Lessons Less Enjoyed

Posted by Aline on

Sometimes I struggle and I’m not sure why.  Flailing is probably the more descriptive term.  Such was the case this week.  I was painting from life one of my favorite models, and I thought I was doing all the usual stuff, noting proportions, juxtapositions, etc.,  getting all the puzzle pieces in place.  But the result was not coming out right.  As Dan Thompson says in one of his videos, if the measurements are correct but it doesn’t look right, it’s not right.  The eye is the final judge. That is true of all painting from life–I have heard myself make that excuse (“hey, that’s the way it was for real”) and simultaneously cringe, because I do know that reality is not a justification for failing to satisfy the eye.  But in this case, I really, really want to understand why my usual tools were not working.  I still don’t have the answer, but I have perhaps a theory.  But first, to deal with the most glaring mistakes, I made some repairs back in my own studio.

Seated Nude, WIP

Seated Nude, WIP

Easy to fix was the arm in the back (her right arm), which was too large.  Because that arm was farther away, it must look smaller than the one in the foreground.   The bigger problem was the length of her torso.  While amending the right arm I also brought it down a smidge, thereby shrinking the torso the tiniest bit.

Seated Nude

Seated Nude

I think this helped, but it didn’t solve the puzzle.  Perhaps the figure is just too skinny?  My model is rather thin, but she is not particularly long limbed.  My guess now is that everything is too long (or not wide enough), but only in the torso does that exaggeration jar the senses.

As if to make up for that struggle, the gods of painting blessed my effort on Sunday to paint a portrait of Grace wearing her glasses.

Portrait of Grace

Portrait of Grace

Keeping the glasses on was Adrienne’s idea.  I painted around them until I could no longer avoid them.  I tackled them very delicately, framing them in with mere wisps of paint.  But one of my goals was to show the reflections as well, so I could not stay timid.  One thing about glasses:  you’ve got to get real accurate to matching one lens with the other–more so than with the eyes.  The eyes are often seen from different perspectives, one going round behind the face while the other is in full view.  But glasses are pretty much right there, perched on the nose, and aside from perspective, should match up exactly.  Well, almost exactly.

I am most pleased with the mouth.  Doesn’t she look alive enough to plant a kiss on you?  I worked and reworked the mouth, until it is almost where I want it to be.  Grace will be back in two weeks to enable Adrienne and me to finish our respective starts.  I want to perfect the philtrum (that groove between nose and upper lip), the nose, perhaps the eyes, and the hair.  And the background.

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.

The Struggle (with compressed charcoal)

Posted by Aline on

I’m pleased to report that I did not chicken out.  Monday a week ago, I proclaimed my intent to deploy compressed charcoal in Larry Christian’s life drawing class, and on Tuesday I did just that.  I had prepared myself by acquiring a large bag of cots.  What is a cot, you ask?  They are little rubber caps for fingers.  They look like condoms.  Larry said they would fit his dog’s, well, you know.  I thought I would need only one cot, for the third finger, which I favor for smearing soft willow charcoal.   I soon discovered that compressed charcoal attaches itself to fingers that merely touch the stick.  By the end of the class, I had one cot on every finger of my right hand, because all of them were handling the stick.  My thumb is fatter than my other fingers, and all my cots were medium-sized to fit my other four fingers, so my poor thumb suffered mightily from the constriction of blood flow; after all that, my thumb still got covered in dust because of a pinhole leak in the tip of the cot.

Smearing, the technique that I love to use with ordinary, vine charcoal, is not a good technique for compressed charcoal.  You can’t soften a mark left by compressed charcoal–you can only make it look messy.  You’ll see.

I started with a test sheet of mark-making.

A test of handling

My sticks were square, but not precisely square.  One side of a square might produce a perfectly even application of charcoal, while the side next to it will produce streaks of darker lines at the edge.  Unless you were expecting and planning for those streaks, this would be quite upsetting.  Because THERE IS NO CORRECTING OF MARKS MADE BY COMPRESSED CHARCOAL.  You can start light and get darker, but you can’t reverse direction.   If you try to erase, you’ll probably sink the boat.

Gestures, no. 2

Upper left–that’s what happens when you try to smear or spread the mark left on the paper by compressed charcoal.  Yucky!

Gestures, no. 1

gestures, no. 3

Gestures, No. 4

Gestures, No. 5

Gestures, No. 6

You’ll notice that I am not drawing with lines.  Instead, I am trying to create form by darkening the space around it, or by filling in form with a darker value.  Given the size of the charcoal stick, details can’t make it into the picture.  You can probably deduce from a few stray boobs that our model was not a man.

The magic of the compressed charcoal comes from its revelation of the grain of the paper.  Almost anything you do can look cool.  To the extent that these gesture drawings are successful, it is probably because I didn’t have time to find ways of spoiling them.  The more time I got with a pose, the harder it became for me to adjust to the unique properties of the compressed charcoal, as these next three poses demonstrate.

Struggle no. 1  Where do you go when you can’t draw the face or fingers?

struggle no. 2 still trying to complicate things

Struggle no. 3 Falling back on lines

Too black, too soon, those last two.  I resolved thereafter to slow down, tread softly.  Restraint is key.

Stuggle no. 4

Finally, I feel I am getting somewhere.  Can you make out the smudges from my fingertips (actually from the cots on my fingertips)?  By this time, my finger cots were layered in thick, greasy, black soot.

Struggle no. 5–close, or there?

Because the back view is my favorite, or maybe because this was our last pose of the night, whatever, I finally produced something of which to be proud.  My light, early marks that were “wrong” (too wide buttocks) did not detract from the beauty of the final drawing.  The paper I was using was low-quality sketch paper.  I can’t wait to see how these marks will look on some decent “laid” charcoal paper.

Isn’t it ironic that a drawing that looks as though it were born of wild abandon is actually born of restraint?

P.S.  Larry was quite pleased with me.

Finding a Face

Posted by Aline on

My day has started out badly.  My camera misbehaved in a way that has me stumped.  I was taking photos of three paintings that I intended to show you, trying out all kinds a strategies short of standing on my head to get one without glare.  I finally figured out that I had to get farther get away from the painting to avoid the shine, and zoom in on it.  But the camera went into some kind of zombie mode wherein the painting showed up as a blank gray canvas.   I loaded the images into iPhoto and increased the exposure, to reveal a ghostly image of the painting.  Scratching my head.  Did I change a setting by accident?  It’s a Nikon D70, if anyone out there has an idea.

underexposed

Meanwhile, moving on:  “finding a face” refers to the process involved in painting a portrait.  I contrast the two nudes with faces attached that I worked on earlier in the week, with the stubbornly unphotographable portrait with body attached that I worked on over the weekend.    Here are the bodies:

From Head to Foot

Larger copy of earlier pose

These faces are sketched in–not carelessly but not with any refinement either.  A little dot of paint placed in the right spot pretty much does the job.  Since the paintings are pretty rough overall, a refined face would look out of place anyway.  These paintings are in line with the fast and loose style toward which I am reaching.

Enter Dan Thompson.  I took a two-day workshop at the Institute with this painter, who hails from New York City (“the South”, as he refers to it) where he teaches at the Art Students League.  There were no beginners in this workshop.  In fact, two of the Institute’s teachers were taking part.  Whereas I have been mostly concerned with getting the features placed in the correct spot, Dan’s primary focus was on the shapes of things.  For example,  in Sunday morning’s lecture/demo, we explored, in great detail, every nuance of the nose, ears, mouth and eyes–in that order.  Before the demo of each feature, we received a lecture with diagrams. The following two photos show his roughed in portrait from Saturday’s morning demo/lecture, with the nose developed in the first one, and the ears in the second:

Nose

Ears

For the nose and ears, I made notes in my sketchbook.  Then I got a little savvier, and took pictures of the diagrams.  Here are his diagrams with lists of terms, one  for the parts of a mouth and the other for the eyes, followed by his demo of each:

Somewhere under all the arrows and embellishments, there was an outline of a mouth.

mouth

eyes

eyes

I loved it.  Every little bitty stroke had its own reason for color and direction, yet the product does not look overworked.  No blending.  I went back and examined my own work in progress from Saturday and was depressed; I didn’t even have the features in the right spots.

WIP– Halfway there?

But I pulled myself together and applied the thinking Dan had just demonstrated to us, and it got better–yet another portrait of Becky.  (For a few earlier portraits of Becky, see my blog titled “Becky”.  On his last go-round, he complimented me mildly, saying “nice job” as he left my station for another, and I have stored that memory in the place where I keep similarly encouraging statements, a place that I revisit whenever I think this whole striving to be great is just a foolish pipe dream.

umpteenth portrait of Rebecca

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.

Catching the Odd Perspective

Posted by Aline on

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:

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.

The Week of “Super Storm”

Posted by Aline on

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.

Waiting for the Roof to Blow Off

Posted by Aline on

Hurricane Sandy is on her (his?) way and I need a new roof.  Fingers crossed.

But so far, the wind is not even moderately scary.  People have lost power though.  Peculiar.  I am sitting pretty with my permanent generator, installed last year after the surprise October snowstorm.  After I finish my blog, I get to clean my palette in readiness for the Tuesday life group tomorrow, instead of my usual Monday bridge game.  Bridge is cancelled because of the storm.  Many have advised me to cancel this meeting of the Tuesday life group, but I am waiting to see if it’s going to that bad in the morning.  I’m almost hoping it will be bad–I could use an unplanned for day off.  Almost.  Falling behind doesn’t help in the long run.

Since last week I didn’t post any of my new nudes or portraits, I have twice as much inventory this week.  The choices aren’t easy.  None are perfect, but each has something I am proud of.  So that will be my theme this week:  proud parts.  No, that doesn’t sound right.  Part of which I am Proud.

Sitting Tall

I struggled most with the arms, and finally got one down but ran out of time.  The part I like is the head.  There is a resemblance.  I think the hands could have been better articulated, but I got a good start on them.

Occupier

In this charcoal drawing, I like the different textures I tried out on the chair and the background.  Also, the big toe.  And the resemblence isn’t bad either.

Sitting Solid

The hands are my favorite part of this portrait.  His hands have always been excellent models for me.  I also like the face.

Finding Flight

For a change, I am not pleased with the face because it looks too old for this model.  But I like most of the rest of this painting–I like the quality of the paint, the values, the colors.  This little green chair is showing up more often–it’s a good choice for us because it has no arms to block one’s view of the model from the side.

Cheeky

This is my favorite of the two weeks.  I like to draw profiles.  Her face was so shadowed that after getting the profile itself in,  I had to imagine the rest.  I started it as a charcoal drawing on a dull orange paper, but added a few pastels (yellow, pink and rust) to bring this drawing closer to being a painting.

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;  for a few more days only at the Pantano Gallery in the Shapiro Library at Southern NH University and at the Derry Public Library; at the law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.  And coming soon:  at the Soo Rye Art Gallery in Rye NH; the opening reception is Saturday, November 10, 5-8.  Also, if you want to plan ahead, a 2-day show  of unframed works at Adrienne’s studio in Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial Ave., Manchester, NH; the artwork will be priced no higher than $150.

The Wall of Nudes

Posted by Aline on

I received a request, in response to last week’s blog, for a picture of my Wall of Nudes before I dismantled it all.  I agreed to comply, but before I could photograph it for posterity, I felt obliged to try for some semblance of order.  Not perfect order, as you will see, but a little bit more coherent than the crazy-quilt effect suffered by my bridge players.  I filled all the gaps at least, which produces a display of nudity even more overwhelming than the original.  You are fortunate not to have to experience this in the flesh.  (forgive me, pun intended)

I kept out of photo range all of my paintings by Others.  The effect is chaotic enough without introducing totally dissimilar artworks.  Plus, I would have felt obliged to identify all of them, which would make for a cumbersome blog entry.  However, having decided to devote this blog to the Wall of Nudes, I thought I might as well include other nooks and crannies of that room and an adjoining one, the Yellow Room.  We tend to name rooms by their predominant color, rather than by their purpose.  Purposes of rooms in my house tend to change over time.  The Wall of Nudes is in a room formerly known as the Pink Room, for its carpet.  The carpet is gone, but I still refer to it as the Pink Room.  Others call it the Striped Room (for the stripes painted on the wall).  As far as purpose, the Pink Room currently serves as Gallery, Entertainment Room (TV, etc), Pet Dwelling (one dog and a bunny).   I suppose it is, in modern parlance, a Family Room.  This family, however,  consists of me, the dog and the bunny.  (My granddaughter, who loves upstairs, has her own fancier TV and does not join us in the Pink Room for any purpose other than a meet up with the dog.  (Her dog.)

The Yellow Room is where I do stuff like stretch canvas, mount canvas onto panels, gesso panels, and frame paintings.  Framing oil paintings is a pretty simple affair, and if you stick to certain standard sizes, you can pop a painting in and out of a frame quick as a . . . well, bunny.  When I began this journey, I would search for and order a specific frame for a specific painting.  Somewhere along the line, the possibility of switching frames dawned upon me.  I began to stock up on standard sizes at sales, and fit them to paintings as needed for exhibits.   At one particularly prolific point of time, I managed to frame and display 81 paintings at one time, finding something appropriate for each one of them in my supply.  Nowadays, my paintings are predominantly 11×14, while I have more 10×12 frames than I can use.  Turns out 10×12 is not a standard size, but I didn’t know that when I ordered a supply of 10×12 panels from RayMar back in 2006.  So for a while there, I was glomming onto 10×12 frames wherever I could find them.  Then, of course, wiser, I stopped painting on 10×12 panels.  Ergo, excess 10×12 frames.  Which led to a wall of 10×12 frames right where I can lay my hands on them, if I ever need them.  Why didn’t someone explain the Facts of Frames to me in the beginning?

I explain all of this ahead of time  in part to whet your appetite, but mostly because I have little confidence that you would read it after the slide show.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

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 Pantano Gallery in the Shapiro Library at Southern NH University; at the Derry Public Library; at the law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

Weary of nudes?

Posted by Aline on

When Londonderry Arts Council decided to take the plunge and allow nude images to be exhibited at their annual “Art on the Common”, an outdoor art show to be visited by regular folk and their innocent, sheltered children, I threw caution to the winds and signed up.  In order to show my nudes, I had to mount and frame them.  Big effort, but more significantly, big expense.  After the one-day show, I had about 25 paintings of nudes, many of them in new frames purchased for the occasion.  What to do with all those riches?  Hang them up, of course.  I have one room in my house pretty much covered from ceiling to floor by artwork, most of it my artwork.  I took down all of my artwork, and replaced those pieces with my nudes.  When you walk into that room now, you are pretty much overwhelmed by the beauty of the naked body.  It’s a bit too much, even for me.  That room is where I host the weekly bridge game, and this week was the first time my bridge players had seen the room in its reborn splendor.  I allowed as how the display was too much, and was rewarded with this telling remark:  “I’d say you got that down — you don’t need to do any more.”

Need vs. want.  I am an addict.  I spend so much time in a week working on my little studies of nudes that I have not made a lot effort to get outside and paint landscapes, or put in some time on my large studio project.  Between my Saturday group, my Tuesday group, my Tuesday night class, my Friday morning workshop, and my Sunday group, I currently probably have more opportunities for life drawing and painting than practically anyone else has ever had since the beginning of modern times (by which I mean the 20th and 21st centuries).  The ability to admit this may be my first step back on the pathway to normalcy.  Or not.

I think I will take down most of the nudes gracing my walls, but I can’t stop myself when it comes to the drawing and painting part.

Sometimes I get distracted by the face.  The ability to paint or draw portraits is important to me.  I keep thinking that if I just keep trying, I will eventually learn how to capture the elusive likeness, and when that happens, only after that happens, I can start to apply some Art to the likeness.  And that thought has led me to another breakthrough insight into modern art, at least the kind of modern art which represents a depiction of something.  The depiction of something with paint or whatever other medium can range from photographic to practically abstract.  The purely photographic requires a great deal of skill and patience.  But it’s doable, given time, talent and determination.  The other end of the spectrum is largely inspirational.  The amazement it engenders in the beholder is something more rarefied than mere appreciation of skill.  That is not to say that both appreciations cannot be embodied in a single work of art.  Sargent, say.  Or my latest hero, Eric Aho, an abstract landscape artist.  Also, see  Antonio Lopez  Garcia , a realist of inspired genius.  Here is one of my favorite works by Garcia:

Sink and Mirror, by Antonio Lopez Garcia

An artist who creates amazing, inspired art is gifted with more than mere talent for drawing and painting.  He (or she) is gifted with genius.  I suppose it is my hope that somewhere hidden inside me is a spark of genius, if only I can find it.  And that’s why I can’t stop drawing and painting nudes.  It’s my pathway.  To destinations unknown.

So, speaking of which, here are SOME of the nudes of the past week, one of which is a portrait:

Figure in Charcoal

This young gentleman is a new, inexperienced model.  I hope we see him again.  In addition to the full figure above, I also drew a pretty accurate portrait, but forgot to photograph it.

Full figure in charcoal

I am starting to misremember when and where I painted what, but I’m pretty sure this charcoal drawing happened in the past week in Adrienne’s studio.  I just can’t figure out how I must have drawn this as well as the portrait below within the same three hours.  I would have skipped over this one but for the breast resting on the ottoman–does it perfectly evoke the soft tissue or could I have done it better?  Doubt is such a demon.

Becky portrait in charcoal

You all know Becky by now.  I thought this was an excellent likeness when I drew it, but now I think I have made her look just a little bit older than she is.

Relaxed

This is a colleague who models for us occasionally so as to defray his cost of participating as an artist.  Artists make the best models.

Long-stemmed rose

Our new long-limbed model.  Drove me crazy as I kept revisiting the question, is her leg (arm, foot, hand) really that long or have I exaggerated it?

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 Pantano Gallery in the Shapiro Library at Southern NH University; at the Derry Public Library; at the law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

Roaa

Posted by Aline on

Pretty in Pink

Roaa is a young (14 or 15) Sudanese girl now living in Manchester.  She is a Muslim, I am told, but lucky for us, not opposed to being painted or photographed.  We have painted two other Sudanese women, but they were not Muslims.  So we felt very honored that Roaa was allowed to pose for us on the last two Sundays.  On the right is my piece as completed that first Sunday, in about two hours.  I had marked off a 9×12 section of canvas from a pad to use as my surface.   Subsequently, I took it to an informal critique, and made a few improvements.  Here is the new, improved version.

Roaa No. 1, finished

The changes were so subtle that they may get lost in the translation to digital photographs.

Covering 9×12 in two hours is a lot easier than covering 16×12, as I was remindedyesterday at our second Sunday with Roaa.  I decided to paint bigger, intending to go for more of a head portrait.  But when she got situated in the light with her hands again cupping each other, I could not resist another half-figure portrait.  Naturally, with the enlargement came complications, and I could not achieve the likeness that I had captured the week before.  I am going to have to find a way to stand (as opposed to sit, as I usually do) for the painting of larger portraits.  When I stand, I can more readily back away to get a better perspective.  Or I must at least remember to use my reducing glass.  The catch is, while I am working, I’m not thinking about whether I need to check my work.  During the process of painting, I may not be “thinking” at all.  So every now and then, I should stop painting and tell myself to think.  So annoying.

Roaa No. 2, in Peach

The wrap that she wore for this sitting was a peach, almost pink, but at the end I decided to lay over some cadmium yellow, from the tube I got from Michael Harding.  It’s so vivid, I love it.  Why do I still call it “peach”?  It’s the color of the insider of a real peach, isn’t it?  Anyway, this is an unfinished portrait, but I’m not going to develop it any further.  Roaa thought it looked more like her mother than herself, and that may be because I got the nose too long.  Again.

In a parallel theme, I am taking a course with Larry Christian at the NH Institute of Art.  It’s the same course that I took  back in 2006 when I first started on this art track, but today  I’m jumping in at an advanced level.  As luck would have it (good luck), nobody in the class is a beginner.  Larry encourages–no, demands— his students to loosen up.  I like to work fast, so it’s kind of liberating for me.  I dug out my compressed charcoal, ready for anything.  Saturday, at SLG, I tried to apply the new thinking, with three pretty different results.  Bet you can’t tell which one took 20 minutes, which took 40 minutes, and which took 50 minutes.

Getting the Angles Right

Out of the Fog and Mist

Blackest Black

But I know you can tell where I used the compressed charcoal!  It’s a bit like finger painting, and it took two days of scrubbing to get the stuff completely off my fingers.  Badge of honor.

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 Pantano Gallery in the Shapiro Library at Southern NH University; at the Derry Public Library; at the law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

Margaret

Posted by Aline on

Last week, Becky was my headliner.  This week, Margaret is the star.  Margaret is another of our regular models.  She met with a terrible mishap last Spring:  While modeling for another group–in a standing pose, she fainted, and crashed from  the model stand onto her jaw, breaking it in three places and damaging 11 teeth.  Young people don’t buy health insurance, and Margaret was just past the age when she could have been included under her parents’ policy.  But you’d never know from her cheerful attitude that the whole traumatic, painful and expensive mess was anything but an adventure.  She even celebrates the scar  under her chin.  So let’s celebrate her this week, and her youthful exuberance that refuses to be bottled up.

The paintings, all painted in the past month, are shown in chronological order.

Figure on the Green Tuffet

Margaret, portrait from the right side

Second portrait of M, left side

We were so happy to see her again, that we have cut her some slack with the talking.  She’s a talker, and even a jaw wired shut could not completely shut her up, according to her dad (as reported by Margaret).  That relatively silent period probably increases the happiness she feels now in being able to talk nonstop.   Stop her we did, eventually, because you just can’t paint a face that is talking.

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 Pantano Gallery in the Shapiro Library at Southern NH University; at the Derry Public Library; at the law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

Becky

Posted by Aline on

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

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:

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.

The Wolfeboro Paintout

Posted by Aline on

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:

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.

Letting down

Posted by Aline on

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

—

Right Corner

—

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:

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.

Prepping for A Show of Nudes

Posted by Aline on

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

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

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

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.

The Clothing Effect

Posted by Aline on

I had always assumed that we draw nude figures because that is most demanding, the most rigorous activity, the conquering of which automatically leads to proficiency with other subject matter.  Logically, it shouldn’t matter what you practice on as long as it has various angles and curves requiring you to measure and fit together.  To reproduce an abstract puzzle  piece would be just as demanding.  Imagine trying to counterfeit a Jackson Pollock.  But, and there is a big BUT . . . our brain lies to us when it sees something familiar.  Continuing along the line of last week’s discussion, I believe painting and drawing nudes as an exercise (not discussing right now what we paint or draw just because we love it) is more demanding than copying abstract shapes and angles because of our precocious brains.  Reproducing abstract shapes would be helpful in gaining the skills necessary to draw the nude figure, but would not prepare you for the lying brain effect.

What about the not so  nude figure?  A new insight was imparted to me this week–the hard way.  First, the background:  Our models wrap themselves in a robe or something similar during their breaks.  Grace  wraps around herself in particularly beautiful lengths of fabric, so, with the permission of the other artists, I asked her to cover herself in her drape while modeling.

Draped Nude

In some ways it was easier to paint folds of fabric instead of belly and breasts, which is what I expected.  What I did not expect was to find out that the drape would throw me off so much when it came to proportioning body parts.  You know what Grace looks like by now, so you can probably identify as well as Grace did herself, the problem:  I made her too tall.

Even though I measured angles and lengths exactly as I always do,  somehow the torso became elongated.  I blame the “clothing” for that.  Something else for me to be on guard against.  This mistake didn’t ruin the painting per se, but if the principal reason for painting nudes is to teach oneself accurate observation, I have to give myself a failing grade.

I should remark on the fuzzy edges.  The edges were sharp originally, but I wanted to de-emphasize the ottoman she was sitting on, so I fuzzed them up, and then one thing led to another, until I pretty much fuzzed up her entire body, except the face.  So the interior spaces, which includes the face and the drape, appear clearly, which the outside edges fade into the background.  I think the effect is interesting.

I fared better with last Tuesday’s session.  For our first time this summer, we had a male model, and it was lovely to have him.

Seated male nude, leaning on pole

The long stick that he uses as a prop, literally, becomes, for the artist, a measuring rod.  I build the body against the angle of that stick.  You may note the introduction of a new piece of furniture in both of the paintings today–an ovoid wooden ottoman.

You might have noticed a bit more oomph in my colors this week.  If so, I would like to give credit to Michael Harding.  Michael Harding makes a line of oil paint bearing his name, and I met him a few weeks ago  in an event organized by our plein air leader, Sharon Allen.  Michael demonstrated his paints and handed out a sample tube to each of us, and I promptly went online to Dick Blick ordered four more tubes.  Since I was already pretty well stocked in my primary colors, I bought an orange, magenta, terra verte (green) and red umber.   The green is transparent, to be used as a tint for other colors.  The others are fierce and I have especially fallen for the red umber.

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 Epsom Public Library in Epsom; at the Bedford Public Library, in Bedford; at the law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

Deception

Posted by Aline on

Yesterday’s painting, part still life, part breathing life, represents a bit of a change of pace.  I requested a view of the model’s back because I wanted to concentrate on larger shapes, more subtle changes in value.  I didn’t really intend to get hung up on the decorative pillows and drapes, but I can’t help myself.  To my eye, those pillows now look exactly like the real thing, even though I suggested only their basic characteristics.  It doesn’t take much information from the eye to translate a form into something the brain recognizes.  That ability of the brain to glom onto something and make sense of it is what enables a certain colleague of mine to see elves and monkeys in just about any painting of shrubbery or clouds.  That ability might also be the thing that gets in the way of accuracy when you really need it, as when you are painting a portrait.  “That’s it, you got that!”  the brain exclaims, but it’s just not trustworthy.

The comparison  of my reclining nude to the Ingres “Odalisque” is inevitable–well, I like to think it’s inevitable.  Comparing my work to Ingres’ is a little bit of . . . is “hubris” the correct word?  What the hell, let’s do it anyway:

La Grande Odalisque by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Much has been made of the anatomical distortions in Ingres’ figure.  Ingres is one of the foremost figure artists of all time, so he didn’t make anatomical mistakes.  He exaggerated, on purpose, the length of her torso and right arm.   And it works, if  you don’t think about it too hard.

My model’s back was almost as smooth as Odalisque’s, but I took pains to include as much nuance as was available.  I’m now thinking some of it is overstated.  I have to keep reminding myself, it doesn’t take much of a change in value or color to get the point across, not with the brain of my viewer zeroing in on the point with great efficiency.

In my Tuesday Life Group, the pose was a carryover from the week before. (One of our artists needed two sessions to work on her painting.)  So I moved to a different part of the room, one I usually avoid.  As a result I suffered from glare from  the sunlit windows  combined with insufficient light on my canvas.  Add to that the fact that my new lens in my right eye does not focus as well as the old one, cloudy though the old one was.  With so many visual handicaps, you’d expect me to strike out on this one altogether.

African Queen

Apart from one yellow breast and one red one, there’s not much I want to change.  Is good vision overrated?  No.  I worked hard to compensate for the poor conditions:  I wore a hat with a brim that I could pull down to shield my eyes from the glare from the windows, and I would bring the painting in close to my eye when I needed to be able to see what I was doing (putting the lights in her eyes, for example. or the highlights on the earrings).  [Footnote: My left is the distance eye, which I use to see the model, whereas the right eye, is the near eye, which I use to see what I am painting.  It was the right eye that got a new lens.]

Seeing what you are doing in fine detail is not important most of the time, unless you are a classical artist.  (Like Ingres).  By the way, this is a pretty good likeness, my untrustworthy brain thinks.  And how about those earrings!  I so loved painting the earrings, which required a bit of skill, and the headband, which required no skill at all.   I love being able to put a stroke of paint on a spot and having it pop right in place and speak its nature.  Obedient.

I want to record herewith an “improvement” made to another painting.  I was bothered by the highlights on her eyelids, and when a friend confessed that the highlights bothered her too, I fixed them.  Here is the before and after.

On the brown leather sofa (BEFORE)

AFTER

Less is more when it comes to values.  I tend to overdo the highlights, because that’s what I see–the highlight on dark skin is almost blindingly white, like light bouncing off a glass.  In a painting, however, such bright highlights look strange.  Or, perhaps, this exemplifies another deception, eye-brain-wise:  those highlights were never as bright as I think I see them, they just looked bright by contrast with the surrounding color.  And it illustrates another truth–sometimes you need to separate the painting from the live subject of a painting in order to see and correct the values.

So to sum up this week’s theme:  Beware of  deceiving yourself, but take advantage of your viewers’ willingness to see what you want them to see.

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 Epsom Public Library in Epsom; at the Bedford Public Library, in Bedford; at the law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

Jewel Tones

Posted by Aline on

Reclining Nude, Green Drape

I didn’t have to think too long before coming up with this week’s caption, “Jewel Tones”.  Any buyer of women’s clothing knows what “jewel tones” means.  It means, for the rest of you, saturated color.  At least, it means that to me.  I didn’t look it up.  It’s one of those intuitive things, primarily enjoyed by women, which as it turns out is singularly appropriate this week.  You’ll see.

My first example has the turquoise green, with which I drew my image so as to force some green into the skin tones.  My second image depicts some actual jewels.  And my third goes all the way out there in jewel-tone-land, and I love it best.

Girl on Green Drape is another study in my quest to find the colors of black (so-called) skin.  My favorite part of this painting is her head, with perhaps the jewelry in close second place.  One of my mates (in the Brit sense of chum) declared the cheek color “authentic” and the earring and necklace “unbelievable”, by which I think he meant, totally believable.  I have been doing a pretty good job with heads lately, even as I focus all my discussion on skin tones.  I have figured out that, when it comes to heads, less is more.  The secret is placement.  All you have to do is get a stroke of the right paint in the right place and voila, it looks like something!  Leave it for a bit, then go back and analyze what will make it better, and apply that stroke.  And so on.  Until you can’t think of any way to make it better.  So now everyone can go out and do it!

I finished the painting that I dreamed up for another WCA themed exhibit.  I really racked the old bean for this one.  Googled the theme, for starters.  “Add Women and Stir.”  It means, I gather, that getting women involved in politics and business and such will lead to world peace and a healthy environment.  Good idea.  However, you must have noticed that I am not disposed to paint ideas.  Conceptual art, and what I call message art, just does not appeal to me.  But I am a member of the WCA (Women’s Caucus for Art), actually on the Board of Directors, and I also like to participate in exhibits.  It’s a stretch for me, so it’s a good thing.  All stretching is good.

This will be the third concept piece I have done for the sake of a WCA exhibit.  (For most other exhibits, I have been able to shoehorn existing paintings into the themes.)  I painted the nude brown fairy in the Iris for “Flowers, Interpreted”  (see it here) in order to sneak a nude into an exhibit–hard to do around here.  I did “Starry, Starry Night” for “On Target” (which by the way was selected for a newspaper article on the show).

So here’s my entry into “Add Women and Stir”:

Grandma’s Jewels

Do you get it?  Old woman sighing over the hope represented by the button for the Equal Rights Amendment, which never did garner the requisite number of states to ratify it and make it part of the U.S. Constitution.   She is going through her jewelry box (costume jewelry–but still in line with today’s jewelry theme),  selecting pieces to give to her grandchild (probably a girl, but maybe not), and comes across that old ERA button.

Last month I was despairing over this piece, and thought I might have to start over.  Revisit my wailing here, where I argue that regardless of outcome, no painting is a waste of time.  But instead I painted out the parts I didn’t like and found some photographic references online to guide me in the repainting of those parts.  Does the old woman look like Queen Elizabeth to you?   I devoutly hope not.

The “Add Women and Stir” exhibit is going to be juried by Sarah Chafee of the McGowan Gallery in Concord, even though the exhibit itself is headed to the Newport Public Library.   (Usually somebody affiliated with the exhibit site juries the entries.)  Notwithstanding all the agony of producing this painting for this exhibit, it might not be accepted.   Will I feel stupid?   A little, but it’s a risk I took on willingly, for the sake of a project that stretched me.  As I said before, nothing is a waste of time.

My final jewel today is from yesterday, still so wet that the camera caught glints of light all over the place.   I started removing them one by one with my iPhoto blemish removal tool, but it was too tedious.  You will be able to respond to the jewel tones anyway.

The Color Purple (Standing Nude against Purple Background)

With this painting I felt for the first time as if I had got beyond the fretting over black skin tones and had just painted.   I stopped being literal.  It’s probably a truism, but you start this artistic journey by being literal, by trying to replicate exactly what you see.  Somewhere along the way,  you let reality go and paint what you feel, smell, taste as well.  Maybe even hearing comes into it, since we play music during our sessions with the model.  Amy Winehouse yesterday– I’m catching up with the current music scene, thanks to my fellow artists.  Followed by Eric Satie.  I couldn’t say which one wrought the bigger influence on this painting.  It must be the combination:  Winehouse-Satie.  Not quite as impressive as a Joplin-Satie combo would have been, but right up 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 Epsom Public Library in Epsom; at the Bedford Public Library, in Bedford; at the law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

The color black

Posted by Aline on

It’s a paradox.  Scientifically, black is empty of color, and white, the color of light, contains all the colors. But an artist wishing to paint the color black selects all of the darkest colors on his/her palette and mixes them together.  It’s a  delicate balance to keep one of the original colors from dominating, but done right, it creates black.  So there are two kinds of black–the kind that is devoid of color, and the kind that contains all the colors.

Lately, I have been talking about painting all the colors I can find in Caucasian skin.  “White” skin.  More accurately, light skin.  Today I have two new paintings of a “black” model.  More accurately, a really dark-skinned model.  Not my first really dark skin, by any means, but my first while consciously searching for more color in skin tones.  I honestly don’t know, as I put this blog together, whether being color-conscious has made any difference.

My very first portrait class, a few years ago, utilized a black model, but I don’t have a photo of that and besides, we don’t need to go back that far, surely.  Here is one I painted last fall or spring from a life drawing (so I was imagining the color):

Proud (Nude Seated on Pedestal)

From the looks of it, I used a lot of burnt sienna and ochre.

Here is a portrait from life done last spring:

Sabrin in the Gold Chair

Looks like I started with burnt umber.  Sabrin’s arm photographed grayer than the actual painting, so the color here is not quite as awful as it looks.  I used a lot of purple here.

Here is a head shot of the same model:

Girl in the Red Turban

I was in such a hurry–the model was very late to arrive, that my choice of colors here must have been pure instinct, based on what I saw.  Let it be acknowledged, however, that the model’s  skin was quite a dark brown, not caramel brown.

Then, just a few weeks ago, I posted this painting of Grace in the yellow chair, which I believe is my first live painting of her.  Apparently, I found some red in her.

A Nude Study in Brown, Mustard Yellow and Lime Green

All of that was done without much thought.  Some thought, just not as much as I have been wallowing in lately.  Gosh, I hope that’s a sign I am becoming a better artist–more time to wallow in thought.

I’m skipping over the next two–one because of the hot pink drape that I hated, and the other because I hated the whole thing (although I have not  yet destroyed it).  If you feel compelled to check it out, the hot pink drape was two weeks ago, and all-bad one here.

Finally, drum roll please, here are the two from last week:

The red hairband (Nude Reclining on Blue Stand)

Nude, On the brown leather sofa

I hope you can tell which was the earlier, because I tackled the second one with even more resolve to find colors other than brown.  One problem I have with the darker, brown base is that the color tends to gray down if you just add white, like that arm in Sabrin.  Lighter colors seem easier to keep pure.  No, that’s just an excuse.  The truth is, I couldn’t see any colors that were not variations of brown.  Mostly warm browns.  My model said other people have claimed that they see blue in her skin.  Not me.  Maybe some navy blue in the shadows.  Maybe some hint of sky blue in the highlights (as I found on the Girl in the Red Headdress).  Maybe purple in the shadows.  But no aquas, no greens.

I am loving the brown sofa painting, regardless of color issue–the pose and composition are very pleasing.  Almost lost the foot, but managed to rescue it by foreshortening the lower limb.  Also, I discovered, with my new eye (cataract removed two weeks ago), that the blue drape reflected the brown of Grace’s skin, which was kind of startling.  Note that the brown leather sofa is a match to the brown leather recliner.  If we keep this up,  you are going to become familiar with every piece of furniture in Adrienne and Heather’s studio.

Grace is back on deck this Tuesday.  Maybe I should start by drawing her figure in green or aqua, instead of burnt sienna, just to see what effect it has.   Not kidding.

