A Month of Beckys

Posted by Aline on May 27, 2013

My life is just a little bit crazy right now, what with retirement deadline looming and two major art events coming up next week. Yet here I am, whiling away the national holiday making good on my promise to post weekly. It’s a Good Thing though, this weekly blog, perhaps as important as all those other important things. For however long the internet lasts, it will remind me of where I was on Memorial Day of 2013, just before those three major milestones.

(I’m glad at my age to still be counting milestones other than birthdays!)

So, to get to the point: Major Art Event No. 1 is taking place this coming Sunday, June 2, in Boston. From noon until 6 p.m., I with 71 other artists will be participating in the Beacon Hill Art Walk. It’s not your typical urban art show in that many of the artists will be set up in gardens and on firescapes. Bruce and I, however, are setting up a conventional tent right at the S(tart) point on Cambridge Street shown on the map here. I introduced you to Bruce Jones last week as my partner in this Beacon Hill venture. It’s the first of its kind for both of us, possibly the first of many partnerships if this experience is a happy one. I’ve decided to go eclectic with my display, meaning a couple of landscapes, a couple of figurative works, and my steam locomotive.

: Side-lined

Engine 501, depicting the real life orphan at the North Conway train station, has been looking for a forever home via the Bartlett Inn for at least a year now. Maybe Boston will be the place where it comes together with the right guardian. (For those of you in the dark, “forever home” and “guardian” is animal rescue speak, dear to my heart.)

Major Art Event No. 2: I am opening at the East Colony Fine Art Gallery. Some weeks ago I was juried into this artists’ cooperative gallery, located in the Langer Place Building, the very same building where I conduct my figure drawing sessions, and where the Hatfield Gallery is located, where I also exhibit. Friday I hung six pieces, all of them plein air landscapes. All are, of course, my favorites. (But I have more favorites left, to take to Boston.) My first reception as a member of this gallery takes place on Friday, June 7, from 5 to 7 p.m. I would love to see all my friends there, cheering me on, especially those (you know who you are) who have complained I don’t do enough to market myself.

Back to the business of Becky: I have three new paintings to show you, none of them exactly “finished”, but I may not ever touch them again since I got what I needed from my efforts.

In the red sweater

I love the texture of the bare, clear-primed canvas and so my leaving the background unfinished was a choice. Nevertheless, it will probably be classified as a work in progress if it survives a few hundred years. Painting a clothed model was a change of pace, one that I enjoyed very much, but I guess I was in the minority because the following week when Becky asked if we wanted her clothed, the response “No!” rang out. So I painted this:

The Faraway Gaze

I couldn’t finish this one simply because of the size of the canvas: I chose to bring in a 20×16 canvas on stretchers, which I would never use for plein air so why not? I knew I had better concentrate on the face, then the chest since I could leave the background and the hair to memory or invention or both. Everyone, including myself, thought my lips (the ones I painted) were great. What makes them work, though, is how well I painted the chin and philtrum–lips don’t exist in isolation. OK, check off lips; next up is noses. Her nose here is pretty good, which gives me hope. Becky’s ear is amazingly simple–most people have complex ears, lots of folds and dips and valleys. I think I will make Becky’s ear my template for ears so I don’t use up so much time on them. Nobody really cares what happens inside the ear as long as its placement is correct, the shape is correct, and the tilt is correct.

From the large to the small: this painting is only 10×8 and it felt even smaller to me because I was trying to get the whole figure in. It’s hard to paint small, I discovered–that little stroke that does the job on a bigger canvas makes a blob on the small canvas, and sometimes wipes out a nuance I had been counting on. I thought if I went small I would end up with a small, completed jewel of a painting. Ha! But this one could be a jewel with just a few corrections here and there, and maybe tomorrow I will get a chance to make those corrections. That depends on the other members of the gang. Most will probably prefer to move on to a different pose. I must say, it was nice to paint the other side of Becky’s face for a change!

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 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. Through May 31, nine of her Boston Arboretum paintings are on display at the Leach Library in Londonderry, NH. On Sunday, June 2, she will be participating in the Beacon Hill Art Walk, in Boston.

The White Mountains of New Hampshire

Posted by Aline on May 20, 2013

New Hampshire has a Seacoast region, a Lakes region, and countless quaint farms and towns, but to the rest of the world, New Hampshire means but one thing: the White Mountains. They do rather stand out, compared to all those other things. I believe “white” comes from the glimpse that early seafarers got of them, when covered by snow. Or perhaps it was the sun glinting off the granite.

In any event, they became the subject of many 19th century paintings. Champney, Bierstadt, and dozens of others explored and painted the Whites. For a complete rundown, go to White Mountain Art. Right now there are two major exhibits of White Mountain paintings, one in Jackson and another in Plymouth. The former we have visited twice before. The latter is housed in a brand new Museum of the White Mountains on the campus of Plymouth State College. We stopped there to check it out on our way to Bartlett last Thursday. We came away with a map showing the coordinates of several locations, that is, the coordinates to the spot where the painter stood to paint or make his sketch (probably not many of the paintings were painted outdoors). My painting buddy, Sharon, aspires to paint like the Old Masters, and her enthusiasm led her to download a GPS app to her smartphone, and led both of us over hill and dale in search of the right spots. It was fun. Unfortunately, progress or tree growth interfered with many replications.

My plein air painting No. 1 is a covered bridge not far from Plymouth.

Smith Millenium Bridge

Friday, we got in two painting segments: the first was in the strawberry fields below Cathedral Ledge.

Strawberry Fields (Cathedral Ledge) (No.2)

Usually, my first painting is my best, I think because the inspirational tug is strongest with the first try. If you don’t count the covered bridge–it was on the way into the mountains, not quite there yet–this is the first. And it could be the best. But there are four more, and you might like one of them better.

Friday afternoon we went on our first expedition in search of Old Master painting spot: Mt. Adams as captured by Champney. The actual spot was right in the middle of the Auto Road up Mt. Washington, but we found a better one off to the side.

Mt. Adams (No. 3)

Mount-Adams-Benjamin-Champney-1852-24-x-30-inches

The snow-streaked mountain in the background of my painting is Mt. Jefferson, and on the far left is the beginning of Mt. Washington, which is a sprawling kind of mountain, lumping its way to the highest point in the Northeast. (Last January I had painted a view of this lumpy part of Mt. Washington on that misery-filled plein air weekend.)

Saturday we found our own spots. The day before, on our way back to the Bartlett Inn from the Mt. Adams spot, a stream near the highway had caught our eye and so the next morning we went in search of it. Sharon sometimes ends up in my paintings, and I was particularly glad of the added interest her hat brought to the scene.

Roadside Painter (No. 4)

After a while, the noise of the traffic hurtling by next to us faded from consciousness and all we heard was the gurgling water.

In the afternoon, Sharon introduced me to Echo Lake, at the foot of White Horse Ledge. It was an idyllic spot. Sandy beach, picnic benched (excellent to paint from–you can really spread out your stuff), lively visitors (and I don’t mean the black flies)–one of whom demonstrated the echo for the rest of us.

White Horse Ledge over Echo Lake (No. 5)

My painting had at one point a much more literal depiction of the ledge, but its very literalness bothered me, so I loaded up my palette knife and spread paint liberally. Perhaps something in between would have worked better. Supposedly there is an image of a horse, whitish maybe, delineated in the cracks of this ledge, but I sure couldn’t see it and I wasn’t about to fake it either.

Sunday was a travel day, but we did get in one painting late in the day before heading back South. It was the product of another Champney search, this time in Sugar Hill. Mt. Lafayette is on the left and Cannon is on the right. Personally, I would call it another view of Franconia Notch.

I’d say this is about half done. The dark clouds arrived, threatening rain, before I even touched the sky. The sky had been a dull gray before that anyway. Cannon is a ski mountain, and I’m not sure I want to put the ski trails in. But why not? I don’t know. View is from Lovers Lane, in Sugar Hill.

All of my paintings on this trip were 9×12, except Roadside Painter which was 10×12. I figured I was out of plein air practice, and the smaller format would help me finish paintings. That was correct. Perhaps smaller will mean more salable too. Eventually, I plan to take them back to hang in Bartlett Inn.

Or I may take them to the Beacon Hill Art Walk on June 2. I am trying to decide whether to take only figurative works, only landscapes, or the best of both. I’m sharing a tent with Bruce Jones, who does beautiful work in the style of Don Stone. I’m not sure I want mine compared to his.

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 Stella Blu , an American Tapas restaurant in Nashua; at her law offices 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. Through May 30, nine of her Boston Arboretum paintings will be displayed at the Leach Library in Londonderry, NH. On Sunday, June 2, she will be participating in the Beacon Hill Art Walk, in Boston.

Marco Island Paintings Part Two

Posted by Aline on March 7, 2013

Each painting has a story, but 14 stories is a bit much to ask my followers to, um, follow, so I am just adding a few comments underneath, same as I did for Mary’s paintings in my prior post. Super-short stories, in effect. Unlike the spread of Mary’s paintings, I organized mine in chronological order to the best of my memory.

We were huddled behind some shrubbery seeking shelter from stiff winds on a relatively chilly day (for the tropics), so the subject was not selected by inspiration but forced by necessity. Usually my first painting turns out to be the best, or at least one of the best, in a series of outdoor paintings. As I was working on this one, I thought it was going to be an exception to that “rule”, but now I am liking it better. . .probably because I am far enough away from the scene to be able to forget reality.

Island Woman. It becomes a scene of intense frolicness (frolicity?) on the weekends, but we wouldn’t have been able to park anywhere close then, much less find a place to set up easels.

Lanai Sunset. Strictly speaking, not plein air, but inspired by sight, memory and assisted by iPad photo. Perhaps still a work in progress.

Waterfront Home. The boats are up in the air on hoists, and I worried about how it would read. But not important now, I think. The water looks liquid, don’t you agree?

Frangepani Tree. Economy of effort:–beautiful bark, few leaves, and blossoms rationed to bloom at the ends of branches for short time. This one had buds but no blooms yet.

Farmers Market Musician. We were chased out of the grounds proper and forced to set up behind the “band”. Lucky for us!

Octagonal house. Occasionally, we can’t resist recording the unusual.

MarGood Park View from the Gazebo. Our 2d visit to this spot. Behind me was the skiff that I painted two days before. It was while I was working on this scene that I got skiff-owner’s request to purchase my painting of his boat and his dog. I posted that news here. Pelican landed just in time to get included in the painting.

Dinner! These are six of the 2 dozen blue crabs that I received in partial payment for the skiff-dog painting. Don’t they look delicious? (I think they were blue before being steamed.)

Fishing under the Jolley Bridge. Had highest hopes for this one, but now worry it has missed the mark. There is a slight curve in the bridge, so don’t get on my case about perspective!

Waterside Dining. That’s how they characterize it. I left out the blue dolphin that Mary chose to feature. Dolphins all over the city, like moose sculptures in NH. Cows in Chicago. Gnus in New London. (look it up)

Two Tiny Visitors to Residents Beach. What? You don’t see them? I thought they were warblers, but the bird book suggests they are more likely wrens. Also met my first Red Knots and Brewer’s Blackbirds in the course of making this painting. (Beach is to the right, past the vegetation barrier.)

Plein Air Still Life? I’m always saying: I don’t “do” still lifes. This not really “still” because the light keeps moving!

Morning of my Travel Day: San Marco R.C. Church. Foreground, what foreground? What can you do with a parking lot? Had to pack up and catch plane in afternoon, so I forgot to get photo of Mary’s version, which was excellent.

I hope that adds up to fourteen. I wish I had a better photo of number 15, which I had to leave in Florida with its happy new owner. I took a photo of Stephen holding his painting, but it turned out horrible. Here instead is a photo of my collector, which I lifted from the Naples Daily News, online edition.

Crabby Stephen

He may look like he only knows about collecting (and cooking) crabs, but he is also experienced in matting and framing, so the painting is in the best of hands. I asked him to send photo of painting when and as framed.

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 her law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

Through March 29, you can also view (and purchase–of course!) my 6×6’s at the Artstream Gallery in Rochester, NH.

If you happen to be near Tampa, Florida on March 7, 8, and 9, you could (and should) catch Nude Nite, happening with music and other entertainment at 3606 E. 4th Ave., in Tampa. Hours are 6 pm to midnight. (Nude NITE, after all)

Marco Island Paintings Part One: M.C. Reining

Posted by Aline on February 24, 2013

I returned from my two-week painting vacation on Marco Island with 14 paintings, and the next two days was back to painting and drawing nudes. Too much for one blogpost anyway, so I am deferring for a few days the pleasure of showing my art in favor of first displaying the artworks created by my Marco Island hostess, Mary Crawford Reining.

On most occasions, we were looking in the roughly same direction to paint if not the same scene, neighboring scenes. You will be able to identify a few exceptions (most prominently the boat featured in my previous posting). You might find it interesting to compare our different treatments of the same subjects. But it would be like comparing apples to oranges, which I understand is not a good thing to do. Mary is a watercolorist (she claims to switch from medium to medium, but I have only seen her painting with watercolors in the five years that I have been plein air painting with her) and her style is looser than mine. I have noticed that the more experienced an artist is, the more successfully they attain looseness. Mary is very experienced, having studied art and having taught art, and, most importantly, having never in all those years ceased to think and behave like an artist.

Potpourri–Nudes, Landscapes, Almost Abstract

Posted by Aline on February 11, 2013

Sideways (12×9)

Once again I lead off with a nude. I love my nudes. This was today’s. You probably recognize the model. Our Saturday group got cancelled by the snowstorm and my painting from Tuesday is not finished, so it’s the only nude I have for you today. (We have Tuesday’s model again this week, so I will finish that one up and post it before I leave for Florida for two weeks.) I am not sure that I will be able to keep to my Monday blogging schedule while I am down in Florida, but I should be able to post photos of the paintings from time to time.

Today I finally noticed why I sometimes see shadows as orange. When it’s cold in the studio, we used a space heater to keep our model comfortable. The heater glows orange. Her breast looked as if it were on fire yesterday. That was the clue. But it doesn’t explain other orange shadows, the ones on the other side from the heater. Maybe it’s simply what I see, after having one cataract removed. Can’t wait for the other one to go.

I also loves me some landscapes. Without a Saturday Life Group session, I was unleashed to paint a landscape. Ever since the Eric Aho exhibit, I’ve had this notion that I too could paint an abstract landscape if I simply gave myself permission . Turns out, it’s not that easy. I have, in the past, made paintings that look abstract–well, only two, to be exact. One happened in a magical state of unconscious creativity (as seen in hindsight, of course), and the other’s subject matter was inherently abstract. “Spirit Lake” is the former; the name I gave it may be a subconscious bow to the process that created it. Click here to go to my web page showing Spirit Lake.

The inherently abstract one was a close up view of the mangrove swamp in the Ding Darling National Wildlife Preserve.

Mangroves, Ding Darling

So Saturday I taped up a 16×20 piece of oil primed linen on a drawing board, and got out a volume of spectacular photographs by Tim Palmer, of some of the most spectacular scenery in existence. I met Tim some years ago at a Sierra Club meeting, and told him I wanted to use his photographs as inspiration for paintings, and he gladly gave me permission to do so. His book, titled “Luminous Mountains: The Sierra Nevada of California”, had been waiting patiently in my studio all these years to be put into service. I opened the book and did not get further than the frontispiece, a magical scene titled “Volunteer Mountain, Yosemite, at Sunset.” I tried valiantly not to paint the photograph, but I’m sorry to report, my product is not very abstract. Not abstract at all.

California Landscape

It’s also earthier, less magical, than the photograph. Isn’t that strange? I may try again, next time limiting my palette–no blues or greens allowed.

I also took the Saturday opportunity to modify, perhaps improve, the frigid plein air paintings of a few weeks ago. I actually made something of that first effort in the windy, subzero meadow off Route 302.

Mt. Washington from 302, No. 4

The scene of the Jackson church needed some cleaning up, and fresh whites (actually not pure white, but white with a tiny bit of yellow). Compare:

Jackson Community Church, looking west, BEFORE

Jackson, AFTER

The differences are perhaps too subtle to show up in this medium, same as a photograph can never do justice to a painting, unless it is printed as a giclee and there is nothing between you and the giclee print. (No digital interface, e.g.)

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

In February, you can also view (and purchase–of course!) some of my paintings and drawings at the McGowan Gallery in Concord, NH, (“Love, Lust and Desire” is the theme) and my 6×6’s at the Artstream Gallery in Rochester, NH.

If you happen to be near Orlando, Florida on February 14, 15 or 16, or Tampa, Florida on March 7, 8, and 9, you could (and should) catch Nude Nite, happening with music and other entertainment at these locations, respectively: 639 W. Church St. (blue freestanding warehouse just East of I-4) in Orlando; and 3606 E. 4th Ave., in Tampa. Hours are 6 pm to midnight. (Nude NITE, after all)

Frozen Moments

Posted by Aline on January 28, 2013

My boots were duck hunter’s boots, so wide and thick that I have a hard time climbing stairs in them. I wore four layers on my legs, four on my torso, three on my arms and hands, two on my head, plus a scarf to wrap around my face. My equipment held up well, creaking a little bit but not refusing to lock and unlock. My brushes were frozen but not brittle enough to break. My Gamsol did not turn into jelly in subzero temperatures like my Turpenoid did two years ago. Nevertheless, painting plein air this past weekend in the North Country was a fool’s enterprise.

My biggest surprise was my paint. I made the mistake of leaving it outside overnight. Freezing oil paint is a good way to prevent the large gobs of untubed paint from drying out; it does not damage the paint. But my paint never had a chance to unfreeze before I set out to paint that first crisp morning. (“Crisp” is such an understatement that it is funny–temps were around minus 14 with strong winds adding emphasis.) Once I got my brushes working, I could only poke at the paint and smear it around a little. (Sharon reported that she couldn’t even make a dent in her yellow with a palette knife.) Meanwhile, my face was so covered up that I couldn’t really see what I was doing, and gusts of wind (which fortunately you do hear coming) would periodically force me to hang onto the equipment and endure sprays of snow until the wind died down. I lasted about 20 minutes not counting set up and break down time. Sharon soldiered on for about another ten minutes. [Sharon Allen is the leader of the NH Plein Air painters group, and for the weekend, my chauffeur and guide.] Below are photos of the spot we were painting and our two attempts.

Mt. Washington from Rte 302

Heroic Effort (Sharon’s)

Heroic Effort (Aline’s)

Just for comparison, here is a painting I did in the fall, after a snowfall on the mountains, from the same spot.

Mt. Wash. from 302

Somewhat wiser after lunch, we sought out a sheltered spot for our next attempt. Nothing like an indoor viewing point for sheltering from wind, so we drove up to the Glen House, across from the Mt. Washington Auto Road, and obtained permission to set up in a corner of the restaurant. Sharon painted the view to the north while mine was southwest.

Plein air? Not.

Glen House Painters

In my view is Mt. Washington, but a shoulder obscures the top, so no buildings are visible. It’s the hump toward the left side of my panel. Route 16 runs through the painting but I decided to leave it vague.

Indoor painting of Mt. Washington

The next day, Saturday, was a little better. I think the temperature rose to 5 degrees, and the wind had died down. Nevertheless, we got lots of passersby commenting variously on our bravery, determination, and insanity. I was by that time in total agreement. Knocked down a peg or two was I! Below are photos memorializing these efforts.

Artist or Terrorist? (Sharon)

Frozen Stream

This green tinted frozen water was what had fascinated both Sharon and me. We had not realized how hard it is to depict frozen water. I had never learned of any way to signal to the onlooker that, hey, this is frozen water here–not flowing water, not an empty field.

WIP Sharon

Jackson Community Church, looking west

Jackson Community Church looking east

Above was a view we had planned to paint Saturday afternoon, but the wind! I guess we were lucky to get in a halfway decent morning. The church in this photo is the same one I was trying to paint from my location in the parking lot of the Jackson Historical Society, up river and to the right in the photo. You can see the sign on the building in the background behind Sharon’s easel, which is why I didn’t crop her Work In Progress down to just the painting itself. The Jackson Historical Society has a collection of White Mountain Art, including a few by Benjamin Champney. Metcalf, Gerry and Shapleigh were my favorites in that collection. The parking lot was a great place to paint if you don’t mind being interrupted by passersby, and since these passersby were on their way inside to see White Mountain art, they got our full attention.

But we never found a suitable spot to paint that afternoon or Sunday either. Every time we spotted a paintable spot, we would check the flagpoles. The flags kept up the whipping all the way home. We took pictures and persuaded ourselves that in doing so, we were doing artists’ work. We wandered through Conway, Albany, Moultonborough, Meredith (lunched there), Weirs Beach, Alton Bay, Chichester, Northwood, and Nottingham (there we stopped by Jenness Farm to buy goat milk soap and socialize with the goats).

The Friendly Goats of Jenness Farm

So I conclude that to get more use out of my duck hunter’s boots, I must be alert to a good painting day around home and just seize it. Carpe diem! We have a few warmer days coming up this week.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

In February, you can also view some of my paintings and drawings at the McGowan Gallery in Concord, NH, and at the Artstream Gallery in Rochester, NH. Receptions for those shows are, respectively, Feb 1, 5-7; and Feb 2, 5-8.

If you happen to be near Orlando, Florida on February 14, 15 or 16, you should go to Nude Nite, a happening at this location: 639 W. Church St. (Blue Freestanding Warehouse just East of I-4). One of my paintings was invited to participate. This one:

Standing Tall

Slacker!

Posted by Aline on December 10, 2012

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

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

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:

Catching the Odd Perspective

Posted by Aline on November 12, 2012

I haven’t mentioned it before, but I have been taking a figure drawing class at the Institute with Larry Christian. Larry’s approach to drawing the figure is the opposite of academic drawing. He pushes us to draw quickly, intuitively, expressively. The techniques are familiar ones, but to please Larry, we must apply those techniques more fluidly and expressively to create an image that is unique.

I took this course with Larry before, in the spring of 2006, when I was just getting started as an artist. At that time, I was obsessing on landscapes, particularly plein air painting. Now that I have done a 180 on that preference, and also come to admire Larry’s drawings, I was motivated to retake the course, hoping to find out how Larry achieves his dramatic effects. For the only images of his work I could find online, click here. By way of contrast, look at Anthony Ryder’s drawing, so meticulous, and also lovely, but definitely academic in style.

Most of our work product in Larry’s course is not fit for public view. We bring nothing to completion. We produce pages and pages of gesture drawings, 30 or more of them each week, and then do our exercises on the technique du jour. One week it was drawing shapes instead of lines. The next week, drawing negative shapes. The week after that, creating form with darker values for shadows. Most recent week, creating form by wiping out darker values to create light.

Last week did produce a few showable drawings. And one of them contributed to the title of this week’s blog.

Bent

We applied charcoal evenly over the paper in order to create a non-white ground, and then erased that charcoal to bring out the shape of the model. I got lucky in my angle on the crouching pose–the simplicity of the shape and the shadow distinguish this drawing. The one before it was a more traditional pose, more complicated, yet less interesting.

Seated

Now that the course is winding to a conclusion, I have a pretty good idea of what I will be practicing in order to emulate Larry Christian: Use compressed charcoal; draw negative spaces; and my shadow areas will be all in one value. That last point was a revelation.

The other example of an odd perspective is my painting from yesterday, Sunday. I brought a larger canvas (12×16) and had less time (we didn’t get started until 45 minutes into our 3-hour session with the model), so perhaps that inspired me to paint more with the larger, simpler shapes. Or maybe I was influenced by the success of my crouching pose above. In any event, here it is:

Pillowed

In evaluating this painting, I remembered one from a month or so ago, which, by consensus of my friends, I had ruined by smoothing out the shapes within shapes. It’s very hard to restrain oneself. Right now I’m looking at that light patch on her forehead, thinking it should be smoothed. But I had a light patch like that on her breast at one point, and it disappeared and I don’t even remember doing it. That’s how hard it is to restrain oneself.

Following up on the Soo Rye Gallery opening last Saturday, I’m hoping you are dying to see my photos taken at the reception.

Totem displayed in Soo Rye Art Gallery

High and Dry on exhibit at Soo Rye

Lotus Studies, on exhibit at Soo Rye

Bea’s drawing, displayed in Soo Rye Gallery

Bea’s portrait of Becky

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

The Week of “Super Storm”

Posted by Aline on November 5, 2012

Haven’t you heard enough about Sandy already? New Hampshire is one of the suffering states, but I got off pretty easy. Looks like I’m going to have to pay for a new roof without help from the insurance company. Being unscathed myself, I insisted on holding the Tuesday life group. It was, after all, a pretty nice day, weather-wise, a little rainy but hardly any wind to speak of. But most of the other artists were dealing with one storm-related problem or another and couldn’t get here for the group. So it was just the model, another unscathed artist, and me.

We set up in the window side of the studio and had our model lounge on the familiar old brown leather sofa. We found ourselves looking down on him, which felt strange at first. The model stand that we usually use puts the model at my eye level or above. (I sit to paint.) We also forewent any supplemental lighting inasmuch as the sun was streaming right in at our backs (yes, SUN). No dramatic shadows to fall back on for creating interest. But as it turned out, I didn’t need any drama from lighting. I accepted a full-on frontal foreshortened pose with the model’s feet practically in my face. (Of course that’s an exaggeration–I did say “practically”.) I was super pleased with this development because it furnishes a response to a taunt from one of my colleagues who, upon viewing last week’s blog, complained that I was not giving enough attention to feet. Since he is also one of our models, I suspect it is HIS feet he want more attention paid to. Nevertheless, feet are feet:

The Feet Have It

I have to point out that it is not often that you get to depict the wrinkles on the sole of a foot. Having recently watched a documentary on Lucien Freud, I also felt as if I were channeling him every so slightly, as I tried to paint the effect of hairy legs.

On Friday, four of us met with Peter Clive for a quasi-workshop session. Peter had during the summer been attending our Tuesday group whenever he could, but currently his teaching schedule at the NH Institute of Art kept him there on Tuesdays. So he offered to come instead on Fridays and critique work in progress, when corrections are possible. In the course of the summer and now the fall, Peter has seen quite a few of my paintings. He compliments me by saying something like “That’s a nice study,” or even “That’s a great study.” He said that about The Feet. Noting his use of the word “study”, I had reconciled myself to the reality that a serious artist does not go around producing a finished painting in three hours (actually less when you consider setting up time and break times). The fact that I consider these paintings as complete if not completely wonderful just shows how far I am from being a serious artist. There is a whole level of professionalism up there that I can only imagine.

However, the work that I did Friday was, at the end of the three hours, pronouced a “painting” by Peter, “not just a good study”. Yes, he actually said those words.

An Actual Painting

He liked the composition, which I admit, I had worked out early in the process. before paying much attention to the figure. So that was unusual. Perhaps because of that, a certain painterly quality emerged for the whole painting. But when I got home, I noticed that the right leg was too short, both as measured against her left leg and as measured against her torso. So I “fixed” it. I tried to duplicate the original foot before I covered it up, but the new foot (FEET again!) doesn’t look right. I may have botched this painting by correcting one errant part of it that may not have mattered in the big scheme of things. All is not lost, however–the same model is returning in two weeks for the same pose, and I will get another crack at that foot. I am also hoping to paint a larger version from the same pose.

Totem, 11×14, $300

Lotus Studies 13×13 $265

: High and Dry, 11×14, $300

A plug for the Soo Rye Art Gallery opening on November 10, reception from 5 to 8 p.m. The address is 11 Sagamore Road, Rye, NH. All the artworks being exhibited are priced no higher than $300. I contributed “Totem”, “Lotus Studies”, and “High and Dry”, three of my all-time favorite paintings. If you can’t get to the opening, the show continues through the end of December, but I expect that a lot of the art will be sold at the opening.

Here is some history for these three paintings:

Totem was accepted in a regional show juried by Don Stone for the Rockport Art Association (Massachusetts, not Maine). I painted Totem on the coast of Rhode Island, near Narragransett, with my artist friend, Mary Crawford Reining. The totem, actually more accurately called a cairn, in the painting really did exist exactly as I painted it. Other cairns had been built by person or persons unknown, but this one was the most adventurous. It was more than a cairn–so I titled it Totem. Earlier in that morning, I had painted another, more complex view of this rocky beach, and had an hour left over. Only much later did I realize until later what a successful painting Totem was.

Lotus Studies won Best in Show at a Manchester Artists Association exhibit, about a year ago when the MAA had a gallery of its own, but I created it at least a year before that for the Women’s Caucus for Art annual 6×6 show. That had been my first year in the WCA, hence my first 6×6 show. I had easy inspiration from photographs taken at the lotus pond in Wickford, Rhode Island, again visiting Mary. The next year we tried plein air painting at the pond, but my output was worthless.

High and Dry has no distinction to report, but it deserves an award, in my humble opinion, for oozing the most charm. I have Mary Crawford Reining to thank again, for High and Dry: this time I was a visiting her Marco Island home for perhaps the third year in a row. None of my Florida paintings had amounted to much until this one, and I still consider it the Prize of my Florida collection. Funny thing is, Mary had had her eye on this boat for a long time, wanting to paint it but never having got around to it. So I swoop in and steal her subject as it were, and make it one of my best from Florida.

Only in the writing of these descriptions did I notice the huge debt I owe Mary Crawford Reining for guiding me to these three inspiring subjects.

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. Also, if you want to plan ahead, on December 1-2, a two-day show of unframed works at Adrienne’s studio on the 4th floor of Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH; the artwork will be priced no higher than $150! At least six artists are participating in this sale.

Becky

Posted by Aline on September 24, 2012

I have a lot of different subjects I could go on about this week, and I’m not that great at choosing. My initial instinct was to present a retrospective of all my portraits of a certain model because A) yesterday’s portrait is the most recent thing I have done and B) yesterday’s portrait, of all the many (countless) ones, is, in my opinion, the best likeness. Then I considered the plein air landscape, which appeals to my eye but which is kind of a dead end of a topic, however appealing the image is. Moving backwards, I have a portrait of Margaret from Friday, another portrait from a photograph done Thursday night after work to enter in an online contest, and a my usual nude from Tuesday. Oops! I totally forgot to photograph whatever it was that I did Tuesday, so never mind that one. Either I have regressed further into senility, or this is what it is like to be a full-time artist, almost. But really, I am impressed with myself that I painted (or maybe I drew) every day except Monday and Wednesday of the past week. It would be easier to keep track if I was working multiple days on a single painting.

So that’s the background. I would put it to a vote, but that would be too time-consuming. By the time I got all the votes in and counted, I could have posted a second blog wrapping up all the leftover bits. So it’s between what I can’t resist and what was my first instinct. By definition, we go with what I can’t resist.

The Mill in New Boston

This is a scene in New Boston, on the property of a private residence called “The Mill”. Rural NH folk like to name their homes, but in this case, the name is descriptive: the home was once a mill–the dark red building on the right side of my painting. There were paintable scenes all around us, but this view of the river coursing along where the dam used to be just demanded to be done first. Of course we got permission from the owners to set up and paint from their property, and as we were wandering about, a lovely lady cop stopped to find out what we were up to. Strangers in Town! But we felt Very Safe. “We”, by the way, is just two of us, me and Bea.

Bea had to be back home by noon for a project with her life partner, so I had planned another painting foray for Saturday afternoon in Auburn with a newcomer to NH, but that companion stood me up, so I took that opportunity to make ratatouille out of the veggies I had picked up at the farmer’s market in New Boston. All in all, a very productive day, with a good painting to show for it, and several days’ worth of ratatouille, even if it was overcooked.

The other irresistible topic is the portrait I did of Becky on Sunday. As I mentioned before, I have done many portraits of this model since the first one in June of 2011. This is the best likeness, I believe. You have no c hoice but to take my word for it.

Becky with mink stole

I’m not going to do the entire retrospective, but just for giggles, here is the first one:

Becky No. 1, June 2011

Meanwhile, you may be wondering, “What’s with the mink stole? If she’s so cold, why doesn’t she put on some clothes?” Ah, well! Adrienne’s studio, Adrienne’s mink stole, Adrienne’s concept. What worried me more was, what color is the shine on mink fur? How do I distinguish the mink stole from the model’s hair? My questions–and yours–are still unanswered.

AlineLotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the Gallery at Red Gate Farm in Plymouth; at the Yoga Balance Studio in Manchester; at the Pantano Gallery in the Shapiro Library at Southern NH University; at the law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

Bonus Blog: Cruisin’ and Paintin’ the Essex River

Posted by Aline on September 17, 2012

Last Wednesday I took the day off from my job as a lawyer in my own law firm (I can do that sort of thing when it’s my firm), and ventured South to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with Sharon Allen, best known as the “plein air gal” responsible for holding our listserv together. I had two tickets for the Essex River Cruise at one o’clock, and figured we could fit in one painting before and one after the cruise. And so we did, even taking time out for a seashore dinner in the town of Essex, and even though poor Sharon was probably more wiped out than she wanted to tell me, inasmuch as she is recuperating from a terrifying regimen of chemotherapy and radiation treatments. We focused so hard on our paintings that neither of use looked up to see what the other was up to. We painted until the mosquitos came out in force and the light started to fail. When I got home that night, I crashed. I can’t imagine how tired Sharon much have been.

Our morning painting was done at Cogswell’s Grant, an historic location including a farm. We didn’t investigate the farm much, just found a shady spot with an attractive view and went to work. My view is of the parking area. That’s not as crazy as it sounds.

Parking for Cogswell’s Grant

The Essex River is not quite visible from here, but it is not far away, to the left of the parking area. The cars, in case you are wondering, are behind the shrubbery on the right.

Our cruise was pleasant, and the weather was perfect for that kind of an outing. Did you know that the 1995 movie “The Crucible” was filmed on an island in Essex, presumably because of its proximity to Salem, Massachusetts. The movie makers recreated the Town of Salem as it had existed in 1692, and it sounded to me as if everything was removed after the movie was completed.

After getting our bites to eat (fried clams being the local specialty, that’s what I had), we set out to find a location that our cruise boat guide had called a magnet for artists–the Cox reservation. Once there, we settled on a knoll with a wide view of the marshy unnavigable strands of the Essex River, looking toward the ocean but not quite seeing it.

View of Essex River marshes from the Cox Reservation

AlineLotter is currently exhibiting:

The Wolfeboro Paintout

Posted by Aline on September 17, 2012

I’m getting a little spacey, a little forgetful; I forgot that I have this self-imposed obligation to post something beautiful and interesting to my blog every week on Monday. My excuse is that I was just too busy yesterday picking apples. Well, I mostly observed the actual apple-picking part, but the whole afternoon was a visit, with my apple-picking family, to old friends from law school, who own a house in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, plunked in the middle of — you guessed it!–an apple orchard. We started with a repast set outside in the orchard–so heavenly! (Heavenly, thanks to the glorious weather we have been enjoying. I entertain a horribly selfish thought: “If this is climate change, bring it on!” Then I remind myself that with warmth comes insects, and invasive plants.)

Anyway, all that information is in aid of explaining why I forgot to photograph paintings for the blog today. There is another, possibly truer, explanation: I am a older person. Older people tend toward absent-mindedness. This is actually because they have lived a long time, long enough to figure out not to sweat the small stuff. Not to imply that you are small stuff. No, you are big stuff, but the self-imposed blog regime is small stuff.

However, I have a few shots taken on Saturday with my smart-ish phone. They are not great photos. I think my previous phone, which wasn’t at all smart, took much better photos. But in phones, as in everything, you can’t have everything. (My smart-ish phone is a Samsung Conquer and it came free with my new Credo cell service provider. I am half-expecting Apple to swoop down and confiscate it after its big court win. Then maybe Credo will offer me the new iPhone. I’m sure the photo quality would improve because I have complete faith in all things Apple, having forgiven Apple for dropping iWeb.

Now that I have got used to WordPress, I would not want to return to iWeb for this blog. With WordPress, I can start the blog at one location (home or office) and finish it at another. That means I can write stuff now, and delay publishing until I get home tonight, take better photos, and post them then–still Monday, just later on Monday. However, another regular Monday thing that I do is play bridge, in the evening. I could work on the blog after bridge, before I go to bed, but, you know, older person? So I’m thinking I had better give you what I have today, and catch up on the good photos next week.

Unfortunately, there will never be a good photo of one subject. Saturday, with a few other painters in the New Hampshire Plein Air group, I participated in the Wolfeboro “Paint the Town” fundraising event. My first painting was sold (YEA!), so I have only that camera phone shot to show for it. Here is the scene I was painting:

Three Boats and a Wetsuit (photo)

It was the wetsuit that caught my eye, but it is such a small detail in the painting as a whole, that I felt I had to draw attention to it in the title to the painting. Also, I worried that the dark splotch might not immediately read as “wetsuit” unless I provided a clue.

Three Boats and a Wetsuit (painting)

The wetsuit painting is, trust me on this, much livelier that it appears to be in this poorly exposed, horribly framed photo. I let the carrier go with the painting. Sometimes I can retrieve the carrier from the buyer, which is to be desired since the carriers (“Art Cocoons”) cost each about $10.

For my second painting, I looked around for a spot overlooked, an interesting corner with good composition and contrasts of light and shade, where I could be myself in the shade. I found one that excited a lot of comments and curiosity from passersby (why would I chose to turn my back on the docks, etc. to paint this dark corner–what could I possibly find interesting enough to paint in this dark corner?), but it was not purchased. Good. I see a few things that I can improve. And I will be able to get a better photograph of it.

Wolfeboro painting no. 2 (Cate Park)

Cate Park Painting–better photo!

P.S. P.S. P.S.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Letting down

Posted by Aline on September 10, 2012

Thank goodness, it’s all over. The one-day show on Saturday that I was furiously prepping for–it ended without disaster. Sure, two rods holding the tent up broke, but I had whimsically thrown in some duct tape at the last minute, which rescued that situation. And my little crew of two useless females and one strong clever one were assisted by the men on either side of us in getting that “EZ Up” up. E-Z, bah humbug! It is not anything I could have accomplished alone, that’s for sure. My granddaughter (the strong clever member of the crew) was there at beginning and end for the heavy lifting part, and my daughter kept me company during the day with her mini Pomeranian dog. The sun came in and out, a little breeze snaked in every now and then, and the rain didn’t start until we were packing up. Here is what my 10 ft by 10 ft space looked like.

Left corner

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Right Corner

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I was the only artist there whose entire exhibit (almost) featured paintings of nudes. (28 works framed, of which all but one were paintings; of the paintings, all but three were paintings of nudes) Apparently there was some controversy generated by the decision to show nudes. Two artists (artists!) boycotted the event in protest. But the organizer promised me, when it was all over and we were packing everything up, that they would continue to allow artistic nudes to be exhibited. It grieves me to report that there were at least three other artists present whose nudes were more award-worthy than the one I picked out as my award candidate. I wish I could show you what these winning works looked like, but the Londonderry Art on the Common PR machine has not got as far as issuing press releases or creating a blog.

On a cheerier note, I was a winner in another show. It opened in Plymouth at the Gallery at Red Gate Farm, last Friday. I couldn’t get there because I couldn’t find a ride (granddaughter needed the car more than I did), but I heard it was the best reception ever, and one of my two paintings was honored. Not sure for what, exactly–just a really nice painting. The theme of the show is “Reinventing the Farm. My painting was “Apples Ready to Pick”, and indeed, I painted them at Mack’s Apples, which allows people to come in and pick their own. I guess you could say that is one way of reinventing the farm.

Apples Ready to Pick

Lest you think I was too preoccupied by the above activities to paint, let me reassure you, by no means! I have two new nudes:

Standing Nude

I had to cheat a bit on the length of his legs in order to fit the feet in the picture. I deliberately left the feet kind of unfinished-looking, but notice how well they are planted. I really love this painting just the way it is, dribbles of diluted paint and all. Cameron, if you are reading this, I would love to hear from you whether you think I can “get away” with leaving this painting in this unfinished state.

It was not dry enough for me to mount it for the show, but I stuck it in a frame anyway and displayed it. You can probably pick it out in the photograph of the Right Corner; it is in the middle, on the ground but leaning against the wall. Many of my portly visitors, when they saw it, started considering a new career in modeling.

My second nude of the week is from a 3-hour workshop with Peter Clive, an instructor at the NH Institute of Art. I spent half the time watching him do a demo, and the other half trying to emulate (in small degree) his tighter approach, starting from highlights, then filling in dark accents, and last, working in the midtones. I think I usually start with the midtones. Everybody has their own “attack”, one that works best for them.

Seated Nude (M)

You’ve probably remarked on how restrained this painting is, compared to my usually more bravura approach. The skin tone is totally realistic. I do like it. Although the skin is quite light, the highly lit parts not look chalky. The highlights on my other nudes tend to bleach out. Must have something to do with values, with contrast. One of these days, I will get to the bottom of that.

One last thing of note–only because I have photographs. I will only subject you to one as I know you must be tiring. This is one section of an exhibit of plein air paintings from five or six members of the NH Plein Air group.

NH Plein Air exhibit at Pantano Gallery

One of mine is on the top left. Flo Parlangeli has two–top right and bottom left. Barbara Carr did the one on the bottom right. To see the entire exhibit, go to the Southern NH University in Hooksett, NH, find the library (Shapiro Library, if there are more than one) and then locate the Pantano Gallery within the Library.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Prepping for A Show of Nudes

Posted by Aline on September 3, 2012

You can’t wait until the last minute to prepare for a show. I started by ordering a modest number of new frames intended to accommodate my recent paintings of nudes on unstretched canvas, with the mixed results that I described in last week’s blog. This week, while waiting for the second order of frames to come in, I framed up what I could, and worked on those 12×16 canvases that needed paint to the edges. So far, I have nine “studies” from this spring and summer all framed and ready to pack, and five 20×16 more fully realized nudes framed and boxed. Three more 12×16 edge-painted studies and the five waiting on the new frames brings the total to 22. There is at least one portrait of a clothed model included in the collection, and I may bring along other recent figure or portrait paintings. I have to keep in mind that I may be doing this on my own.

Since of the nine studies I have framed there are two that you have not yet seen, I decided to photograph all nine in their frames. But first, the painting from yesterday, which cannot be framed yet:

Owning the Brown Leather Sofa

Now for the nine, in chronological order to the best of my memory:

Week One, Brown Leather Recliner Pose No. 1

This was one of my experiments with the palette knife, and the first of four paintings from the same pose. The second is waiting to be framed as a 12×16 after being painted to the edge. The third, a head portrait and another knife painting, may be left home. The fourth is one of the 20×16 framed and already boxed.

In the Artist’s Studio

This would have been my pride and joy, but I ruined it with a sloppy mount. Lesson learned. It will be on display but not for sale.

In the Artist’s Studio, No. 2

In this photograph you can judge the new frames that I ordered specially for my nude studies. They have a subtle scrolling that harks back to olden times, as befits paintings of nudes, ironically in our liberated age not often displayed. This painting is one of my resizing victims (from 11×16 down to 11×14).

In the Artist’s Studio, Green Drape

I wanted to crop this one, but could not sacrifice either the elbow or the foot, so I had to extend the green drape to the bottom edge. Note to future generations of art lovers: it would OK with me if you were to reframe this one with the bottom one inch cut off.

African Queen

This is the only one of the 22 that looks better in a black frame than in silver or gold.

New Angle on the Brown Leather Recliner

Modern Odalisque

Another resizing victim.

untitled

In the Artist’s Studio, Green Hassock

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the Gallery at Red Gate Farm in Plymouth; at the Yoga Balance Studio in Manchester; at the law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

And don’t forget: Saturday, June 8, Londonderry Art in the Common. (Rain date is June 9)

No Nudes Week

Posted by Aline on August 27, 2012

I mislaid my Tuesday painting of a lovely male nude. That’s the primary reason for depriving you of any paintings or drawing of nude people this week. However, it creates the opportunity to publish the plein air paintings that I left behind in Portsmouth a few weeks ago.

Bridge to Pierce/Peirce Island

This first painting, “The Bridge to Pierce/Peirce Island,” I worked on for about three hours, and brought it pretty much to a point where I felt it was finished. Notice the American flags. They were present, of course, but I could have ignored them. As the result of spending so much time on the bridge painting, I did not have as much time as I needed to finish the second one.

NHAA’s Sheafe Warehouse

I had expected the Warehouse to make for a simpler painting, but I had difficulty with perspective and texture, which took time to work out and so I ran out of time. One day, when I am more experienced, I will know to ignore the deadline and just withhold an unfinished painting from the wet paint sale. I don’t plan to finish this painting. It goes on the discard pile, to be sanded and painted over.

I’ve been wondering why I tend to go in close to buildings instead of situating them in a landscape. I’m beginning to realize that it’s harder to paint a successful landscape painting with so little actual land. Buildings can be beautiful, but they need to be placed in context. In the next painting, I stepped back a little bit–but still I chose to lose the top of the barn.

Swallow Barn

I produced this painting in the course of collecting the above two Portsmouth paintings from my artist friend, Bruce Jones, who had kept them safe. This barn is across the street from his home in Exeter. [Exeter is the home of Don Stone. Bruce paints with Don Stone and has a lovely loose style that you sometimes see in a Don Stone painting. Who influenced whom?] I titled the painting “Swallow Barn” because Bruce’s wife Tracy told me about barn swallows who have made this barn their home. I wish I could have caught them in my painting but I guess they were snoozing. Instead, I put in the shovel, as my quirky substitute for life. Don’t you wonder what use that shovel was being put to, in the middle of August?

Report on exhibits: Two of my plein air paintings were accepted into an exhibit titled “Reinventing the Farm”, opening this Friday in Plymouth NH–the Gallery at Red Gate Farm, 188 Highland Street. The reception is Friday from 6 to 9. I never got around to mailing out the post card invitations to attend the reception. I feel really bad about that, and hope a few of my blog readers will make the effort although I know Plymouth seems a bit out of the way.

Another painting, not plein air but rather a combination of still life and photographic references, that I developed specifically for an exhibit titled “Add Women and Stir”, was rejected. To check out the rejectee, click here. Perhaps not edgy enough, perhaps just not good enough. I look for excuses but “just not good enough” seems most likely reason.

I round out this week of painting-from-life-but-not-nudes with my two paintings of our new Sudanese model, Yannette. These are from our Sunday life group. The first is the one I started last week. I “finished” it this week, which only means I came to a point where the painting seemed uniformly complete and I didn’t feel like taking it any further.

Yanette

Sorry about the glare. The painting is 20×16, which is a very large surface to light without incurring any shine anywhere. I’m going to be doing more paintings of that size now that I possess a 16×20 canvas pad, so I promise to figure out how to photograph paintings of size more competently. Surely there is something on the Web, if only I can find it.

I may have rushed the full length portrait of Yannette to conclusion because my secret desire was to paint a closeup portrait of her.

Yanette Profile

Finally, a fuller explanation of why I mislaid my lovely Tuesday nude. I have been readying my nudes for display at the Londonderry Art in the Park on September 8 (Saturday). As I mentioned in an earlier post, Londonderry is not only permitting the display of pre-approved nudes, it is encouraging it by making the theme of the show “Bare Essentials” and awarding a prize for the best nude in the show.

I probably have twenty or so nudes painted in oils, and hundreds of nude drawings that I could mat and frame. To keep effort and costs down, I have decided to concentrate on the oil paintings. I ordered six new, distinctive frames, which arrived Thursday, two days early. I selected my ten favorite nudes–almost all of them had been painted on 12×16 unmounted, unstretched canvas. I had to choose whether to crop to 11×14 or to add paint to the edges where my support had covered up the surface. This choice resulted in a lot of agony. Even the painting to the edge distorts the composition of the original painting. If only I could wave a wand and produce odd-sized panels to mount them on, and odd-sized frames to put them in. Then, picture this: I go to insert my cropped-down treasures in the new 11×14 frames and they won’t fit! Five of my hardboard supports had been cut slightly too large. Price being no object when it comes to presenting my paintings, I got on the phone today and ordered five more frames cut slightly larger than 11×14. Meanwhile, I had put aside my last nude because it was not quite dry enough for the mounting thing, and it disappeared in the midst of the chaos. I’m not worried. It will turn up, and it will be on display in my tent at the Londonderry Art in the Park on September 8. Be There!

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the Gallery at Red Gate Farm in Plymouth; at the Yoga Balance Studio in Manchester; at the law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

Painting outside in not so random back yard

Posted by Aline on August 20, 2012

Some Back Yard!

Saturday I got out to paint with the New Hampshire Plein Air painters for only the fourth time this season. There are two reasons for that rarity–first and primarily, Sharon, our leader, and my usual ride for these activities, was knocked low for the season by precautionary chemo and radiation treatments; and second, I have been satisfying my painting urge with the twice-a-week life painting sessions. (Last Saturday I got out, in my own car!, and painted two scenes in Portsmouth, part of the Art Festival paint out organized by the NH Art Association–but I left my paintings behind for a wet paint sale, without grabbing photos first. No, they didn’t sell, and I will get them back eventually, and if they look as interesting as I remember, I will post photos of them then.)

So this Saturday we showed up at an Open House in Madison, NH (two and a half hour drive from Manchester) to decorate the grounds with our artistic activities. The place would also make a great artist colony. The realtor lured us with promises of food, drink, bathrooms, and good views. She came through on all counts. We’d like to buy the property, but it’s a little outside of our means. So we are hoping it doesn’t sell quickly so she will have us back in the Fall. There’s a view across the fields of a cluster of buildings, including a churchly steeple, that I have my eye on. But the most compelling view was this one of the water and its reflections.

Back Yard photo

My position was dictated by the presence of a watercolorist working to my right, so the tree was smack in front of me.

I think it’s important to document all the discomfort a plein air artist has to put up with, after jostling for a decent view of the desired subject matter. I had to peek around the sides of the tree to see what was going on in the margins. I was on a hill– fortunately, facing downward. Sideways would have been impossible. Because I was on a hill, my sandals dug in between the toes. So I did the sensible thing and went barefoot. The flies of Madison apparently go gaga over bare feet. Luckily I had my bug spray with me, and doused the feet. (No more bug issues, which is amazing. I suspect the realtor of debugging the property before we got there.) I was standing to paint, so my back was hurting. To give it respite and get a longer view of my painting, I had to get out from under the tree (see that branch in the foreground?), and climb uphill to my chair, whence I took the above photo. Can you even see the painting from there? Here is a better look at my work in progress.

Some Back Yard! WIP

The sight that attracted me to this painting was the dark and light reflections in the water. You can see in this photo that I started by laying in the darks first. By the way, to lay out my composition, I was drawing with paint from my new tube of Michael Harding Red Umber. Since I never heard of Red Umber before, I thought you too might be curious about it. Then, after I got some beautiful reflections in, I allowed the leaves of the irises or lilies to obscure the water. By that time, I had dragged my chair downhill and was dabbing away at the painting from a position below it. Shocking? There are no rules, damn it! I regret not taking more WIP photos. Could be that the painting was much better somewhere midway, before my back started to kill me.

Naturally, I still got in my two life painting sessions on Tuesday and Sunday. Tuesday I experimented with more extreme colors mostly in one range–yellow to red.

Male Nude in Red and Yellow

Sunday’s painting is either unfinished or a study. A lovely Sudanese refugee posed for us, her very first experience at modeling, in one of her native dresses.

We will have her again in the same pose next week, so I will have to decide whether to revisit what I started yesterday, or start over.

Yannette

One factor: I did yesterday’s work on a 20×16 piece of canvas, taped to a board. Seems a waste to paint a study on something that large.

They (good artists) say that worrying about waste is something a good artist gets over in time. Not there yet.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the Bedford Public Library, in Bedford; at the law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

What I Learned This Week

Posted by Aline on June 25, 2012

Don’t bite off more than you can chew. That was Lesson No. 1 this week. To rephrase in artist’s terms, don’t try to paint/draw larger than you can take in at a glance, unless you are able to move away from the easel frequently to judge what you are doing. Another way of not biting off more than you can chew is to “sight-size” your drawing. I learned this at least once before, I’m sure, but perhaps it just doesn’t sink in until all the other obstacles to good drawing have fallen away. I prefer to think of my recidivism that way, so that it appears I am making progress, not just the same mistakes time after time. I will explain, elaborate, and, to quote the Car Guys, obfuscate:

At Tuesday life group, we are starting to attract more artists that I originally would have thought we could fit into our studio. Last Tuesday, I decided to forgo the paint and try to complete a charcoal portrait of our model. I got up real close to the model. That is supposed to be a good idea for doing portraits. I work sitting down because my legs and back start to hurt if I stand for very long. Because I was low and close to the model, I had artists working on either side of me and behind me. I was pretty much trapped in place.

From my perspective, the portrait was looking pretty good. It was larger than what I could see, so not “sight size”. “Sight-size” means drawing the image exactly the same size as the image being read by your brain. You can hold your drawing up next to the model to check how your are doing. If you are not doing “sight-size”, the smaller your drawing, compared to what you see, the easier it is to judge the accuracy of your drawing. Think of it as a built in “back up”. Obviously for someone like me, who has to sit close to her drawing most of the time, drawing sight-size or smaller is the way to go. Going big is tricky–the more you enlarge on the image that is hitting your brain, the more scope for error. Proportions become especially hard to judge.

Portrait in Charcoal

Only when I got my Tuesday portrait home did I realize how far off the mark I was. You may not be able to judge how disappointing this was as a portrait, because you don’t know the model. This is not the first portrait I have done of her, however, and all of the others were more faithful to her likeness, so if you have been following along for a while now, you know this model too. Examples here. The hair looks good though.

Lesson No. 2. Maybe not so much a lesson as an insight: I’m getting hooked on paint. I usually love working in vine charcoal, but Tuesday, as I smeared my charcoal around, I wanted to mix color, not shades of gray. It didn’t help either that I was drawing on relatively slick Bristol board instead of my usual Strathmore Charcoal paper, which has a texture that is characterized as “laid”.

Lesson/Insight No. 3. Laid paper is laid (textured weave) for a reason. Exactly what it is that makes “laid” so appealing is hard to articulate. I should probably look it up to see what other artists have said but I really want to try to come up with something intelligible myself. The weave definitely contributes to the look and feel of the drawing . . . the charcoal settles into the nooks and crannies–or not, depending on how much smearing the artist does. Does this satisfy some kind of primal artist hunger for the unexpected result? When the unexpected happens and not in a good way, fixing is easy. When unexpected happens but in a happy way, artist takes credit. Note to self: do not use vine charcoal on Bristol board again. I used charcoal pencil on Bristol board once, to good effect with a no-smear technique (getting it right from the first mark). See here.

Lesson No. 4. Worrying about why your painting does not sell in the wet paint sale after a paintout is a waste of time and psychic energy. You can’t change what you do, so don’t try to analyze why two terrific paintings got left on the table. Hmmm. The table. Maybe it would have made a difference if the paintings were upright, as on an easel! Darn, I forgot to bring the pieces of cardboard that would make an easel out of my Art Cocoons. What a dummy I am! Here are the paintings:

South Corner, Forbes House

View of Boston from the Forbes House Driveway

The location of our paintout was the Forbes House and Museum in Milton, Massachusetts. My first painting took some liberty with the color of the Greek Revival house, in that I added orange to the tan because there was a pinkish cast bouncing off the house when the sunlight hit it. The pink glow under the soffit was really there, so the house had to have pink in it, right? (In the interest of full disclosure–I am going in for cataract surgery next week, and I’ve heard that colors will look different after I get my new eyes.)

The second painting is the view across the road from the Forbes House. I liked how the two fruit trees framed the distant city skyline. I finished this painting so fast, that I filled my remaining time until the wet paint sale by cleaning my palette. It was good to have a clean palette. It was good to have two plein air paintings that I am happy with. So it was a good day even if my offerings were shunned.

UPDATE: The Women’s Caucus for Art has two exhibits going on: “Flowers, Interpreted” at the Epsom Public Library; and “On Target,” at the Bedford Public Library (going up at the end of this month). In earlier blogs, I discussed each of my contributions: Starry, Starry Night for On Target, and for Flower, the brown fairy called Iris, Interpreted. Even if you don’t remember those discussions, you might enjoy these exhibits. Many different media will be represented, with special emphasis on photography in the Flowers exhibit. Given the parameters of “On Target,” I’m expecting some crazy stuff. Certainly my contribution is nothing like anything else I have ever done. Also at the Bedford library is my “Enchanted” painting on view for the summer, per “Artist of the Month” vote by the Manchester Artists Association.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Epsom Public Library in Epsom; at the Bedford Public Library, in Bedford; and at her studio by appointment.

On My Own . . . Sort of

Posted by Aline on May 7, 2012

No more class on painting the contemporary portrait. No more Saturday life group. Both are victim to the school calendar and to the need of the graduating Bachelor of Arts students at the NH Institute of Art for space to exhibit their senior projects. (This is a wonderful exhibit, by the way; if you can get there during the run, you really should go.) Even my Sunday morning ad hoc group was cancelled. I had no organized artist activities for a whole week, and I had two whole weekend days with no workshops. In short, I was on my own.

First I chose to clean up some paintings in waiting. I went all the way back to my Florida trip in March for this one:

Marco Island Medical Center

The main focus of this plein air painting was the reflections in the big picture windows, and I was happy enough with how I portrayed them. But the painting was unremarkable, dull, boring. I thought I could jazz it up with new treatments for the tree and the grass. Better now, right?

Next I turned to last week’s painting of our model in the brown recliner–painting No. 4 of her in that thing. I did a little bit of this, a little bit of that, refining some areas, blurring others.

The Pose, Take No. 4

This might be Stage 2 in a multi-stage painting. I’m thinking I would like the arm on the left more in the shadow, and perhaps all of her shadows should be darker. I don’t care for the Barbie doll look of her features, but I’m not quite sure what to do about that. What I do like is the new treatment of the aqua drape and the background.

Another past painting touch up victim was last week’s “Iris Interpreted”. I hope you like what I did to her face and the lower right corner.

Iris Interpreted

Finally, I struck out for new territory. But it was territory based on last week’s drawing of the black and white couple. Here is a glimpse of my set up as I copied the drawing into paint:

High Contrast in the making

Try as I might, I could not make his skin less white and her skin more black. That happens sometimes–the painting refuses to be what I want it to be.

I discovered the magic of a brayer on this painting. The brayer is a roller of soft rubbery material. It picks up and removes paint. If you don’t clean it constantly, it also lays that paint down again somewhere else. (I think it was actually meant to be a printing tool–and not one that comes in direct contact with the ink.) You can see the effect in the background. As I become bolder, I might even obliterate my carefully drawn figures in this way.

High Contrast

For the figures, I tried to keep the paint thick. I was working on a slippery panel, so that was difficult. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t get the effect I wanted. Is this a good painting? Good enough to forgive the flaws that I find so frustrating?

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Gallery at the Sage Gallery in Manchester; at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Library Arts Center in Newport; at the NH Institute of Art in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

Link to website: www.paintingsbyaline.com

P.S. Honey is recuperating from her surgery, and is getting back her spunk.

Mary Crawford Reining

Posted by Aline on March 19, 2012

Continuing my report on my 2-week vacation on Marco Island as the guest of Mary Crawford Reining, here I present for your awe and delight a slideshow of 11 of Mary’s paintings, 10 of which were painted during my stay. Mary is, as I mentioned two weeks ago, really into painting sunsets. Me, not so much. While she was working on the sun, sky, clouds, etc., I would be faced in a different direction, painting the effect the light of the setting sun on various objects, like her cat, her mahogany tree, and so on.

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I guess there is one that doesn’t fit into the colorist label, but for the most part, Mary revels in colors of the highest chroma. She does not gray anything down!

Just to be fair, I added comments to her paintings too, which you can access by clicking on the image.

Mary's Sunset No 1

Mary's Sunset No. 2

Mary's Sunset no. 3

Mary's Twilight Palms

Mary's Esplanade Fountain

Mary's Palms through the Lanai

I included her painting of the Esplanade fountain just because it was there, and why not? I should have photographed some of her larger opuses as well, but I wasn’t thinking straight. It was really, really HOT down there, and humid too! No, one does not retreat into air conditioned interiors. Especially if one is a painter. What good is a lanai open to nature if you are going to hunker down in a closed-in building?

Mary's Farmers Market No. 1

Mary's Farmer's Market no. 2

Mary's Corkscrew Swamp

Mary's "Mangos"

Mary's Bridge (Work in Progress)

Two years ago, I posted a lot of bird photos that I captured in SW Florida. I have a few more of those plus alligators, but another day. I might have to supplement this post, already in two parts, with a third part, sublime wildlife photos from Marco Island. But I have that time problem, so don’t hold your breath!

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Gallery at 100 Market Street in Portsmouth; at the Sage Gallery in Manchester; at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; and at her studio by appointment.

Link to website: www.paintingsbyaline.com

14 Days, 13 Paintings

Posted by Aline on March 19, 2012

Actually, there was briefly an additional painting, the first one, which would have made the total 14, but I wasn’t loving it, so I painted over it. Usually my first painting in a series turns out to be the best, but I’m glad when a pattern stops repeating. I would like to think that at any point in the timeline I might be creating a masterpiece. On the past two Mondays, as blog substitutes I posted snapshots of 9 paintings, taken on my cell phone. I did not have the patience to work out how to add text to the pictures, although obviously I managed to do just that for a few pictures the first week. (I should have taken notes.)

Now that I am home, I can upload photographs taken with my Nikon SLR. (Until I got back to my computer, I had no way to move photos from my Nikon to WordPress.) Because there are so many, I decided to put the entire array in a slideshow. If you are very observant, you will notice that some of the nine paintings received improvements after the posting of the cell phone photos.

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One painting, you might have noticed, was not a plein air landscape of Marco Island; it was a portrait from a photograph for another Fine Art America contest. But I did it on Marco Island, so it gets included in the slideshow.

To save me time, which I am desperate to stretch right now, I am also posting the individual images in order to give you access to my comments for each one. Just click on the image that interests you, and a pithy remark may or may not appear. The paintings below are presented roughly in the order in which I painted them.

Cleo, Watching the Sunset

Mary's Mahogany Tree

Papaya Tree and other tropical delights

Waterway

Corkscrew Swamp -- the Anhinga airing his/her wings

Lanai in Shadow at Sunset

Strong winds

Marco Island Farmer's Market

Corner Cafe (Mango's, in the Esplanade)

Bridge over Canal

Picture windows, reflecting neigborhood across the canal behind me

Missy, the 3-month old "teacup pot belly pig" who accompanies one of the vendors at the Farmer's Market.

My hostess, Mary Crawford Reining, is an accomplished artist in just about any medium you can name. Unlike me, after we parted ways after our high school graduation, she never stopped making art, even though she mothered four children and is still married to their father. (Domesticity may present the biggest obstacle to creative endeavor.) Mostly, however, she seems to prefer watercolor and pastels. I don’t know of a term to affix to her style, but I do believe she is what you would call a “colorist”. You will see what I mean when you proceed to the next blog entry. (I could not separate my photos into two different slide shows within the same blog entry.) So continue on, please, for an entirely different art experience!

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Link to website: www.paintingsbyaline.com

Marco Island week two

Posted by Aline on March 12, 2012

Marco no. 1

Posted by Aline on March 3, 2012

Improvements

Posted by Aline on December 5, 2011

Above is a new and improved version of the Rockport Harbor painting from last week. I’m hoping you might be curious to see what can happen to a plein air painting after the artist gets to stare at it in the studio for a while. It all started when I decided that the shape of the red fish house was not quite right. Perspective errors are the worst–they haunt me forever unless I fix them. And once I dive into a painting to make one correction, chances are pretty good that I will find other ways to improve on a painting, even a painting that started out not so bad. (With a bad painting, I’m like a dog with a bone–I won’t give it up.) So, after correcting the shape of the fish house, I made the following changes:

Sky: horizon color–greener

Red fish house: adjusted values of lighted and shaded sides

Blue fish house: changed color of roof

Boats: added clean whites to sun-struck surfaces

Water: brought up reflections of boats, toned down reflection of red fish house

Stone abutments: eliminated highlights, contrast

Rockport Harbor WIP

After making those changes, I submitted the painting to Patrick McCay’s critical gaze in my EEE class, and, following his advice:

Foreground shrub: added darker shadows, to better compete with the dark in the middle boat

Middle boat: inserted lighter shadows into the deck , so that the boat stopped attracting the eye

Red fish house: grayed down the red on the fish house–to comport with aerial perspective rules.

I think it’s done now. Unless something else starts to bother me about it. But I am deep into more studies for the Mount Washington bike race painting and unlikely to give Rockport Harbor another going over.

Here are two Mt. Washington studies, one finished (maybe) and the other, not quite finished–hope you like them!

View of race with vista

At the Finish (WIP)

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Link to website: www.paintingsbyaline.com

Boats

Posted by Aline on November 21, 2011

Rockport Harbor, November 2011

Last Monday, I took the day off to go painting, making a gift out of the chore of picking up an unsold painting at the Rockport Art Association in Massachusetts. Accompanying me were my friends, Jackie and Clint. We explored the entire downtown area before settling on a location across from the T Wharf where Clint and I had painting a month ago. It was a magnificent day, at least until the sun disappeared behind the buildings.

Drawn again by the fish house known as Motif No. 1, I also had Van Gogh in mind in my depiction of the drying shrub. At the start, the boats were necessary to the scene, but not necessarily the focus of the painting. But boats have a way of stealing your attention, of grabbing the eye. So I give up, and let it become a painting about the boats and not at all about the now-annoying drying shrub in the foreground.

A few days ago, I read another blog exhorting artists to keep all their older work so that they can see and appreciate the progress they are making. I keep pictures of most of my paintings, and the rendering of boats is particularly difficult. I searched everywhere to find the first boats I remember having painted; the only images I could find were embedded in an Excel file. (I used to keep track of all my paintings in an Excel file, but after 100, it got to be too cumbersome.) The struggle to find a way to include these two proofs of my early ineptitude has taken me all morning. I finally figured out that if I transfer each image from the Excel file to a Word file, then save the Word file as a web page, the images get converted to jpg images that I can import into iPhoto. Then I export the images from iPhoto to my desktop, from whence I can upload them into WordPress. Whew! Not sure the effort was worth it.

These two paintings were plein air, on Monhegan Island, during a workshop with Stan Moeller:

Monhegan Harbor from Fish Beach

Lobster boats, lobster pound

Kind of clunky, right? But not bad as a start. Bear in mind the damn things are constantly moving and changing their orientation as the tides move under them.

In my search through the archives, I stumbled upon three paintings from another Moeller workshop that also contained boats, earlier than the Monhegan boats by about two weeks:

These three are views from La Napoule on the Mediterranean coast of France. The boats in these three paintings are too distant, too small to qualify as boat paintings, but I thought they were worth including since they are the very first boats to appear in any painting by me.

Apparently, I went without boats of any kind for two years after that. The next grouping is two Rhode Island paintings, again plein air, that I painted in the summer of 2009:

Working Boats at Rest 8×10

Marina at Allen Harbor, Rhode Island 12×16

I was very pleased with these two paintings, which were done in the same afternoon from virtually the same spot. The conditions were uncomfortable–very windy, cold, I think, yet sunny. I just remember being miserable during the first painting and rushing to finish it. It’s not hard to see progress between the Monhegan boats and the Rhode Island boats.

Most of my boats are plein air experiences, but there is one prominent exception. I painted a large (for me, then) portrait of a waterfront in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and toward the end, stuck in a boat to break up the waterline and add interest:

Portsmouth Waterfront 16×20

That is a real boat–it belongs to someone who lives in one of those buildings. This boat “portrait”, painted from a photo reference, undoubtedly helped me in depicting my favorite plein air boat, “High and Dry”, from 2011 below.

My Rhode Island successes had given me the courage to go for boats on my next trip to Florida; in 2010 I choose this orange catamaran.

Catamaran

The double hulls made this a complicated project. I was not thrilled with the resulting portrait. So I tried again with this one, looking for the magic I seemed to have found in Rhode Island:

Boat Slip

This painting is not about the boat in the background, but about the reflections in the water of the pilings. But it’s still a boat so it has to count for something. The boat is certainly better than the Monhegan boats–not as clunky. But I don’t love it the way I love my Rhode Island boats. Perhaps I have a bias in favor of working boats.

That Fall (2010) I painted my first New Hampshire boats, but in a way that the painting cannot be assigned a place the scale of good, better or best boats. These were impressions of boats from a distance, much like my La Napoule boats:

Sunset over Massabesic Lake

The point of this painting, obviously I guess, was the sunset. The boats are mere window dressing, silhouettes against the light. Around about the same time, I painted from a photograph taken in Ogunquit, Maine, the following scene:

Reflections

Another case of the boat being window dressing.

This brings me to the most recent predecessors of Rockport Harbor: two paintings from Florida in March of this year; and one from Wells Harbor in June.

One-story home with Boat

High and Dry (but still perky)

Wells Harbor

Of these three, only “High and Dry” is all about the boat. “High and Dry” is, in my opinion, my best boat ever, but it should be:– unlike all other boats, my model for this painting was perfectly stationary. It’s hard enough drawing or painting a moving object, much less one that demands a level of accuracy approaching portraiture.

Finally, Rockport:

Rockport Harbor, November 2011

Three boats of diminishing size to show perspective, of diminishing detail to show distance, a scene so perfectly matched to the beginning (Monhegan boats) that a comparison is easy. There has been progress! But wait–what about progress since Rhode Island boats? That is far from certain, to me at least.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Link to website: www.paintingsbyaline.com

A Best Week

Posted by Aline on November 13, 2011

Some weeks are so full of reportable stuff that I have trouble choosing my topic. Other weeks, I have trouble scaring up a single decent topic. I could save up half of the good-week stuff for a dull week, but who wants to plan for dull weeks? Not me. On the other hand, I don’t want to bore you either, and really now, wouldn’t you rather hear about struggles? This week I can report on a bit of a struggle and its accompanying triumph so that’s what I lead with.

Part I. Alpaca Love. You remember the alpaca farm/ranch from last month?

Alpaca Farm in North Conway

This was the plein air painting from the Bartlett weekend, to which, I announced, I would be adding an alpaca closeup. I had one good alpaca closeup, so I went with that, even though I’d have preferred the animal to be facing more towards the viewer. My closeup did not include the legs either, so I was winging it with regard to the posture and thickness and general shape of the legs.

Alpaca Farm v.2

Pretty awful, right?. I wouldn’t even show it to you before–I couldn’t let it sit out there as if finished when I was going to have to repaint the red alpaca closeup. First, I had to find a better reference photograph.

As it turned out, when I got around to searching my own photographs, I had plenty of good alpaca poses. Thanks to my powerful Nikon SLR camera, alpacas photographed in the way distance still gave me enough enlarged detail to paint a loveable blond alpaca in just the right pose, in just the right spot.

Alpaca Farm, v.3 (Final)

Part II: Supercyclists. Earlier this evening, I delivered two paintings to my son in celebration of his birthday. One of them you have seen already.

Andy as Supercyclist

It depicts him right after finishing the race up to the top of the Rockpile (Mt. Washington). Paint still wet on the second one delivered, is my painting of his friend Kori, from the same time, same place.

Whew!

I love the foreground in Kori’s painting. Strange that where the focus of the painting is the figure of the cyclist, what I love most is how I painted the ground. I would have liked to paint the face more expressively, but I didn’t really have room for that. The two paintings are each 12×9, so the faces are quite small. I wanted to get the likenesses as close as possible, so I had to be careful. Andy’s worked out better because I had only light and shadow anyway, but Kori’s nose, mouth, eyebrows had to fall in the exact correct places, and no smearing please.

My major painting plan, for which these two 12x9s have served as studies, is still on, but the faces in the big one are not going to get any bigger since the plan is to encompass the entire rockpile. I think I need to reuse this scene in a longer painting so as to include more of the shadow, and larger overall, so as to allow more of a slapdash face.

Part II: Lovely Nudes. Finally, for a change of pace, how about a collection of lovely nudes from Saturday Life Group? My best from two weeks ago, and all three from this week:

Arrangement of elbow and knee

Leg on Blue Draped Pillow

Right Side with bent elbow

The back from a left angle

I am wondering if I am getting too heavy-handed with the charcoal. The “Leg on Blue Draped Pillow” has more charm to it, I think, because I had the pose for only 20 minutes and had to keep a light touch. I would like to know if you agree. Or disagree. Either way, it was a good week. Here’s hoping for another one coming up!

Tomorrow (Monday) I pick up my painting from The Rockport (Mass.) Art Association. Unsold. They invited me to apply for membership, and I thought I would if my painting sold, but it didn’t, so I didn’t. A bit far to go for the sheer joy of exhibiting. Although I do hope to get in a plein air painting day tomorrow, which makes a trip worthwhile. Also tomorrow, paintings are being changed out at the Sage Gallery in Manchester, 70 Lowell Street. Please visit this new gallery.

My old website, with multiple painting galleries yet to be transferred to this WordPress location, can be accessed at this address: www.paintingsbyaline.com. Also there are all the images attached to earlier blog entries. Eventually I will move everything here, but it takes a lot of time.

Bartlett, October 2011

Posted by Aline on October 17, 2011

Bike Race spectator on Mt. Washington

In my EEE class last week, I painted one of my studies for the Mt. Washington Bike Race painting, and since it is my favorite painting for the week, I start with it. The official title is “On the Top of the Rockpile”. Mt. Washington is, for those of you not from New Hampshire, referred to affectionately as the Rockpile because above treeline, it seems to be nothing more than pile of rocks–quite a few of them loose rocks, which makes the going tough for hikers. Here at the tip top, the boulders are more civilized. I painted this painting on a 9×12 art panel that had been first painted with an acrylic cadmium yellow. You can see some yellow peeking through a thumb print and some smears in the upper right corner. I had dropped the painting, face-down, on a cat-and-dog-fur loaded carpet when I got home after class. The figure escaped undamaged, and the rocks conceal any hairy texture (is the painting now “mixed media”?), but I tried to wipe the sky clean of fur and dirt.

The biannual trip to Bartlett for the artists’ getaway fell on last weekend. “Fell” seems appropriate because the weather was pretty darn awful. We could not visit the Rockpile, or any other tempting peak. In fact, another guest at the Bartlett Inn reported that the Cog Railroad on Saturday started up Mt. Washington but had to back down because of the high winds. Most of us painters sat out Thursday altogether; painted under a roof Friday (pavillion at Swift River Lower Falls), managed to get a few windy hours in before rain started on Saturday, and finally got a rain-free, partially sunny day on the appropriately named Sunday. I usually come home with 5 or 6 paintings from a Bartlett weekend. This time, only three:

Lower Falls

Mt. Washington Valley with Moat Mt. and cornfield

The view above is from the lawn of the Red Jacket Inn. The painting will be exhibited at the Red Jacket once it is finished and framed.

Alpaca Farm in North Conway

I got out my big Beauport easel and a 16×20 panel for the alpaca farm. I intend to add a close up of an alpaca, using one of my photographs. Here is one of my models:

Head Shot

I had to minimize the shadows with my photo editing program (iPhoto) in order to see her amazing face. She came up fairly close to me several times, but each time I could not get my camera in focus quickly enough to get the straight on gaze that I would love to have in the painting.

Not all of the alpacas were this lovely chestnut color. I love that red shade because the edges generate such a warm glow.

Gray Alpaca

White Alpaca

Here are two others, who were not disposed to come so close to me. They are shown galloping toward their owner at the back of the barn, who called them in by shouting “Ladies!” At all other times, their muzzles are buried in the delicious grass.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Gallery at 100 Market Street in Portsmouth; at the Sage Gallery in Manchester; at the Manchester Artists Association Gallery in Manchester; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Rockport Art Association Gallery in Rockport, Massachusetts.

Link to website: www.paintingsbyaline.com

Brave New World

Posted by Aline on October 6, 2011

The title of this post has nothing to do with any art that I am sharing with you. It refers to my destination after Apple’s iWeb stopping publishing updates to my Blog. OK, I’m not going to complain anymore. I’m just going to get on with it.

I have lots of art to share: a backlog of nudes, my own “Motif No. 1”, sketches from the Mt. Washington Bike Race, and progress in my class with Patrick McCay.

Let’s start with Motif No. 1: Every artist should have a version of this red building, which came to be known as “Motif No. 1” because every artist painting in Rockport, Massachusetts, did have a version of this building. (Google it!) I painted mine yesterday from the “T Wharf”. I debated whether to include the pirate ship–thought it might be too much detail. But I liked the two masts and decided I could handle it. But the pirate ship kept leaving. I think they were selling rides. I would look up to check a detail, and it would have vanished, only to return an hour later.

I was in Rockport to attend the reception for the New England Invitational exhibit at the Rockport Art Association Gallery. Wonderful, large gallery, great reception food, with wine and champagne. Much more elegant than I am accustomed to. On the other hand, they were interested in my name tag, which I bought years ago for Manchester Art Association receptions. It identifies me as an exhibiting artist. Apparently, no one has thought of doing that before, but it was definitely useful. It caused the director to stop and shake hands with me, which I am sure she never would have done but for knowing who I was.

Another plein air enthusiast accompanied me to Rockport and to the reception. In fact, but for Clinton Swank and his car, I would not have been able to get to Rockport at all. Clinton is a young 20-something painter, absorbing knowledge and experience like a sponge. He did not know about Motif No. 1 and chose to paint another scene from the T Wharf even after I told him about Motif No. 1.

The McCay class is called “Explore, Exploit, Express”, maybe not in that order. In the future I will refer to it as the EEE class. This week my project was to repaint the first Bedford Farmers’ Market scene, the one with the multi-colored umbrella, but to paint it as if I had only ten minutes to get it down. It was a mess. But Patrick advised me to blur all the edges and then come back in with fresh strokes of highlights. I gave that a try, and there is where it stands as of today:This one is headed back to class for more help Wednesday, but already everyone who has seen both versions has preferred this version to the original. To view the original, click on the link below. http://web.mac.com/alotter/Paintings_by_Aline/Index_to_Painting_Albums/Pages/Newest_Additions.html

My long range project still involves the Mt. Washington Bike Race. Here are two pages of vignettes that I hope to piece together in a large painting:

Before working on the Big Picture, however, I will paint studies from these sketches. It is my intent, my goal, to keep the brushstrokes loose and fresh.

SLG, or Saturday Life Group, has met four times already! In years past, we would just be getting started in October, but since we meet in a classroom at the Institute (NH Institute of Art), we are subject to the Institute’s calendar, which means there are some Saturdays when we cannot meet there–when prospective students are invited for tours of the campus, for instance. We used to be required to stop working and cover up our model to let groups of impressionable youths come in and inspect our goings on. So instead of suffering such interruptions, we start the season a few weeks earlier.

Here are my best drawings from the past four weeks:

IPAP weekend

Posted by Aline on September 12, 2011

IPAP stands for International Plein Air Painters, and every year in September, IPAP, the organization, calls on the painters to get outside on a particular weekend and paint. Our local organization, the NH Plein Air group, or guys, or whatever, responded to the call. It is our tradition to select three different locations over the weekend (weekend for painters generally includes Friday). So while in other parts of the world, I imagine painters piling up at their glamorous locations, we spread it around New Hampshire.

I participated on the first two days of our event. Friday we painted at Twin Bridge Park in Merrimack. It’s one of those places that you would never notice unless you got out of the car and explored. From the parking lot, you take a trail down toward a baseball field and playground, but then veer off into the woods, and descend farther, following the sound of rushing water, to a trail alongside Baboosic Brook. Due to the recent storms, the Brook was a torrent.

My chosen scene, featuring Sharon Allen behind the tree.

Because of last week’s workshop on layering water, for my second painting I chose this scene:

The water was moving very slowly over the flat rock in the foreground, which just happened to be catching beams of sunlight. The light enables you to see the shapes and shadows formed by the rock’s submerged surface, the ripples catch the blue of the sky, there’s foam, there’s vegetation, there’s unsubmerged rock. There’s not enough time! I had only an hour to work on this painting, so I kept my rendition of this scene abstract:

I like this painting for what it is, but I would like to paint another version from my photograph, to see if I can better capture the effect of the light and seeing-throughness, to coin a phrase. (Probably “transparency” is the synonym, but that word has secondary meanings and who needs that?)

Saturday morning I could not give up the new year’s first meeting of the Saturday Life Group, so I was not at the appointed IPAP location until the afternoon. We painted in the most northerly end of the Amoskeag Millyards in Manchester. Old mills, because of their locations on waterways, near falls, offer a large range of subject matter. It was my idea to paint there, but turnout was disappointing. I guess most plein air painters prefer natural landscapes over the man-made ones. I, on the other hand, even welcome the odd vehicle into my paintings from time to time:

The building in the foreground is occupied by a restaurant (Fratello’s–good Italian fare). All of the buildings in the Millyard have been repurposed of course–there is no milling going on there. In another one of them, at the southern end of the city, is the artist’s studio where we have our figure drawing on Tuesdays.

NEWS FLASH! A new fine art gallery is opening in the arts and cultural neighborhood of Manchester, 70 Lowell Street, just down Lowell Street from the new building of the NH Institute of Art. Called the “Sage Gallery . . . . a Fine Art and Metaphysical Meeting Place” (how quixotic is that!), it is owned and operated by the former director of the Manchester Artists Association Gallery, Janice Donnelly. I have seen the space and it is terrific, and of course the location is also terrific, not to mention the director–yes, also terrific. Yes, I will be exhibiting there. I think the hours are generally 11 to 4. If you can, please stop by and encourage Janice’s courageous venture.

Layering Water

Posted by Aline on September 5, 2011

This week I was almost a full-time artist. Tuesday, I attended a figure workshop in the morning and painted at the Bedford Farmers’ Market in the afternoon:

Friday I tended Gallery (Manchester Artists Association) and passed my time by painting a sunset with reflections in puddles, thinking to prepare myself for Saturday:

Saturday I attended another one of our periodic single-issue-landscape workshops with Peter Granucci; the topic of the day was handling see-through water, that is, water shallow enough to allow you to see to the bottom. More about that later.

Sunday Sharon and I met up with other NH Plein Air artists at the Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, Massachusetts. Our mission was to paint, but we also visited the art musuem on the grounds. On exhibit from their permanent collection were paintings by the Hudson River painters; on special exhibit were paintings by New England impressionists from the turn of the century. Only one name was familiar to me–Childe Hassam. My favorite of the heretofore unknown impressionists was a guy called Clifford Grear Alexander. I googled him, but other than his dates (1870-1954), no biographical information is available. Both Sharon and I were struck by the fact that many, if not most, of the paintings in these two exhibits were of New Hampshire scenes.

Farm House at the Fruitlands Museum, 11×14; when I got bored by this painting, I applied high contrast outlines to see the effect. I like it.

Meadow at the Fruitlands Museum, 11×14.

Monday, today, I put more time in on the Meadow because I had only one hour’s work into it on location. One of the docents had told me she saw a doe with two fawns at the tree line, so I added them to the scene. I wish I had a better grasp of deer anatomy, but people keep referring to our Great Dane as a deer, so I put her in the painting, hoping she passes as a deer from a distance.

The title of this blog, “Layering Water”, comes from the Saturday workshop. The point of the workshop was to learn to see all the layers created by water, and then, armed with that understanding, represent them in a painting. There is the reflection on the water, which requires that the water be relatively still. There is the surface at the bottom of the water, which requires either no reflections, or that any reflected object be in shadow–you cannot see through a reflection if the reflection is lit. If you can see the bottom rocks, mud and whatever, you need to note color changes and value changes but much more subtly than if the water was not present to obscure the view. Sometimes it’s hard to decide whether you are looking at a reflection or at something that exists under the water, especially if your reference has no context. Peter started us off with photographic examples that made our heads spin. Then we worked on two assignments. Here are my results:

The assignment on the left was relatively straightforward. Below, on the left, is a closeup of one of shadows formed by the submerged rocks. The closeup on the right is reflected grass–note that the reflection is darker because the underside of the blade of grass is not lit by the sun.

The second photograph was hard to deciper. We believe that the lighter shape at the top may be an overhanging rock. The middle section is supposed to represent a partially submerged rock extending toward a fully submerged ledge. Why is the water line so dark? I still don’t know what to make of the dark shape between the overhanging ledge and the submerged ledge, but in the middle of it is another rocky shape that suggests the whole dark piece is a shadow cast by — something outside our view, or the overhanging ledge? Peter wouldn’t say. He took the photo but maybe he couldn’t remember, or maybe he just enjoys torturing us.

Views from the Top of Mt. Prospect

Posted by Aline on August 29, 2011

Last week I teased you with photographs of the scenes I painted from the Weeks State Park location but not the paintings I worked on there. This week I am making up for my laziness by posting those two paintings as well as two paintings that I started on location at the Bedford Farmers Market.

First, the painting above shows the view from the Weeks house toward Vermont, a northwesterly direction. One of the locals told me that the pond just visible was the Martin Meadow Pond, but I am sure he was wrong about that. My little sliver of a water feature does not even get named on Google maps, while the Martin Meadow Pond is much larger, and is visible from another break in the trees to my left. What attracted me to this view was the little taste of a vista, enclosed by the foreground of foliage. It was a difficult position to manage because I did not feel free to take up the whole path with my easel. That’s always a consideration for a plein air painter–keeping out of the way of the folk who are there for the same view you want to paint. From time to time, the park ranger would wander by to check on my progress. What he would see was pretty much a mess–big smears of muddy colors–until close to the finish, when I cleaned up the edges, hit the shapes with some brighter colors, and refined the details. When he arrived at that point, he was blown away–couldn’t believe it! “Wow!”

Wow is always a good word to use to compliment a painter.

The second Weeks painting was on a much larger panel, 20 x 16, I was already tired, and frankly a bit bored by my choice of subject matter–the tower. There was no reason to continue working on it at home, except that front page article in the Concord Monitor, posted in last week’s blog. So I worked on it yesterday:

On to the next subject–Farmers Market in Bedford. My friend and fellow painter, Suzanne Whittaker, lives in Bedford and was asked to be an attraction at the Market by painting there. She sets up a tent every Tuesday afternoon, 3 to 6, and paints a still life. Other artists join her when they can. My joining her depends on my getting the use of my car on a Tuesday afternoon, which so far I have been able to do twice. Instead of painting her still life, I try to paint a piece of the market scene. Of course, nobody stays motionless long enough for me to capture their image, but I can get the structures and add anonymous figures suggested by the real people. As you will see, I go for colorful stuff:

The Bread Seller, 14×11

The Apple Hill Stand

The guy in the baseball cap noticed me looking his way a lot, so he came over afterward to see what I was doing. Most of my admirers were the children. They always asked the price, bless their uninhibited souls. They always want to buy, and are so disappointed when they can’t afford the price. One of these days I may just bring paintings to give to them. Better than dying with hundreds of paintings that my children will have to dispose of.

