Last weekend was the annual spring artists’ getaway to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and I was happily present.  This time I took some larger panels to paint on, instead of those 9×12 carton paper supports I have been relying upon lately.  I’m a big girl now and I want to paint bigger.  I took three 12×16 panels, one 9×12 panel, and as back up if I needed them, a small stack of the carton paper sheets.

There were eight of us, not very many but very select.  Walt and Ann from western Massachusetts; Suzanne from Rhode Island; Helene, my roommate, from Nashua, NH; Betty from Wolfeborough, NH; and of course the stalwarts and leaders of this plein air event, Sharon Allen and Byron Carr.   It was a great weekend, with the weather cooperating for the most part–rare for a New England spring.  Weather forecasts for rainy Saturday afternoon sent us off course in search of meaningful nonpainting pursuits, none of which really panned out (the museum in Jackson was closed), whereas the weather stayed lovely and would have been ideal for painting.  [virtual teeth gnashing]  I made up for it on Sunday and the good thing is, I never had to dip into the reserve supports of carton paper.

My first painting Friday morning was this one from Pear Mountain Road.

View of Mt. Washington from Pear Mt. Rd.

I added the telephone wiring after I got home.  I did not want to smudge my lovely blue sky by trying to add the wires into wet paint; besides, at home I had some new tools called “French curves”.  I don’t know the proper method of deploying them, but I picked out an appropriate curve and used it as a guide for my brush.  The resulting lines are almost too confident.  These wires wee a necessary element of this painting.  Here is what it looked like before I added the wires.  The greens in this cell phone version are more accurate than the ones in the expensive SDLR Nikon version above.  (more whining complaint below.)

View of Mt. Washington wip (cell phone photo)

After lunch four of us gathered at Jackson Falls.  I have painted various versions and aspects of Jackson Falls over the years.  How to make this one better?  Feature a big rock instead of all that white water.

Portrait of Big Rock at Jackson Falls (cell phone photo–because Nikon version too dark)

Since I was working large, I had no trouble filling each half-day stint with just one painting.  I was pretty happy with how things were going so far.  The next day we went looking for a covered bridge because of the Stupid Weather Forecast.  The one we chose is not open to traffic, and usually we would have been content to paint it or paint from it at road level.  This day, however, my painting buddies discovered a way to get underneath the road with a view up at the bridge.  This created a curious problem, one I did not recognize until I had already committed to my vantage point.  Damn covered bridge is essentially four stripes of almost equal width running across the top of painting–that is, if you want to show the water too.  Nothing more monotonous.  I struggled with the size of the stripes.  I messed with the edges.  I toned down the red so as to push the thing into the background.  Still awful.  When I got home, I decided it couldn’t hurt to try scrumbling shadowy darks over the left edge of my bridge, and I think that may have saved it from the scrap heap.  Here are the before and after:

Convergence of Saco and Swift Rivers (before)

Convergence of Saco and Swift Rivers (after)

OK, the colors don’t match.  For some reason, photographing all of these paintings has been unusually frustrating.  The new Photos app that Apple has forced on me does not give me a way to adjust the level of yellows, blues and reds.  I am not coping well!

That accounts for my three large format, 12×16, panels.  Sunday morning, after the usual fabulous breakfast at the Bartlett Inn (but no rancho huervos this year–I forgot to complain about that!), Sharon and Betty and I followed Byron up a road off Route 3 between Twin Mountain and Franconia Notch:–white water, moss-covered rocks, deep pools.  For the best spot, you needed to be pretty adventurous, but I found a tidy little version close to the road and fought off Sharon for it.  I included some Trillium at bottom left because I saw some on the slope to adventure spot.  This may be my favorite from the weekend.

Woodland brook 9×12

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

one last week at the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett;  at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the Library Arts Center in Newport, NH; at the Sharon Arts Center in Peterborough, NH; at the Buttonwoods Museum in Haverhill, MA; and at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester.

As usual, you may 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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