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 Epsom Public Library in Epsom; at the Bedford Public Library, in Bedford; at the law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

Skin, Colors of

Posted by Aline on

Back in the Brown Recliner (Nude Seated in Recliner)

By now you should be aware, I have been caught up in an activity that could be headlined: Live! Nudes!  Good thing I am a little old lady with white hair, or regular people might suspect something irregular is going on.  This luxury of painting live nudes (as opposed to drawing) has come my way fairly  recently, thanks to the generosity of a fellow artist, Adrienne Silversmith, who lends her studio (nominal fee) for my Tuesday Group, and runs her own group on Sundays.  It was at Adrienne’s Sunday sessions last Spring that I first embarked on painting, rather than drawing, the models.  Why?  Because Adrienne had the model holding the same pose, not just for the 3-hour session, but for multiple successive sessions.  (I didn’t take advantage of the multiple sessions to continue a painting over more than one session–instead I made a series of  four paintings of “The Pose”.)

It was this simple formatting decision that opened the door for my fantastic voyage into live nude painting.  Most life drawing sessions are broken up into segments of quick poses, slightly less quick poses, and longer (1 hour) poses.  The quick poses get you warmed up, and challenge you with positions that a model could not physically hold for longer than 1 or 5 minutes.  Trying to paint short poses can be frustrating, although I did do it once when I had only painting supplies with me.

In the course of these few months of live nude painting, plus the portraits class that I took with Cameron Bennett, I have learned a few things about painting skin tones.  (Caucasian skin tones, that is.  I feel I am still in the experimental stage with darker skins.)

Before I had live nudes to paint, I painted them from drawings that I had made during our Saturday life group.  My very first one, a few years ago, came out all harsh in reds and blues, and I was disappointed in it. It went away to that special place reserved for things to do over, or paint over.  Then, after a long hiatus, I brought it out again, and painted over it with different colors.

From a Charcoal Drawing, a Painting of a Nude Woman

I may have tried a set of pre-mixed colors put together by Howard Sanden.  Sanden is one of the top portraitists of our time, and he had honed his skin-tone expertise to the point where he premixed his skin-tone colors.   Then he decided to sell those premixed colors, and I won a set on eBay.  I found them harder to use than mixing my own colors.  They interrupted my rhythm.  Figuring out how to use them added a layer of complication.  They limited my colors as well.   I wasn’t aware of that shortcoming at the time, but as you can see, I invented skin tones even here that were not to be found in Sanden’s palette.

When I was working from a black and white drawing, I had to invent my colors.  A lot of lavender shows up in my shadows there–probably because, as a plein air landscape painter, lavender shadows were what I was used to.  In a live model, lavender is not much there.  Maybe it depends on the model–most of my best paintings feature Rebecca, and her shadows can be red,  green, gray, red, and ochre, pink; and purple when I wanted it really dark.  For example:

(“In the Artist’s Studio”, my still favorite nude painting, which I keep finding excuses to show.)

So I have stopped worrying about skin tones per se. Instead, I try to evaluate my paintings on the basis of  value, and just enjoy the color.  Here and there I will throw in a few patches of traditional skin color, merely as a reference point for the viewer.  “Here’s what this skin looks like in the light.”

“Back in the Brown Recliner”, shown at the top of the blog, is my latest, from last Tuesday.  We started a about 20 minutes late, so I had to finish up the painting at home, which is kind of interesting in itself.  I seem to be on a clock of three hours, start to finish.  I don’t consciously pace myself to finish within three hours–it just happens.  Except last Tuesday, but that was because we spent a lot of extra time figuring out where and how we wanted our model to pose.

What we ended up with was a pose practically identical the “The Pose”–that Sunday pose held by the same model in the brown recliner for four weeks in succession.  But this time I had a different angle on it.   Here is the No. 4 painting in that original series.

The Pose, No4 (Nude Woman in Brown Recliner

I have 2 photos of this painting, taken a week apart.  Here is the other one.

The Pose, No. 4, v. 2 (Nude Woman in a Brown Recliner)

The colors are so different, it’s disturbing.   I believe the first one is more accurate.  Perhaps it goes to show how it’s not the color of skin, it’s the values and the heat that make or break a nude painting.  Well, any painting, really; it’s just more obvious with nudes.  It also goes to show that you can’t trust a photograph to convey the true beauty of a painting.

By the way, I’m posting larger versions of some of my paintings because I lately realized that you cannot click on an image to enlarge it.  That must have been something I remember from the iWeb days.  I hope you enjoy seeing the brush strokes up close.  I see you lose the title though.  I guess nothing’s perfect.

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 Epsom Public Library in Epsom; at the Bedford Public Library, in Bedford; and at her studio by appointment.

Painting Luscious, or Painting with your Tastebuds

Posted by Aline on

There’s nothing like oil paint to please the senses.  My senses, at least.  Not that one wants to smear it all over one’s body, although that sometimes happens when one least expects it, but it just looks sensuous.  I concede that a good pastel painting can look as if it had been created by oil paints .  After all, the same pigments form the bases of oils, pastels, and watercolors.  But for sheer yummy lusciousness, however, there’s nothing like oils.   I love the look of wet oil paint in particular.  The glossiness of it.  You never get that with pastels or watercolor.  Or, dare I say, with acrylic?

To keep that glossy look of wet paint, I have been using a medium that includes Liquin.  It works so well that recently when I took a painting in to be scanned for reproductions, there was a concern that the shine would interfere with the scan.  It didn’t, thank goodness.

I bring this up today because the painting I was working on Sunday sings to me like a ripe peach.  I don’t know how else to describe it.

Study in Reds (Nude seated on pillows)

Although it might not come through on the computer screen, every area of this painting is permeated with red.  I was in a red mood, I guess.

I might have been teetering on the edge of another breakthrough (yes, yet another breakthrough):  this one, out of realism and into something different–a realm where seeing is only one of the engaged senses.  Feeling, smelling, hearing, even tasting seem to figure in the experience.   Notice  the words I chose above–singing peaches, luscious paint.  “Peaches” evokes tasting and smelling.  “Singing” evokes hearing and feeling. Touching– through the brush–that IS painting.   I think maybe, just maybe, this ability of a work of art to evoke more than a visual response is what makes art  important to our civilization.

Lest you think I am going all weird and mystical on you, let me reassure you that I have not gone off the deep end or found religion.  But I like my new hypothesis:  only when you are able to let go of the visual rules for creating art (I mean, not break the rules, but LET GO) and allow your  nonvisual senses to manifest themselves in a painting, only then are you making good art.  Let me be clear–it’s not about breaking any rules; you may, or you may not.  However many rules may underpin a great work of art, they don’t control a great work of art.  Think Van Gogh.

Now that I’ve got some rules down pat, I will try to let them slide in favor of putting my other senses in charge.  I will at least be thinking about doing that.

My last two Tuesday paintings are more down to earth:

The Last of the Hot Pink Drape (Nude Woman Lying on pink-draped stand)

The title means:  no way am I allowing that drape in a future session!  You’d think that I’d like hot pink, given my fondness for reds.   But  this shade of hot pink was too intimidating, too overpowering.  I couldn’t see color anywhere else.  This painting could have been pretty good if I had only solved the problem of color and background.  The lines of the figure should be the story here, not all that distracting pink and bilious background.  Might be worth fixing.  In my studio where no hot pink is allowed.

Fletch, Thinking? (Nude Man seated on blue-draped block)

I could have called this a “Study in Complementary Colors.”  (blue and orange)  Reading or sharing my distress over the hot pink drape of the week before, Fletch, who most of the time is one of us artists, arrived with his own blue drape.  He’s also good at moving the model stand and getting the overhead fans to work.  Full service model!  For most of the session, his left foot was not visible–it  had sunk deep into the three pillows that he was resting it on.   It didn’t look right, having his leg end at the ankle, so at the end we substituted a trash can for the pillows just so that I could get a view of the leg terminating in a proper foot.  (One of the pillows got obliterated as well–who needs that detail when you have a lovely foot to admire?)

Mark the date:  September 8.  On this day the Town of Londonderry NH is doing a very courageous thing:  it is allowing depictions of the nude figure in its annual Art on the Common show.  The special theme of the show is “Bare Essentials”.  Every nude must be juried into the show in order to screen out anything deemed too . . . pornographic?  I am so hoping that some of my nudes will be acceptable to the censors.  But whatever, even if my nudes don’t make it, this is monumental! — this welcoming of nudes in a venue to be frequented by innocent young children whose eyes have never beheld such a thing before, presumably.  PLEASE support Londonderry’s Art in the Common 2012 with your enthusiastic attendance.
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.

Not a Waste of Time

Posted by Aline on

I got so immersed in what I was doing last weekend that I totally forgot about documenting something for my blog.  That’s a good thing, right?  I was watching TV (of course) last night, on BBC America, a new show called “2012”.  The characters are responsible for putting on the London Olympics.  One of them was keeping a video blog, following her progress in getting in shape to run the marathon at the Olympics.   Her blog and the training was intended to demonstrate support and enthusiasm, etc. for the Olympics, but she inadvertently divulged some inside information, which promised to land her in hot water, so she ordered the whole blog removed from the web.  (Hope you were able to follow all those clauses–we sometimes can’t resist a good long compound sentence!)  Then she explained her action to the omnipresent interviewer something like this (I didn’t take notes so please just take this as the message my brain received, not necessarily the message that was directed to my brain):  “Well I was only keeping the blog up to talk about my training for the marathon, and I was only training for the marathon to have something to put in the blog.”  Loved that.  The rest of the show is pretty good, too.  I so admire the way the Brits serve up humor–gently.  But to get back to the point–I am glad that I am not (yet) painting merely in order to have something for the blog.

Such a build up.  Now for the letdown.  My big project of the weekend is not fit for public eyes.  It may never be publishable, but I don’t feel my time was wasted.  I am working toward a concept piece in order to qualify for another WCA show, this one called “Add Women and Stir”.  I searched among all my available artworks for something to shoehorn into that theme–that is how I usually match painting to show–but nothing even remotely qualified.  So I researched the phrase ( meaning, I “googled” it), free-associated words, tried out some ideas, and finally came up with a concept that I like.  It’s the kind of concept that, if it does not make it into this show, will just sit around gathering dust for the next hundred years.  Actually, that will happen even if it does make it into the show.  But nevertheless, I firmly believe it is NOT A WASTE OF TIME.

Why not?  Because it forces me to stretch, probably beyond my ability; because it exercises my imagination; and because it gives me a goal to work toward in this summer where for one reason or another I am not painting much outside.  So what if the result of all this imagining and stretching is amateurish!  Let’s regard it as a preparatory study.  Some parts of it are OK–the parts where I had something real to look at:

Jewelry Box

My old satin and velvet jewelry box, which I have owned since I was a teenager, looks an awful lot like that.

ERA YES

The parts that I had to conceive of in my imagination?  Not so good.  Even with all my practicing with TV heads, I cannot paint a believable head out of pure imagination.  Today, therefore, I  searched the web for models to inform my ultimate vision.  I have latched onto an image of Queen Elizabeth that I look forward to trying out.  Already, though, I have learned a lot by doing what I only knew in theory before.  I now understand why somebody as accomplished as John Singer Sargent was making sketches of the murals in the Boston Public Library, trying out different positions of the figures, different gestures of the fingers on the reins, before he attempted to paint on the walls.  So should I feel like an idiot for failing to produce a masterpiece at this point in my endeavor?  No, but I should feel like an idiot for thinking I could just pop out a decent representation of my concept in one weekend’s time.

Meanwhile, I have been saving up some nudes to share with you.  Now seems like a good time to do that.

Study in Brown, Mustard Yellow and Lime Green (Seated Nude Woman)

“Study in Brown, etc.” goes back to before our Tuesday sessions got to be so popular that we could not afford to hide the back of the model in either this arm chair or the brown leather recliner that I got so good at painting.

Palm Study (Nude seated on pink draped block)

Feeling a little desperate for something different in a pose, we came up with “Palm Study”.  This model’s posture is always so perfect that just to get her to look down was something.

Last is the best since “In the Artist’s Studio”:

Back in the Artist’s Studio (Nude Leaning on block)

Same model, same studio, same pillow–different pose, different background.  Hence the title.  I hope you enjoy it!

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.

What I Learned This Week

Posted by Aline on

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.

