Before getting to the title topic, I just have to show you the portrait I did last Tuesday of Grace.  She is justifiably proud of her new dreadlocks, and of the fact that she created them herself.  I had to be careful not to let the dreadlocks dominate the painting, so fascinating were they:

Grace in profile

This was my first portrait after attending the Steven Assael workshop, and I think I was still under his influence.  My process was a little different in that I scribbled in the shapes and stayed a little looser than usual, and the result is different in that it is a little more contrasty. more monochromatic, and bluer.  Because of Assael, I have discovered the pigment called “King’s Blue”, and it is a glorious blue indeed.  Slightly redder than cobalt, so very close to my favorite color, periwinkle.  You see King’s blue in the highlights of Grace’s face.  You’ll see it in the sky I painted behind my ships, in the painting featured below.

I got home yesterday from four days away, the principal point of which was Saturday’s plein air festival in Castine, ME–the first annual plein air festival in Castine, I have no doubt.  Inspirations for paintings lay strewn about like pebbles on a beach.  I settled on boats, and I had lots of company on the dock.  Michael Chesley Johnson took this photo from  his own easel and caught me on the far left.

Castine dock painters

Next from the left is Michael Vermette, who started out more towards the boats, between me and Bobbi Heath (in the blue shirt), but then his easel took off under the sail of his umbrella, scattering all of his equipment and 50 tubes of paint in my direction.  Fortunately, I was unscathed, but the leg on his easel broke and that is how he ended up using the picnic table in the photo.  On the right is Renee Lammers, who paints on copper and sells out regularly.

Participation in this event was juried and I felt very lucky to be among the Chosen.  I drove up with Sharon Allen Thursday, and we spent that day and stayed overnight with Diane Dubreuil, one of our Bartlett Weekend paint buddies.  In Castine we each with residents, so our only travel expense was the gas, the tolls, the meals.  The food at the Saturday night wet paint sale was extraordinary in quality and quantity.  All in all, the event was fabulously successful with the only fly in my ointment being that none of my three paintings sold.  Here is the first and my favorite:

The State of Maine (with tugboat)

These boats belong to the Maine Maritime Academy, which is located in Castine.

I hope you remembered to vote in the first round of the poster competition, and if you did, thank you:  I made it to round two!  The winners of next round are to be determined by the experts, and those 15 who survive that test will be on exhibit at the Currier Museum on Thursday this week, from 5:30 to 7:30, and admission is free because everyone who shows up can vote for his/her favorite poster.  Need I say more?

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery and the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Kimball-Jenkins Gallery in Concord, NH; at the Bedford Library in Bedford; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway;  at Stella Blu , an American Tapas restaurant in Nashua; at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester; at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center in Manchester (part of the Healing with Art program); and at her studio by appointment.  Two paintings are also hanging in the Manchester office of Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter.