I knew about the extended pose, I started this painting on a 16×20 sheet of primed linen.  I intended it to be a whole body pose, but allowed my impulsive first blocking in to change my mind.  What you see is the product of two sessions, and it is almost finished.    Some tinkering with the facial features and decisions on the background are needed next week.  When it is finished, I will roll it up and stash it away with so many other paintings on which I have lavished hours of time and effort.  And love.  Paintings that, unlike landscapes, no one else is likely to savor.

At  SLG (Saturday Life Group) I continued the experimentation with compressed charcoal that I had started in Larry Christian’s class at the Institute.  Here is the final pose of the session:

40-minute pose, view of the back

40-minute pose, view of the back

Yes, I do like backs.

There is another  drawing, from a 20-minute pose, that I wanted to include today, but for some reason, the photo I thought I took of it did not turn out.  Too bad.  It was a good one, and different from the one above.  I will include it next week if I can work it into next week’s topic, whatever that might be.  I hope next week’s topic will include work in my studio, inspired by the successful completion of my reorganization exertions.  Yes, that’s my excuse for no studio painting:  I have been laboring on moving stuff, and removing stuff, to create more space in my bedroom/studio for the studio portion.  Books, heavy books, had to be carried downstairs to make room for just art books on the studio shelves.  Underbed storage units had to be emptied to make room for  clear bags, saved drawings and such art-related, seldom-accessed items.  Dust bunnies had to be captured and disposed of (sneeze!).  Furniture had to be rearranged and some of it relegated to the guest room.  Today, I ache all over.  Well, that’s nothing new.  Arthritis.  Really slowing me.  Down.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester (Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway;  at the Soo Rye Art Gallery in Rye NH; at her law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

Lessons Less Enjoyed

Posted by Aline on

Sometimes I struggle and I’m not sure why.  Flailing is probably the more descriptive term.  Such was the case this week.  I was painting from life one of my favorite models, and I thought I was doing all the usual stuff, noting proportions, juxtapositions, etc.,  getting all the puzzle pieces in place.  But the result was not coming out right.  As Dan Thompson says in one of his videos, if the measurements are correct but it doesn’t look right, it’s not right.  The eye is the final judge. That is true of all painting from life–I have heard myself make that excuse (“hey, that’s the way it was for real”) and simultaneously cringe, because I do know that reality is not a justification for failing to satisfy the eye.  But in this case, I really, really want to understand why my usual tools were not working.  I still don’t have the answer, but I have perhaps a theory.  But first, to deal with the most glaring mistakes, I made some repairs back in my own studio.

Seated Nude, WIP

Seated Nude, WIP

Easy to fix was the arm in the back (her right arm), which was too large.  Because that arm was farther away, it must look smaller than the one in the foreground.   The bigger problem was the length of her torso.  While amending the right arm I also brought it down a smidge, thereby shrinking the torso the tiniest bit.

Seated Nude

Seated Nude

I think this helped, but it didn’t solve the puzzle.  Perhaps the figure is just too skinny?  My model is rather thin, but she is not particularly long limbed.  My guess now is that everything is too long (or not wide enough), but only in the torso does that exaggeration jar the senses.

As if to make up for that struggle, the gods of painting blessed my effort on Sunday to paint a portrait of Grace wearing her glasses.

Portrait of Grace

Portrait of Grace

Keeping the glasses on was Adrienne’s idea.  I painted around them until I could no longer avoid them.  I tackled them very delicately, framing them in with mere wisps of paint.  But one of my goals was to show the reflections as well, so I could not stay timid.  One thing about glasses:  you’ve got to get real accurate to matching one lens with the other–more so than with the eyes.  The eyes are often seen from different perspectives, one going round behind the face while the other is in full view.  But glasses are pretty much right there, perched on the nose, and aside from perspective, should match up exactly.  Well, almost exactly.

I am most pleased with the mouth.  Doesn’t she look alive enough to plant a kiss on you?  I worked and reworked the mouth, until it is almost where I want it to be.  Grace will be back in two weeks to enable Adrienne and me to finish our respective starts.  I want to perfect the philtrum (that groove between nose and upper lip), the nose, perhaps the eyes, and the hair.  And the background.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester (Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway;  at the Soo Rye Art Gallery in Rye NH; at the law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.