Confessions of a TV Addict

Posted by Aline on

Conventional Wisdom would have it that no artist should be wasting her time watching TV.   TV can be a terrible time-waster for anybody, not just for artists.  Not watching TV has become, however, an article of faith for those artists who are into preaching to other artists.  Most of the articles of faith are true enough, and it’s good to be reminded from time to time to find your own style, treat  your collectors well, and always be working on improving your art.  But I can’t give up TV (or the movies that I use a TV set to view).  I just don’t understand those people who complain there is nothing worth watching on TV.  (For those people, not watching TV is no sacrifice on the altar of Art anyway, so they have no business preaching to people like me who enjoy the dramas and documentaries available on television.)  I enjoy a whole host of programs, mostly dramas and documentaries.  I even get into some of the “reality” shows -for example, “Too Cute” on Animal Planet is not to be missed!  I also believe an artist should not cloister herself from what is going on the the Real World but has a duty to keep informed on current events.  The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert are “must” viewing for me.

As much as I disagree with those sermons about demon TV,  I do feel guilt over my addiction, and I confess as often as possible, hoping to purge the guilt. One, maybe even two, earlier blogs make the same confession, and I still have not repented.

Thanks to my DVR, however, I have found a better method to assuage my guilt.  I keep a sketchpad, pencils and eraser nearby. It adds about an hour to my viewing time, but on a good night I will have two well-developed drawings at the end. I wait until something on the screen catches my artist’s eye, pause the program, work on my drawing as long as necessary, and then resume the program or go to bed, depending on the hour.  (Obviously, I watch TV alone.  Couldn’t do this otherwise.)  None of these drawings will end up in a museum, but it’s great practice that I would not be getting if I were reading a book.  (Books are apparently approved time-wasters, regardless of the subject matter.)

Here are 52 images, some containing more than one drawing, dating from about mid March to last night.  I hope they demonstrate progressively better drawing.  I have numbered them in roughly chronological order, and intend this slide show to set them before your eyes in that same order, but who knows?

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I think –I hope–you might notice that I am getting more nuance into facial muscles, and am developing the drawings to a finer conclusion.  I am also getting more stubborn about the likeness, not giving up until it looks right.

Now when I sit down to watch TV, I am looking forward more to the drawing activity than to the TV watching non activity.  I notice a dearth of children’s faces, so I will be concentrating on them in the future.  And more animals.  Love animals, but it’s hard to demonstrate rigorous likenesses with animals, so not so much of a challenge.  I hope you responded to  the eyes of the lion, though.

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.

Imagination

Posted by Aline on

Last Thursday I attended the opening reception for an exhibit of the landscapes of Eric Aho at the Currier Museum.  Really interesting abstracted landscapes.  Eric and the curators presented a slide show during the reception that was SRO.  I was lucky enough to get a choice seat next to Mary McGowan.  Mary founded the McGowan Gallery in Concord, and proudly reported (sounds better than “bragged”, doesn’t it?) that she had exhibited some of Eric’s paintings back in the day.  (Mary has recently retired from the Gallery, passing on the job of discovering new talent in the New England region to Sarah Chafee.)    We, Mary and I, being of similar age, conferred over the idea of taking up painting at an advanced age.  A sensitive subject for me.

Mary said she had always liked to paint, but would not take it up in retirement.  Her eye was too good.   “My eye is better than my hand.”  She meant she would be so hypercritical of her own work that she would not be able to enjoy the results.

That got me thinking.  Do mediocre painters paint mediocre pictures because they don’t see what’s mediocre about them?  Is the reason I am not churning out masterpiece after masterpiece that my eye is deficient?  No, I think I know what’s good and what’s bad.

So is the problem technical–a lack of skill–the hand, as Mary would put it?  Skill is not something that comes and goes.  It grows, or it declines, and yes, you can have a bad day, but once you learn how to apply  paint to a surface, to achieve a certain effect, you have the “hand”.

The critical element is something I used to call “inspiration”, but earlier that day I had watched a lecture online, broadcast from the Cornell University alumni reunion that was I skipping, on the subject of imagination–the importance of imagination to the advancement of the human race.  Who first realized the value of fire?  Who first thought of using a wheel to move heavy objects?  The realization of fire, the concept of a wheel, each required the thinker to form an image in his mind of the usefulness of such a thing–to imagine something not yet in existence.

Between that lecture and Mary’s casual remark, I came to the conclusion that what makes a great painter is imagination.  Mary’s eye knows a good painting when she sees one.  Her hand could be taught how to achieve what the eye wants to see.  But in order to know what the eye wants to see, imagination is required.

Let’s take Eric Aho, for example.  Landscapes are the most familiar of painting subjects, and the most popular.  A well done landscape takes a fair amount of skill.  Not the greatest amount of skill, but a landscape done by a skilled artist is going to be much better than one done by an unskilled artist.  But this required imagination:

(This reproduction of his webpage constitutes “fair use” under the copyright law.  I hope.)  Art in the 20th and 21st centuries has become all about the idea underlying the work.  Skill is assumed, or even discounted.  Think  Jackson Pollock.  He was not particularly skilled at the painterly underpinnings such as drawing.  But he was fiercely determined to be an artist, and he had imagination.

All this deep thought made me realize that what I have been doing, mostly, in my making of paintings is developing skills.  Every once in a while, an idea trinkles into my head and produces something special, like last week’s “In an Artist’s Studio.”  Repeated here for your convenience and also because I just love to show it off:

In an Artist’s Studio (Nude Woman Reclining)

Acquiring skills is important.  If, last week in the artist’s studio, I had been struggling harder to get the proportions correct and the skin tones plausible, my mind would not have had the luxury of considering the composition, which made all the difference between an exercise and a showable painting.

My regression from that pinnacle continued downhill this week.  I won’t even show you the entire painting.  It will be consigned to the “dust bin,” an antiquated term which seems  more fitting somehow than the trash can.  It contained a few OK parts, which I have cut out for you here.

Head of Nude Woman

Hands of Nude Woman

That was Tuesday.  Sunday I decided to paint a portrait in my three hours with the model–another “exercise”, I guess.

Head of Nude Man

It looks better in person.

Remember my “Iris Interpreted”?  Little brown fairy (Grace again) ensconced in a giant iris.  From  June 16 to  July 21, it will be exhibited as part of the Women’s Caucus for Art “Flowers Interpreted” annual show.  The site of the exhibit is the Epsom Public Library.  There will be an artists’ reception on Friday, June 22, 5 pm to 7 pm.  Come if you can.

A continuing exhibit without reception features seven of my landscapes in the Bedford public library, on the bottom floor, through the month of June. After June 30, one of my paintings, a rather long and tall one called “Enchanted,” will remain hanging there for the summer because it won that privilege by a vote at the annual meeting of the Manchester Artists Association.  Look for the tiny frog near the bottom.  It’s hanging near the children’s book section, so I’m hoping the children pause long enough to delight in the frog.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

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

Link to website: www.paintingsbyaline.com

Breaking Through the Sticky Curtain–Not

Posted by Aline on

In an Artist’s Studio

Last week I mentioned the occasional magic of a painting that seems to complete itself,  all in one session (process known as “premier coup”  or first strike), and contrasted that happy event to my more common process of reworking and fussing over a painting.  Well, Tuesday morning, in the course of my regular Tuesday Life Group,  magic struck.  The result is above.

I long to be able to paint the way John Singer Sargent did.  I don’t mean I want to make paintings that resemble Sargent’s (although I would not turn down such a precious gift); rather I want to be able to place a brush stroke with confidence in just the exact right place for it, and not have to amend the color or value.  Sargent worked like a fiend for many years in order to attain such apparently confident perfection.  But even after he achieved the pinnacle of his brilliance, he continued to practice and try out options before putting paint to surface.   I have heard he sometimes restarted a portrait many (like, 20!) times before finding satisfaction.  So how can I , who have been painting for only six years, and painting people for maybe half that period, complain that about having to try this color, then try that value, and just generally operating in a constant state of experimentation?  Who do I think I am, anyway?  Not John Singer Sargent.

In “The Artist’s Studio”, however, I got a lot of strokes right, plus, perhaps most importantly, an interesting composition. Even the brashness of the spots where the canvas is showing through seems to bear witness to my energy, and pleasure.

In the past, I would have heralded such an accomplishment by proclaiming I had achieved a Breakthrough in my Painter’s Progress (the title of this blog, you know).  I would have expected every painting after the Breakthrough painting to follow in a trajectory of improvement because some kind of veil of ignorance had been lifted–I had seen the light, I knew where to go–finally.  But of course, the trajectory operates more like the stock market, up, up, and  . . . down.  I think of it now as a sticky curtain.  You can push through with great effort, glimpse the other side, once in a while even make some kind of a mark on the other side, but you never quite break contact with that sticky curtain on the other side.  You get sucked back.  Well, I get sucked back.

So I wasn’t surprised when the glow created by “In an Artist’s Studio,” only lasted until Sunday, when I sat down to paint, within three hours, another painting from life.   The Sunday painting is much more accomplished that what I was doing a year ago, even six months ago, and I consider it  a well done exercise.  I am proud of it, proud of my progress.  But glowing?  No.

Sunday Model June 2012

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Library Arts Center in Newport; and at her studio by appointment.

Link to website: www.paintingsbyaline.com

Am I Beating a Dead Horse? Or am I trying to make it stand up and behave?

Posted by Aline on

Once I have started a painting, I will finish it, one way or another.  And when I say “finish”, I mean I make it as good as I can, or I paint it out.  Usually.  But I admit that my best stuff seems to the stuff I have not fussed over, my “premier coup” stuff, my “alla prima” stuff.  Well, that’s great when it works out, but unfortunately, not everything comes out just wonderful in only a few hours.

But a few years ago, at the end of one of his Snow Camp workshops up in Sugar Hill, Stapleton Kearns was finishing up his critique of my first painting of Franconia Notch.  He had a number of suggestions for making it better that I agreed with.  I wanted to implement those suggestions when I got home.  He advised against it.  He said, “Put the painting somewhere where you can observe it, but don’t touch it.”  I think the idea was, in its unreformed state it would better serve as a reminder of my mistakes, so that I don’t repeat them.  But I couldn’t take that advice.  No way could I live with a painting that needed help without helping it.  So I make the changes to that painting that he had suggested and few more that he hadn’t suggested.  (If you want to check it out, follow this link to my webpage with NH plein air paintings–it’s in the first column, about 13 down.)

Nothing I did last week in Bartlett was perfect.  In fact, most of them were far from perfect.  The biggest problem was that uncharacteristic difficulty I was having with the greens.  So I have fussed with all of them.  Now, today, I am going to be able to compare the before to the after, and judge whether it was worth it.  And even if I could not end up with a painting that I am proud of, did I learn something by trying?  At this point, before loading the pictures, I don’t know how I am going to answer that.

Here is the first one, the one that I accidentally dusted with sand and grit:

The effect of sand, dirt and grit

The Saco River in Bartlett

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • The sand and grit did not brush off as easily as that sounds, but I was able to remove most of it without damaging the painting.  The sky required some touching up and is, as a result of inclusions, a little lumpy now.  I also tinkered with all greens.

The second one was the Jackson Falls one.  You’ll notice I put back in a few elements that I had removed before (trees and guard rail), but I put them in much less prominently.

Path at Jackson Falls–Version 1

The Path at Jackson Falls

This painting looks quite charming in person;  maybe you can get an idea of it by enlarging your view of it, which I believe  you can do by clicking on the image.

No. 3 is the railroad bridge with the impossibly green trees.  The actual painting did not look as extreme as the photo, but I still amended the greens.

Lesson in greens

RR Bridge over the Saco River in Crawford Notch

In addition to working on the greens, I added the darks in the lower left corner and in the sand line on the right.  I think that decision had something to do with composition, maybe.  I make my compositional decisions by instinct and thus cannot articulate reasons.  Reason and instinct are opposites, right?

My last effort had been the most successful–Lower Ammonusuc Falls.  But still not perfect.  However, I never intended to to anything to it except make better marks defining my figures, but one thing led to another and virtually every square of it got painted over today.  It is sometimes gratifying to see what the combination of a little bit of memory and a little bit of perspective can produce.

Another kind of green

Lower Ammonusuc Falls 2012

Was any of this useful?  Now that I have been able to examine the Befores next to the Afters, I didn’t ruin anything, and I think I improved all of them.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Library Arts Center in Newport; and at her studio by appointment.

