First of all, it’s hard to get started.   I’ve been dragging my feet for over a week, avoiding my first post of the new year.  Second, it’s hard to be original.  New Year’s Resolutions for artists come in two packages:  Plan A:  Get Better.  Plan B:  Get Better Known.  The “How” of each?  That’s what used to be known, before inflation, as the $64 question.

How to get better for painters:  paint more?  paint different?  read more books?  take more classes and workshops?

How to get better known (“do better marketing”):  write a blog?  send out a newsletter?  join a gallery?

These two big objectives are basically incompatible unless you hire someone else to do the marketing for you.  A spouse comes in handy!  For a colleague’s summary of possible resolutions for an artist’s new year, see the blog of Sharon Allen.  Now I don’t have to think about it anymore!  Instead, I will press the Restart button next month when I have a convenient birthday.  The older, slower, and lazier I get, the harder I must work just to keep up.

This week, I photographed all the works from our Monday life drawing/painting session; everyone seems to enjoy that.  Our model this week was actually one of my patrons, one who buys my nude paintings, prints and drawingsof other people, and wanted one of herself.  She had had a double mastectomy and wanted to record that achievement.  She was a great model, and is pleased with the painting that I did of her, so “Mission Accomplished!”  The following photos were taken with my iPhone, so the quality of reproduction might not be up to what we are used to from my Nikon D70.  (I sure hope so!)  After this array, I am including some stragglers, which should have been included in previous blogs but weren’t.

The Charcoalist

The Pastellist

The other oil painter

My painting

We all agreed on the color of her hair.   Only mine has the egregious shine.  The shine may be caused or aggravated by a mixture that I use as my medium, which includes Liquin.  Oil paints lose their natural glossiness when they dry, but the Liquid helps to reduce that effect, but it also makes the paint when wet super glossy.

The stragglers are three from a week when I never got around to posting at all, or I posted on other subjects.

Bursting with Life

Isn’t she glorious?  I see at least flaw that I want to correct–wrist of her right hand looks suddenly too narrow because of a stray blob of dark paint.  Gwen has been extremely popular with the artists, but alas, we will not be seeing her for a while, at least for the duration of her pregnancy.

For the Monday between Christmas and the New Year, we painted Aubrey again, also a very popular model who happens to be an artist herself.  I did not photograph the artworks that day, but our Pastellist (Nancy Healy) was good enough to bring her drawing back this week to show off how great it was, so I got the photo then, again with my iPhone.  Nancy had taken a photo of Aubrey and worked on the facial features at home in order to get them just right.

My own painting was this head and shoulders version:

I perhaps got too fascinated by the turquoise pendant.  But isn’t it interesting how similar the two faces are.  Almost as if we were both on the same painting spot.  We were pretty close.  I was lower down since I sit to paint, and Nancy stands.

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 New London Inn in New London; at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester; at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center in Manchester (but access is limited to patients and health care workers).  Very, very soon, the Love, Lust and Desire show at the McGowan Gallery in Concord is coming!  January 29 is the reception.

You may also view paintings with prices and order prints, iPhone cases and the like at my Fine Art America page. If the painting you are interested in is not there, or if you prefer to bypass that experience, you may contact me by email to alotter@mac.com.

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