Dogs are welcome at the Farmers Market, so I have been taking Justice with me. He is a shy dog, particularly fearful with new men. But he seemed to enjoy our first day at the market, and never barked once. Things were different last week. We were closer to the traffic, hence to the other dogs. But that wasn’t the worst of it. A drum circle came to use Sue’s tent about one hour before closing time. I couldn’t reposition myself at that point, two hours into my painting, so they closed in behind me. Poor Justice huddled under my chair for that hour, frantic to get away but pinned in place by the leash I had him on. So when Mr. Apple Hill came over to check us out, after the drumming had ceased, Justice greeted him like a long lost friend. So funny. So there are worse things than strange men. . . much worse! And then it got pretty good–the vendor next to us sells homemade gourmet treats for cats and dogs, and gave Justice her leftover samples to take home.

So far it is looking good for us to return to the Farmers Market in Bedford tomorrow–if you want to see us there, the Market is located just off Wallace Road in the Benedictine Park.

Making News

Posted by Aline on August 22, 2011

The photograph above is one taken by John Tully of the Concord Monitor last Thursday. It led a story by Laura McCrystal on White Mountain painters, then and now. That’s me at the easel, on top of Mount Prospect in Lancaster, NH. Ironically, I had pretty much decided to wipe out that painting, but now that it has been immortalized in print, I may try to rescue it.

How did the Concord Monitor reporter and photographer and I happen to come together at the top of Mt. Prospect in Lancaster? A meeting between the reporter and Sharon Allen, our intrepid leader of the NH Plein Air artists was arranged beforehand, and I just tagged along. It’s a long drive to Lancaster. The article is part of the publicity for the Weeks Act centennial, which I have been mentioning each week in my blog. Mt. Prospect is the site of the Weeks house, now part of the Weeks State Park.

When Sharon and I arrived at the top of Mt. Prospect about 1 p.m., this view toward Vermont was the one that caught my eye. I am very pleased with the resulting painting, but have not yet photographed it for you.

The larger painting that I was working on at 5 p.m. when the photographer arrived is this scene:

Why no photos of the paintings? I apologize. I was so wiped out by what I did Saturday, that I forgot to take care of blog business on Sunday. What was so exhausting on Saturday? How about getting up at 3:30 a.m. to drive up to Mount Washington to watch my son finish the bike race to the top–in the excellent time of 1:11:xx? (xx because seconds don’t register with me.) Here is a photo of him nearing the finish line.

The Mt. Washington race is going to be the subject of my next large complex peopled painting, the second after the Farmers Market painting. I have it all planned out: First I have to compose the course at the top, catching the sinuous curves (is that redundant?) and the distinctive staircase between the summit and the parking areas. At various point on the course I will place some cyclists. Then I will create vignettes of spectators and officials, children and dogs, sketching each group individually. I will position the vignettes on my course. I will draw the entire composition out on paper first, as I learned to do at the Sean Beavers figure painting workshop, then trace it onto my canvas. I can’t wait to get started. It will take months to complete.

At Last! A Good Plein Air Day

Posted by Aline on August 15, 2011

Last week, I told you about the Eight Days of Weeks, National Forest celebration, that we NH Plein Air artists turned out for. This week, on Saturday, our numbers at the Flume hub were reduced to just Sharon and me but we celebrated the Weeks Centennial with personal highs–two paintings each that we were happy with. Above is the covered bridge over the Pemigewasset River on the grounds of The Flume. We got a lot of traffic going by, and it was fun interacting with the visitors. By the time we got hungry, the paintings were done. I took this photograph while we were packing up, just in case the painting got bought at the wet painting sale, but of course, no one showed up for the wet painting sale. Late last night in my studio, I took photographs of my entire week’s worth of artworks; I use articifial “full-sprectrum” light that I thought produced images that are good enough. However, the images of the bridge were not nearly as good as the one I took in the field. Makes me think I should stop trying to photograph my painting indoors.

After hanging around for the wet painting sale that wasn’t, Sharon and I headed farther north to enjoy the late afternoon light on Profile Lake, which lies below Cannon Mountain, right in Franconia Notch.

That high point, Sharon tells me, is something called “Eagle Cliff”, but I couldn’t see the eagle in it. Perhaps it has lost crucial parts. Sharon could still see an eagle, but Sharon sees images in just about anything–a habit somewhat annoying to artists whose clouds and rocks are the subject of her scrutiny.

Sunday we found ourselves together again at a Peter Granucci workshop in Londonderry at the studio of Elaine Farmer. The subject of this workshop was wet-surface reflections, including sand and pavements. We also got into the combination of reflection over what might be visible underneath the water.

This is my copy of a detail from a painting by Alfred Thompson Bricher, a White Mountain painter born in Portsmouth, NH. The painting that we copied is called “Time and Tide.”

This one was painted from a photograph. My photograph here is pretty awful–colors are off, but I think you get the idea.

Last Thursday was my last class with Cameron Bennett for a while. He had read my blogs and seemed much less critical of my efforts, but that may be my imagination–as I progress to becoming more critical myself, it may seem to me that he is overlooking egregious errors. Here is Rebecca again, from the other side:

This too was painted in the direct painting method that I used for the homework as described in last week’s blog.

And here is my final effort on that Valentin Serov copy (I erred last week when I identified the Russian portrait artist as “Kerov”):

I worked on this even after the last class last week, trying to get the right eye placed correctly. I had already put hours and hours into that eye, and considered devoting the whole blog this week to the Mystery of the Traveling Eye. I might revisit this topic when I have a better handle on it. If that ever happens! Right now I am so disgusted that I ‘m not even giving you a chance to compare my final (for now) copy to the original.

So it has been a full week for me, and thus wonderful.

More about Portraiting

Posted by Aline on August 8, 2011

Above is the final version of my copy of the Annigoni self-portrait. This is what I had to show the class and the Critic Supreme, Cameron Bennett. I wish I could remember his exact words, but they were more complimentary than usual, and he concluded by saying I should post it on my blog. I had to confess that not only had I already having done so, but I also solicited suggestions, which I took, on things to fix.

But not everything got fixed, because after the compliments, he and my classmates proceeded to tear it apart. Here, for the sake of comparison, are both new and old versions of my copy, against the original, which is in the middle:

He rejected my own observation about the face being too wide; that was an illusion caused by the ear being too low. Also the nose was too tipped up, the nostril shadow not extended enough, and the eyes too wide open. Each issue is a matter of millimeters. Millimeters matter. If there were something smaller than a millimeter, it too would matter.

That exercise entailed the drawing of the portrait before the painting of it. Once you have labored over a drawing, the painting phase becomes semi-automatic. As long as you get the colors right, and stay within the lines you have drawn, the portrait comes out okay. This week our assignment is to copy a portrait by a Russian painter (Valentin Serov, one of the greatest Russian portraitists of his time, according to this website) using the “direct painting” method. Skip the drawing. You start by painting an oval for the head. After the outside shape has been refined, you may begin to suggest features within that shape using midtones and shadows. Here is where I was with my copy last night–original is the one on the right:

This morning I corrected the eyebrow on the right; it was arching a little too far to the right. There’s something not quite right with that eye, but I’m not sure whether it is the size or the shape, or both. The iris just seems to be popping out of her head. Perhaps I need to narrow the entire head.

Saturday I finally got outside for a little plein air painting. I joined other members of the NH Plein Air group to help celebrate “Eight Days of Weeks.” A NH native, John Weeks, was instrumental in the passage of the Weeks Act 100 years ago, without which we would have no national forests. So each Saturday during the month of August, we are organizing painting forays to northern New Hampshire, which is dominated by the White Mountains National Forest. For this first Saturday, we were determined to get an early start so as to paint the Turkey Jim Covered Bridge in Campton in the morning, then move to the Forest center in Lincoln for the afternoon. At three o’clock we would then have two wet paintings to offer for sale at the center.

Alas, we couldn’t find Turkey Jim Covered Bridge. This is a bridge now closed to vehicular traffic but looking delightfully paintable in its disrepair–from photographs. Mapquest led us to a point near its western terminus, but we didn’t know that and even if we had, we would have had to climb fences. (Not feasible with painting gear.) Then first one then another “native” gave us bad directions. When we finally found the correct road with the help of a third native , it led us to a field bursting at the seams with RVs, waiting for a bluegrass festival to begin. We managed to talk our way through the field to the other side where our bridge awaited, without buying tickets to the concert. Our reward for all this extra effort and lost time? No good place to set up easels. The only good view of the bridge was from the middle of the stream.

So off to Plan B, Otter Rocks on the Kancamagus Highway, in the White Mountains National Forest east of Lincoln, NH. We picked up lunch in Lincoln and arrived at Otter Rocks about 11 a.m. to find a picnic table waiting for us at a particularly good vantage point for painting the rocks. I ate my sandwich and started painting without changing position.

Otter Rocks was brimming with families Saturday, plus one really interesting dog. I wish I could have included the dog in my painting, but getting those two figures in there was effort enough. I waited until I had most of my painting completed before even considering figures. The painting was thick with paint by then. I focussed for a second on an appealing father-daughter pair and tried to freeze that image in my brain. By the time I had scraped away excess paint to make room for my figures, the father had stood up and I was on my own. Apart from the original gesture, my figures bear no resemblance to the real people who inspired them.

In September, I am taking yet another Master Class workshop, this one with Stan Moeller; he promises to teach us how to people a landscape en plein air. It is definitely something at which he excels. Check out his paintings here. I sure hope he has some tricks to teach us. I was fortunate to have taken landscape painting with Stan at the Institute when I began to paint in 2005. He wasn’t including figures much then. Now he paints hardly anything in which a figure is not the focal point. I want to do the same.

Oh yes–the Rest of the Story. No one came to the wet painting sale. But we shall try again next week because the Flume is scheduled as the site of the next wet painting sale. If we can get into the Flume to paint, chances are better that some visitors will turn into art collectors. The Northern Arts Alliance and other Eight Days of Weeks organizations are to receive a 30% commission on all wet painting sales, although they will have done little to earn that. We had to fashion our own price labels out of scrap paper and prop up our paintings against a fence. Maybe they didn’t expect us to actually show up. Now they know. Crazy artists!

Snow Painting

Posted by Aline on January 19, 2010

Next August, I plan to participate in a special exhibit at the Arnold Arboretum in Boston, of paintings painted au plein air by members of the New Hampshire Plein Air group at the Arboretum. We are trying to cover all four seasons of the year. So we had to do winter. On January 7, the first group of us (about six in number) descended upon the Arboretum with our usual gear, plus all those things designed to keep us from freezing to death. I staked out a spot on the Willow Path, which is just inside the main gate, not far from the bathrooms in the visitor center. At least I had a bit of a hike to get to this spot. Others who shall remain nameless set up their work stations in the parking lot.

Willow Path in Winter

After finishing the painting above, I had a little extra time, so I produced a 6 by 12 panorama of a nearby culvert, which may seem a little weird to you. I chose it to seize the opportunity to include a richly dark area in my composition. Contrast creates drama.

Culvert in the Arboretum

Paintings by Aline

A Painter's Progress

Category Archives: Plein air

A Month of Beckys

The White Mountains of New Hampshire

Marco Island Paintings Part Two

Marco Island Paintings Part One: M.C. Reining

Potpourri–Nudes, Landscapes, Almost Abstract

Frozen Moments

Slacker!

Catching the Odd Perspective

The Week of “Super Storm”

Becky

Bonus Blog: Cruisin’ and Paintin’ the Essex River

The Wolfeboro Paintout

Letting down

Prepping for A Show of Nudes

No Nudes Week

Painting outside in not so random back yard

What I Learned This Week

On My Own . . . Sort of

Mary Crawford Reining

14 Days, 13 Paintings

Marco Island week two

Marco no. 1

Improvements

Boats

A Best Week

Bartlett, October 2011

Brave New World

IPAP weekend

Layering Water

Views from the Top of Mt. Prospect

Making News

At Last! A Good Plein Air Day

More about Portraiting

Snow Painting

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