Link to website: www.paintingsbyaline.com

Bartlett May 2012

Posted by Aline on

For the headline this week I had trouble deciding between two stories.  One candidate was Tuesday life drawing, at which I took camera-phone pictures of the output of my fellow artists.  This blog will be more interesting for you and me if it isn’t always about me and my successes and failures.  Not that I would judge another person’s artwork a success or a failure–I don’t pretend to possess any such expertise.  I’m having enough trouble analyzing my own failures.

But how could I not feature the semi-annual Bartlett Artists’ Getaway Weekend?  So Bartlett gets the nod for headline and first pictures, and let’s start out with this:

The meaning of blue

This nest on the porch of the Bartlett Inn is higher than my eyes , but I could still snap a photo of it with my Android smartphone and thus see from the picture what the nest contained.  Such an incredibly vivid blue!  Poor mother robin did not get much sitting done, what with the constant stream of guests flowing in and out.  She sat bravely as long as possible, but would not let me get any closer to her, so I was stuck with the dark shade effect of the bright background on the lens opening.

Mother in attendance

The nest is entwined with a garland Christmas decoration that stayed too long and now now become a celebration of Spring.

I painted only two days, Friday and Saturday, and pumped out a respectable four oils, one in each morning and one for each afternoon.  I struggled with the greens, and only now that I am home and comparing paintings to photographs do I realize that I was not seeing green correctly.  For example, here is one photo of a scene that I painted Saturday morning:

The meaning of green

The photo is a little washed out and  does not do justice to the variety of greens that I saw, but it does point up the intensity, or lack of intensity, of nature compared to what I painted:

Lesson in greens

Ouch!  More yellow, less viridian, please.

This next one was a good idea, poorly executed.  I originally included three trees that I thought were contributing to the original composition, but later I painted them out hoping to improve the focus.

The path beckoning up

The path was the thing I wanted to focus on, and I was harking back to a much larger and more successful painting that I named “The Path Travelled Up”, suggesting that the path in question was the one on which I had hiked up about 1500 feet (as indeed it was–in Alberta; not plein air but from a photo).   This new path intrigued me because it first dipped down and away from me, before zigzagging its way up to the road.  Among the elements I put in and then removed was the guard rail that would have told you about the road.  Methinks now I was a little too ruthless with the painting out bit.  Also yes, you are correct, the blue of the water is too vivid.  By the way, this is Jackson Falls, where the rocks and water provide endless possibilities for painting subjects, but no, I’m painting a path.  Doomed.

Diane Dubreuil, a watercolorist who is SO good, and therefore someone whom I respect greatly, complimented me profusely on the next painting at Lower Ammonusuc Falls (spelling optional), so I will accept her judgement and say this was the best one:

Another kind of green

Believe it or not, the greens are pretty accurate this time.  The color of the green pool was spectacular when the sun was overhead.  The young people arrived when I was almost finished, and I accepted the challenge of including a few of them.   I kept reminding myself how Sargent could plug a distant figure in a landscape with undecipherable  slashes of pigment, and slashes of indecipherable pigment are a good thing to learn.

My first painting of the weekend was pretty good too, but an accident befell. I was using Art Cocoons(TM) to carry my wet panels, and I had left the lid on the ground while I painted.  When we packed up to leave, I grabbed the lid and slammed it on the painting without noticing the sand and grit that had settled in the lid.  Here is that unfortunate painting:

The effect of sand, dirt and grit

Peter Granucci arrived Friday night with his wife Paula, so I asked his advice on what to do about the sandy painting.  He thinks I will be able to brush away the foreign matter after the painting dries.  Happens all the time–especially with plein air painting–that stuff gets stuck in the wet paint.  Usually, it is a bug or two.  One of the artists (Bruce Jones) claimed that he leaves the mosquitoes in and calls them “birds”.

I have to mention and applaud Sharon’s participation.  Sharon Allen, aka Plein Air Gal, is the one person who keeps our plein air group going.  She is being subjected to horrifically debilitating chemo and radiation treatments to back up the removal of a cancerous tonsil.  She refused to miss a Bartlett getaway, though, soldiering through even though she could not speak without pain and had minimal endurance for our 3-hour outings.  She nevertheless produced four paintings, two on the road with Diane and me, and another two from her cabin at the Inn.

Back to Story No. 2, the Tuesday Life Group.  Here are the efforts of four of us (Dee got away before I got the idea of photographing everyone’s work):

Heather’s drawing

Roz’s drawing

Chloe’s drawing

My drawing

You can see in Heather’s and my drawings our effort to get the proportions right, reflecting perhaps the influence of our workshops with Peter Granucci, or perhaps at base reflecting our desire to take workshops with Peter Granucci.   For Chloe, color is the thing.  And Roz is the master (mistress?) of mark-making.  Perhaps we can learn from each other.  In any event, we have fun.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Library Arts Center in Newport; and at her studio by appointment.

Link to website: www.paintingsbyaline.com

Drawing to Perfection

Posted by Aline on

. . . by which I mean, drawing TOWARD perfection.   It may be that technical skill in drawing is not so important in today’s art world, but I believe that it is something every true artist has to work at, at least until she gets inspired to do something so out of the box that drawing skill becomes irrelevant.  (I’m thinking Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, for example.  Jeff Katz?)   I figure that if I work at getting my drawings both beautiful and accurate for another, say, five years, I might then be in a position to move on.  That leaves me plenty of time to be great, provided I live as long as my mother did.  So that’s the Plan.  First:  perfection.  Second, greatness.

This week was a week without painting.  So I plan to unveil a bunch of new TV heads and two drawings from life, all with my stated goal of perfection in mind.  I’ll start with the TV heads.

David Cook, My Favorite American Idol

If you were not watching American Idol four years ago, or the 11th season program last week, you don’t even know who David Cook is, much less what he looks like.  He’s pretty.  But what inspired me to make these two drawing was the interesting attitudes and facial expressions.  (He was singing.  I hope that’s obvious.)

One of my favorite series is The Mentalist, and I think I’m not alone in that.  So you might recognize this portrait:

The Mentalist’s partner

Teresa Lisbon.  I’m sorry, I never learned the name of the actress who plays Lisbon.  This is her expression upon witnessing Patrick Jane’s declaration that he is quitting his job as a consultant for the California Bureau of Investigation.  She’s worried about his mental health.  Does it show?

Heroic Journalist

Heroic Journalist in “The Girl who. . . ” series (Swedish movies)

Character from “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest”

These are two characters from the movie, “The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest”, third in the trilogy that started with “The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo”.  One is the star (Swedish version) Michael Nyquist, and the other is a supporting role.  I had earlier drawn a portrait of our American version of Mikael Blomquist, Daniel Craig:

I think it is not as good as my more recent (by a few weeks) ones, which, if true, would be such an excellent indicator that I might reach my 5-year plan goal.

Last night I added  to my collection of heads–Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson as currently depicted on PBS.

Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch)

Dr. Watson (Martin Freeman)

Holmes is played by a guy whose name is Benedict Cumberbatch.  I have been noticing him for some time now, bemused at how the Brits can allow a  comedic name like that out there, attached a guy looking so incredibly nerdy, and make a hero out of him.  So refreshing!

So those were practice.  The real test comes with the life drawing.  Last Tuesday I had three hours to create this drawing of a lovely nude back.  I could have used the same three hours to make an oil painting, and it might have come out well and been quite charming, but I’ve done a lot of painting lately, and I felt the need to hunker down and strive for the pure perfection of form and value as expressed with the lowly pencil.

The Perfect Back

The Perfect Back

To bring you up to date, hot off the press, as it were–just a few hours ago, I parted company with Dee.  Dee is a fellow artist whom I got to know from the Saturday Life group, before he moved to the Midwest.  Back in New Hampshire for a few days, he give me the gift of posing for me today.  I chose do a  portrait in pencil.  Before he left, I grabbed this photo to use later in perfecting my drawing:

Dee, for real

And here what I accomplished after two hours–a good start on the trickiest parts.

Portrait of Dee

The other news of the week is very disappointing.  The Sage Gallery, which I have been touting since it opened last September, suddenly called it quits.  As far as I know, not a single painting was sold (other items did attract buyers–stained glass, sculpture, photographs, etc.).   She (Janice Donnelly) got lots of media exposure, but somehow could not connect with the  serious art collectors.  Are there any serious art collectors in the area?  Maybe not.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Library Arts Center in Newport; and at her studio by appointment.

Link to website: www.paintingsbyaline.com

On My Own . . . Sort of

Posted by Aline on

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.

Everything Undone, Nothing Finished

Posted by Aline on

Portrait of Honey

Those of you who have been with me more than a year will remember Honey.  Many still ask me how Honey is doing.  There was a crisis involving her eyesight back in–2009?  Maybe 2010.  (I have completely lost it as far as judging time is concerned. )  Anyway, Honey needed eye surgery to remove a growth on her cornea, and we had to raise $3,000 to pay for it.  I held yard sales.  Many people donated items to the yard sales, and many people just donated money.  My granddaughter used the bulk of the money she gets to help her get through college.  Honey got her surgery and seemed happier for it.   I  went out and bought pet insurance for all four of the animals that live with me and said granddaughter.

Last night the insurance paid off.  Honey again.  Something called “bloat” happened to her in the middle of the night.  I guess it’s called bloat because her belly seems to swell up, but what is really happening is her stomach gets twisted around.  She needed surgery as soon as possible.  Tabitha, my granddaughter, had read up on the health problems that beset Great Danes, so she recognized the problem immediately.  Honey had surgery at midnight and  by two a.m. had come out of it in fine shape.  Thank you, American Express!  What a comfort it was to know the bills will be covered by our insurance–mostly–eventually.

I don’t have a decent segue from Honey’s story to this week’s topic, so I’ll just forge ahead without one.  I’m feeling a little down in the dumps.  Why?  Let me count the ways:  (1) The week contained both my last class with Cameron and our last SLG of the year.  (2) Cameron is moving to England.  (3) I tried to paint another large portrait and a  large figure study and failed to get either done in the time allotted.  (4) I tried to come up with something to submit for the annual “Flowers Interpreted” exhibit of the Womens Caucus for Art, and produced a painting very close to what I had intended but now think the whole idea was just dumb.

Our last meeting of the SLG (Saturday Life Group) until the fall was remarkable in that we had two of our favorite models posing together.  Since they are a couple, they could touch each other, support each other.  If we get to do this again in the future, we might come up with more interesting gestures than the ones we got, but it rocked anyway.  Here are my efforts:

10 minutes with 2 models

20 minutes with two models

SLG two models

For my class in contemporary portraits, I tried to outdo myself on the same large size panel (16×20), with a head even larger than last week’s.

Jonathan's Head v 2

At the end of the class, we voted on which of my Big Heads was better.

Jonathan's head v. 1

Big Head No. 1 won.  So No. 2 is not finished.  No. 1 may not be entirely done either, but I am not touching it.  No. 2 even has white canvas showing.  Should I finish it, or should I wipe the whole thing out?  I’m thinking it was just an experiment, I don’t need it anymore, and I could use the canvas for a new experiment.

Sunday morning at Adrienne’s, we were back with The Pose.  Four weeks with The Pose, four paintings for me.  I had been closing in on her from week 1 to week 3, but couldn’t get any closer this week unless I wanted to do a huge portrait of an eye.  Interesting idea, but I was not in the mood.  So I moved to a different point of view and got out another 16×20 panel.

Girl in Recliner No. 4

The colors are a disappointment.  I also intend to work on the composition around the figure.  I probably shouldn’t beat myself up over the fact that I can’t complete a painting on a 16×20 support in a mere 3 hours.  But knowing that with my left brain doesn’t help because that’s not where the art happens, if it happens at all.

Which brings me to “Flowers Interpreted”.  I have never before been tempted to paint a mythical, allegorical, fairy tale kind of scene, but the deadline loomed for entry into this exhibit, which I had taken part in for the past two years, so it’s a habit, a tradition already, and this image just popped into my head.

Iris Interpreted

It’s an iris with a brown fairy, I guess.  My first version of the fairy had harder edges;  I decided that smeared edges would make her more of a piece with the flower petals.  The fairy image might look familiar.  About a month ago it was a drawing done in Peter Granucci’s workshop.   I just hope it doesn’t get censored from the exhibit because of the nominal nudity.  Fairy nudity shouldn’t count.  Should be treated like cat or dog nudity, right?

