Seated Nude A

Seated Nude A is from the Tuesday session of two weeks ago.  Nancy C. urgently requested that I not make another mark on it, with about a half hour to go.  I respect her judgment, so I only clarified the feet after getting her permission.  Ii’m always saying I want to paint more loosely.  The difficulty is knowing when to stop, so I need a Nancy C. around at all times, I guess.  This is the Carolyn Anderson side of me.

Seated Nude B

I don’t know where Nancy C. was, but I got a little further into Nude B.  I think the story here is the good contrasting skin values.  I painted in broad shapes again.  Don’t you see a similarity to the figure I had going with Steven Assael’s help here?  I have to give another plug to Michael Harding’s King’s Blue.  It seems to be just the right blue to add into the shadowed skin tones.  Nowhere is it more evident than on the edges of Nude B’s shadows.  I am getting away from the more chromatic shadows that I used to indulge in, e.g., Nude A’s thigh.  One could say I improved a great deal in one week’s time, but one may be saying next week that I am just as fast a backslider.

Becky Portrait v.2

This is the portrait that I was reluctant to show you as a work in progress.  The wayward eye is gone.  You can’t even notice the tiny change I made to the outside face/jaw line.  I think I should bring it in even more.  There is still something about this picture that bothers me.  What is it exactly?  I think it is the modeling of the face.  Kinda crazy, really.  I need the model back!

Here, for sake of comparison, is the version 1 next to version 2:

unfinished portrait of Becky

Becky Portrait v.2

Could it be that it is the tightness that also annoys me?  I must work on loosening up in portraiture now that I am getting a feel for it in figures.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery and the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (both are in Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH);  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;  the East End Art Gallery in Riverhead, Long Island; at the Manchester office of Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter;  at the Boston Arboretum Visitor Center, 25 Arborway, Boston; and at her studio by appointment.