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

Extreme Faces

Posted by Aline on

Thursday night in my Contemporary Portraits class, I decided to Go Big.  On a panel of 20 inches by 16, I filled all the available space with my model’s head.  Supersized.  Bigger than life.

Downcast

I started out with some idea of using the palette knife, but found that when covering a whole lot of canvas, a big brush is more efficient.  Then I found that I liked the big brush strokes as well.  The image becomes almost pixelated as a result.  (What word would I have found to describe that effect if we hadn’t got “pixelated” from the computer industry?)  You can probably tell I also deployed the knife here and there.

I am struck by the fact that, with the bigger format and the bigger brush, it was easy to forego the details.  Puzzling.  You would expect that the larger the format, the easier (in my case, read “more tempting”) it would be to paint in details like eyelashes.  The big brush must be the key.  I am now eager to find out what will happen if I deploy the big brush on a smaller panel.

However, this revelation did not come to me until just now, so when I set up for my Sunday painting, I chose the palette knife for a small, 11×14 surface.  First, I should explain that our model and pose has not changed for three weeks.  I already have two paintings done from that pose, which you can examine in the last two blogs.  The first was whole body.  The second was head and chest.  So Sunday I closed in even farther, thinking to replicate in miniature the big-head experience from Thursday.

Knifed Closeup

Interesting how you can see practically every scrape of the knife in this photo.   It looks so much more impressive online than the original  painting.  I think that’s because you can’t tell online how large the actual painting is.   Or in this case, how small.

By studying this image and the following ones, I finally figured out what was bothering me about this painting.  The nose is too narrow–way too narrow.  So I am going to have to fix that soon, before all the thick paint dries.

Last week I talked about how much I admired Bill Turner’s treatment of the blouse on our model, so this week I am providing the proof that was missing last week.  Here is Bill’s portrait, still not finished but I hope he doesn’t touch the blouse!

Bill Turner's portrait of Becky

And yes, I have to admit, the arm and elbow are pretty special too.

While I am sharing the works of other painters, I know you will enjoy this version of Becky, which was also still a work in progress  when I snapped this picture:

Bea Bearden's portrait of Becky

Bea’s specialty is the eyes.  She always paints spectacular eyes, and gets fantastic colors in the skin tones.

Note that the color of the hat in both of these versions of Becky.  Now compare the color of the hat in my version:

Girl in Green

I started out painting a black hat until Cameron told me the hat was green.  Although close up it was clearly more green than black, I  could not see the green when the hat was on Becky’s head and under the spotlight.  (I hear cataracts affect color perception, so maybe it is time for eye surgery.)  We don’t have to match the local color if our muse takes us in a different direction, but in this case, I was OK with imagining the green.  My blouse color, being more green than the other two, was a deliberate choice.

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 Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; and at her studio by appointment.

Link to website: www.paintingsbyaline.com

Faces

Posted by Aline on

Sleeping on the Job

Faces is my theme this week, but there is more to enjoy than the face in this portrait of a dozing model.  Last week I featured this model in the same pose but in a painting of the entire body.  Since last week’s version was done with a palette knife, with very thick applications of paint, I couldn’t do much to improve on it this week.  Oh, it was certainly not a perfect painting, whatever that might be, but it was fixed and immovable because of the impasto effect.

I am leading off with this example of a face because it’s my pride and joy for this week.  I love the varied but believable skin tones, and I think I am getting the values right.  I feel as if this might be another “breakthrough” painting for me.

Peculiar, however, is the pleasure I take in the recliner.  Again.  For a painter who eschews the still life as a painting subject, I get an awful big kick out of portraying the inanimate objects that accompany my figures.   More about that  below.

Girl in Green

You should recognize my model here–she is also the sleeping beauty above, as well as the subject of many portraits in my checkered past of portraits.

This one is a portrait from my Thursday night class with Cameron Bennett.  It represents two sessions of three hours each.  Instead of a big brown recliner distracting me, here it is the hat (especially the satin bow), the earring, and the soft jersey blouse.  I am proud of the hat and the earring, but disappointed in the blouse.   One of my classmates, Bill Turner, turned out a beautifully and subtly draped blouse that I envied.  But Cameron gave me the fisheye when I exclaimed how wonderful it was, and pointed out the superior quality of the arm Bill had painted.  I guess it all depends on where you are coming from.  Bill paints trucks and horses, so a delicately formed human arm is the bigger deal for him.  Here is a link to view some of his trucks and horses, painted fantastically well.

image

Here is of my favorite models, from the Granucci workshop on figure drawing–but this drawing turned out to be about her face.  The likeness is good, but more than that, she looks as beautiful as she can look.  If I could accomplish this kind of result every time out, I could make some money as a portraitist.

I have two more faces to show you.  Over the weekend, at the popup exhibit at the White Birch Brewing company in Hooksett, I conceived the idea of offering free 15-minute portraits, as practice for me and to make the time not totally wasted (I took in about 20 paintings to display but put prices on none of them because I did not foresee encountering a serious art collector, i.e., one willing to pay hundreds of dollars for an original oil).  A handsome young fellow artist, Clinton Swank, sat down for his portrait. The he drew a portrait of me.  Then I did another one of him, trying to capture the “sultry” in his look.  Then he worked more on his portrait of me.

Clint, No. 1--a good likeness

Clint's portrait of me

I like it.  Fierce, but not mad.

Clint, No. 2, not as good a likeness, but sultry, right?

I had prepared a selection of other faces (more TV heads drawn while watching TV), but that would be too much of a good thing, so I will save them for a future post.

Last minute note:  another of my 15-minute portraits has been posted on Linda Feinberg’s blog, link here.  The portrait is of Linda’s husband, Joe Smiga, noted local author.

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

Speaking figuratively . . .

Posted by Aline on

is a lot easier than drawing figuratively.  And painting figuratively, especially without the coverup advantage that clothing provides, is hardest of all.  I admit that I am torturing that adverb “figuratively” –pretending that it can be substituted for the phrase “about the figure” in one sense and for the phrase “of the figure” in the other two examples.  I don’t make a lot of use of puns,so I figure (there’s that word again0–definitely no pun intended), I’m entitled to a little wordplay.  In face, half the fun of blogging is finding ways to make plays on works.

But figurativity is relevant.  This week, the subject is figures.  Beautiful figures in reality.  And paintings and drawings  that aspire to be beautiful in their own right.

My experimental palette knife work carried over into this palette-knifed figure study:

Girl in Brown Recliner

This painting is the output from one of our Sunday morning sessions.  Don’t you love the chair?  I do, but have to admit it looks better in person (in the painting itself).  I will get another crack at this model and pose, but instead of trying to correct errors in this one, I will start over with a new painting or drawing.  Paint that has been ladled onto the canvas with a palette knife just is not conducive to being overpainted.  Case in point: last week’s portrait, which I declared cooked after that session ended.  I would never try to add another layer of paint to that.  My first palette knifed portrait was not as heavily impasto’d, so I was able to rework  most areas.  (Both of those portraits can be seen in last week’s blog.)

Here’s another palette knifed portrait, but it’s also a little riské, so it fits in my theme for this week:

How Demure is She?

“Demure” is another one of my contest entries on Fine Art America, wherein I am given a photo of which to make a painting.  Because of the restrictions placed upon my use of the photo, I can’t reproduce it for you.  You will just have to trust me when I say that you would recognize this woman as the same one in the photograph, despite the radical colors and rough knife strokes I have adopted.  Or you can go online to Fine Art America and check out the current contest for “painting from photographs”.

I am kind of pleased with the ways I am finding to depart from the literalness of the subject matter without sacrificing the rigor of getting the essential elements right.

Not that I always get them right.  Au contraire.  Last Saturday I came away from our Saturday life drawing sessions with a couple of drawings that I felt good about.  This one, however, no longer looks good to me:

Reclining Woman

Through the fresh eye of the camera, I can now see that her head is way too big for her body.  I think of some deKoonings, Picassos etc. and ponder, so what?  They drew people with diminished bodies, and no one claims that they didn’t know how to draw.  Hmm.  Well, let’s move on:

Crouching

The arms on this figure got crumpled up somehow, but I still like the overall look of the thing.  It’s so . . . Degas.  Mind you, I am not all that admiring of Degas’ drawings, so this is not necessarily a self pat on my back.

Faring a lot better is this multi-colored drawing, which some of my fellow artists begged me not to touch after the first model break (20 minutes into the pose).  I continued working on it anyway, but not in any significant way.  I worked on the drape, clarified some values, things like that:

Seated Woman in Color

With an extra five minutes left for the pose, I sketched this head of the model:

Five-Minute Head

As you might have deduced, had you thought about it, our Saturday models come top-lit.  The light streams down from an overhead skylight, at least when the sun is shining.

OK, here are some guy drawings that I saved up from last month:

Seated Man

Contemplative

The composition of this one is interesting, and if his hand is a little too big, that’s better than being too small.  Our guy models use those poles a lot–not only do they give the model something to handle but they also give the model a place to rest his/her hand/arm, so as to provide more variety in the pose.  I also use the pole as a check of my  placement of limbs; if the angle of the pole is correct, the body parts have to come together with the pole in the correct way or I have got something wrong.  (Same model, same pole were featured in my mid-January blog titled “Why is this Man Digging a Hole in the Nude?”  Still a good question but now you know the answer.)

I suspect that I have written way too much tonight, but can’t trust my judgment.  It is  late, and I am  tired.  My usually upbeat Monday was discombobulated by the discovery that we had been burglarized; my desk, in particular, had been “tossed”.  My losses were not catastrophic, but still, it put me off my stride.   And Monday being Bridge Night, contains no slack.  (The cards were kind to me, which certainly helped put me in a better frame of mind.)

One last item of interest:

POP UP!

A pop up art exhibit will appear at the White Birch Brewing Company in  Hooksett NH Friday (5 to 7 p.m.) and Saturday (noon to 5 p.m.) this week.  April 13-14.  Food for the Friday night reception will be provided by cooking students from nearby Southern NH University.  Don’t sit this Friday the Thirteenth out, huddled in  your closet.  I believe a tour of the brewery with beer tastings can also be expected.  Whoo’ee!

Oh, yes,  I am participating.   I haven’t picked all the pieces that I will be exhibiting (and selling) yet, so if you have one you’d like to see there, let me know.  The theme is “New Hampshire Proud” but only one piece is required to represent that theme.  If you Google the theme, you will find elegantly composed publicity for this event. Support your local artist and your local brewery at the same time as enjoying food from your local  univeraity.  Doesn’t get much better, right?

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.  AND, for two days only, April 13-14, at the White Birch Brewery in Hooksett, NH.

Link to website: www.paintingsbyaline.com

Playing with Knives

Posted by Aline on

This week I am going to catch you up on the last three weeks of my class in painting the contemporary portrait.  (At the NH Institute of Art, with Cameron Bennett)  I have talked about this class before, but we didn’t have a live model then.  Now we do.  In fact, for the last two classes we have had two models to choose from–Rebecca and Randy.

This would be my fourth portrait of Rebecca over the past couple of years, but the first completely in profile.  Not exactly my choice–in my absence (Florida), a makeup class was scheduled.  The day before I flew South,  we had had a snowstorm here in NH and strangely, that class got cancelled.  (Strangely, because it wasn’t all that much of a snowstorm but it was almost the only one we got all winter, and a big deal was made of it.)  My Florida trip, so carefully planned to coincide with the Institute’s vacation week, cost me a class after all, and when I showed up the following week (in time for class despite a flight cancellation and rerouting to Boston), it was to find all the prime spots around the model had been claimed the week before.Each class is three hours long.  Three hours on a portrait of a live model is not very long at all.  A total of 4 classes had been scheduled for Rebecca’s pose.

Because the idea of this course is to do something outside the box (you know, “contemporary?”), I decided to try  using only palette knives.  I took one picture on my phone before all the canvas was covered:

WIP No. 1

At the end of that first session of three hours, I took home this version of Rebecca’s profile:

I was happy with the freshmess, the vivid red, the clear skin tone, the sharp edges.  I thought I was finished, except for a few minor details.  Eye too high, for example.  The likeness needed to be improved a little–Cameron suggested exaggerating the size of her eyes and mouth, then carving back on them in order to get closer to accurate.  He also complained about the harshness of the shadow on her neck.  I expected to be able to fix those items in perhaps an hour, then be on my way to something new.

Becky, WIP No. 3

Notice the earring?  I don’t think she was wearing it the week before, but now that she was, I had to bring it in, with its delicious shadow.  In this version, her lips are exaggerated.  I spent that entire 3-hour class bringing the painting to this point. Before the next class I would carve back on the lips, but not the eyes :

Becky, No. 4. Final?

Above is the portrait as I presented it  for critique at our last class.  I wondered if perhaps I had overworked the painting as compared to the underdone 3-hour version.   Nobody seemed to endorse that thought, but as a result of the critique,  I do intend to do something about the background on the right side–it is too flat and dull.

The critique having used up our first hour of class, we had only two hours left to work on actual painting.  I got a spot in front of Randy, our other model, and went to work, knives flying.  Cameron came around and suggested that I take photos as I progressed over the two hours:

image

There’s no white canvas showing because I slathered paint all over the canvas before starting to carve out the figure.  That was my new out-of-the-box experiment for this week.  Cameron saw what I was doing, and advised me to start the figure by scraping away the excess paint.  Otherwise I was going to be in for a big headache, trying to paint over thick, wet paint base.  I might have come to that conclusion myself, perhaps the hard way.  (Doing it wrong first.)

image

Here I was just trying to get biggest stuff (features) in the general proximity of where they should be.  Ear, nose, chin, neck.

image

Getting close.  Eyes too close together.

image

This, my final version (I think). shows his mouth finished and his right eye moved to the left.  See–I even signed it over there on the left.  My model claimed that he liked it.  Nose is too long, however.   Nose length is something I have trouble with–always too long.  If I were going  for the best possible likeness, and had more than two hours, I hope I would have scraped out half the face and started over with a smaller nose.  Which half?  Tough choice.

Likenesses notwithstanding, Cameron likes this portrait of Randy better than my portrait of Rebecca.  My granddaughter, however, displayed some funk, complaining that she could not see the features.  Obviously too young to see outside the box.  (Don’t worry–she won’t see this–she doesn’t read my blog.)

I’m happy about both paintings, but I do think I am happier with Randy.  Perhaps that is just the power of Cameron’s suggestion.

What is it about painting with the palette knife that appeals to me?  Mostly, it keeps me from getting bogged down in details. Because as much as I love the details, I love more to see how the merest suggestion of form is enough for the brain (well, most brains) to translate into form.  It’s magic.  Details of a different magnitude are still vitally important–if a single stroke of light can create the impression of an eyelid, so can such a stroke in the wrong place create a lantern jaw.  Done that.

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

Overcome by Hydraulics

Posted by Aline on

This week ‘s tale is of the three-day workshop I took with Stapleton Kearns at the NH Institute of Art in Manchester.  Stape, an active landscape painter, member of the Boston Guild, formerly of Rockport, writes a blog for other painters, and in that blog he had at one time discussed the anatomy of waves and other items of interest associated with the painting of seascapes.  One point stuck with me:  most of the dramatic, wave-crashing seascapes could not be painted on location–the painter, or at least her easel, would not have survived the first crashing wave.  So I already realized we were not going to be heading out to paint waves from life (as if any such thing were available in Manchester, New Hampshire).  I  assumed we would be relying on some use of slides or photographs in order to paint our seascapes.   That’s what we had done in my  intro to waves with Peter Granucci–I recounted that learning experience in my blog of July 17 last year.

I do like surprises.  I also just love being reminded that the mastery of painting is much, much harder than one might imagine, and takes a lot, lot longer than the time one has available.  So, boy, was I ever pleased with this workshop!

First, there were no slides, no photographs to use as reference.  Stape demonstrated on three separate paintings, one each day, how, without any reference whatsoever, he designs a seascape and works in the elements of the sea: waves, foam, rocks.   All three paintings were fantastic  little jewels.  If only each afternoon I could have followed his example.  The first day I mimicked his design, with a decent result.

Theoretical Wave

The second afternoon, I tried to invent my own composition.  The big wave element was not working for me.  Several times I wiped it out and started over–not because I could not construct a decent-looking wave.  After all, the one I had done the day before was passable.  But  this one was too fussy looking.   I was still working on it the last day, near the end of the workshop, so I asked Stape to come over and tell me what I was doing wrong.  He sat down, squeezed out a half tube of white on my palette, mixed in some blues and grays, and pushed paint aggressively all over the offending areas.  The wave is now barely recognizable, but the energy was exactly what I had wanted.

Stape's wave

What a monstrous lesson for me!  I had been so caught up in the hydraulics of wave action, worrying about whether this brush stroke or that one was consistent with the physics of waves, that I forgot to just be a painter.

Stape also had us doing simple exercises, not necessarily related to seascapes.  Below on a single panel are his demonstrations of three of the exercises:

Stape's painting exercises

The top one was a demonstration of how to paint a wave over and into white paint: After a generous layer of white paint is laid down,  you manipulate your blue paint over and into the white to create a wave shape.

The one below and to the left shows the opposite technique: lay down the dark blue paint first, then come in with the white to shape waves.  Sounds simple; looks simple.  Ain’t simple.  Allow me a year or two to practice that one.

The orb in the bottom right was his illustration of the rule that nothing in the shaded half can be as light as the darkest value in the lighted half.   And vice versa.  This rule is important to all subject matter whatever the media, but is easily overlooked when you get lost in waves. Confusion in the waves leads to ambivalence in assigning values–is this spot lighted or shaded?  Stape’s advice:  commit to one or the other.  You start with a 50% chance of being right, plus another 25% from some other logical assumption–wish I could remember what–so taking that plunge with odds so in favor of you has to be better than not choosing at all (leaving wishy washy values).  Even if I can’t remember where that 25% comes from, I shall remember to commit to light or shade, no matter what.

The overall lesson imparted was the one I hate most to hear: to be a good painter, you must paint every day for ten years.   I cannot accept the extremity of that pronouncement, but I admit that I need a lot more practice (especially in seascapes).  Maybe I should just stick to portraits and figures.

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

Mary Crawford Reining

Posted by Aline on

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.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

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

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.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

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:

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

Painting from Life, Compared

Posted by Aline on

In terms of number and variety, my output last week may seem disappointing–my figure workshop with Peter Granucci skips a week and  last week was a skip week; then my portrait class with Cameron Bennett was taken up with critiques and a demonstration painting by Cameron; and finally our Saturday life group (SLG) was cancelled because our model was sick with the flu.  However,  the Sunday clothed-model group met as planned, and resulted in a piece that makes me happy.  No, make that thrilled.

Profile of Sabrin

This is Sabrin, the same model that we had the last two weeks.  The first week with Sabrine I painted a 3/4 portrait from a 3/4 view on the lighted side (see that week’s blog).   The next week, I drew her in profile in charcoal (last week’s blog).  This week, I found myself again on the side with a profile, but with an exciting new headdress and the full three hours to paint.  I actually finished in about 2 and 1/2 hours.  The panel was small–only 12×10.

Her headdress pattern comes from gold threads.  I created the impression of a gold pattern by simply drawing through the wet paint with my “color shaper”, which is a rubber-tipped point.  I used the same technique to create her earring.  When the paint dries a little more, I will add some sparkle to the gold threads, her earring and the gold chain around her neck.

You might be able to see that I added cerulean blue to the highlights on her skin.  The light bounced off her skin so brightly that it was hard to determine exactly what color it should be (never pure white!  Lois Griffel’s voice echoes in my brain).  I decided to use the blue of the sky, even though she was lit by a combination of natural light from the window and a spotlight from the same direction.  The blue works, I think.

I have to confess I got the idea of using blue light from two sources–one is Peter Granucci who uses the blue light on rocks and other surfaces lit by the sun, and the other comes from a class at the Institute conducted in the same room where I take my portrait class with Cameron Bennett.  The students left their works in progress in this room and their assignment was apparently to paint the lit surfaces of a human figure in a bright aqua blue.  Sounds bizarre, right?  But it was remarkably effective.  My experiment with the same was much more subtle.

Last week, the piece I was happiest with was a painting of a portrait from a photo I did not take, indeed from a photo of a person who was a total stranger to me.   How does the one compare to the other?

Contest Portrait, Final

I love both of them equally.  I can’t come up with a way to measure the merit of the painting from life over the painting from a photo–even knowing intuitively that the former ought to be better than the latter.  But maybe any judgment would be contaminated by one common attribute that helps them both–I didn’t care about getting the exact likeness of either one, which freed me to just paint beautiful, as I see beautiful.

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

A Splurge of Portraits

Posted by Aline on

“Splurge” seemed the right word, so I looked it up, and indeed, there is a secondary meaning that covers what I feel I have today:  an extravagant display.  Beginning with the figure workshop with Peter Granucci last Tuesday, through the class with Cameron Bennett, and and ending today with my last–no, my most recent–edits of the Sami and Noodles portrait, my week was full of figures and faces, most of them falling squarely under the category of portraiture.  Oddly enough, my favorite of the week is the most unlikely candidate.  I entered a contest to paint a portrait from a supplied photograph by Shan Peck–he is the photographer and the contest administrator and the juror.  It’s not a big deal, just a fun thing to do, and it became a project to do in my class with Cameron.  I can’t reproduce Shan’s photo here–he made a point of forbidding any use of it other than to paint the portrait–but you can link to it here.

Since we were encouraged to upload our works in progress, I snapped a few of those on my cell phone (had to figure that out first–what a banner week!).

WIP for contest

Contest Portrait, Final

Our Sunday model, Sabrin, was slated to keep the same post and dress as she had last week, so I went prepared to draw a charcoal portrait of her.  She was very late in arriving, however, so another artist volunteered to sit for us.  As a result, I came away with two charcoal portraits, one better than the other.  The first did not capture a good likeness.  If I had had the time, I hope I would have achieved a likeness.  As it stands, I believe I exaggerated the size of her nose.

HH Profile

The profile of Sabrin came out well, I think, likeness or not.  Her mouth was very interesting and challenging to capture.

Sabrin, in charcoal and profile

While we are on the subject of portraits, I took another crack at the portrait of Sami and Noodles.  It’s harder to capture children, I think, because you have to keep a light touch.   Their features are so delicate.   For that very reason, though, painting portraits of children makes for terrific practice in making marks at the precisely correct spot to provoke a translation in the viewer’s brain that matches reality.  Our eye/brain supplies so much of the information that an artist who tried to lay out all the information before you, especially in a child’s face, comes across as heavy-handed and awkward.  As a result of trying to avoid heavy-handedness, I spent most of my time today painting out the details that I had so carefully laid in earlier.  I may not be there yet, but at least I know where I want to be.

Sami and Noodles

I’m not done yet.  Remember, I promised a “splurge”.  Tuesday, Peter suggested that my last drawing was worthy of working up to a finished piece.  I had that drawing pad with me Saturday when my car broke down, so I was able to pass the time waiting for the tow truck by working on that drawing.  Never has such a usually tedious wait passed so delightfully.

G, in pencil

Nude woman in chair

Wait, there’s more.  Saturday morning (the regular Saturday life group) I completed two charcoal drawings with which I was happy.  One of my favorite models–it’s remarkable how much difference a good model can make to the drawing.  Last week’s was uninspiring.  This week’s–well, it’s what keeps me going back.

R, reclining

R, seated, in blue and yellow

I think that’s it.  Seven days, seven happy figure/portrait projects.

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

Skin Tone Struggles

Posted by Aline on

Sabrin, No. 1

My painting of Sabrin (pronounced Sabrine) is the result of one three-hour session with the model yesterday.  It was quite the exercise in skin tones, and I am still not happy with the arm closer to us–it’s too gray.  It’s so easy to tip over from a fresh color into mud, and I believe white is to blame most of the time.  I must have painted her chest a dozen times trying to get the value and the color just right.   While I labored over the skin color and her facial features, I succeeded in portraying the hands with my initial strokes.  So I am leaving them alone.  No finishing touches for them.   I wish I could produce an entire painting with that kind of verve and bravura.  Some day, perhaps.

Earlier in the week, I reported to Cameron Bennett at my contemporary portraits class with the two works I had done the previous Sunday (see previous blog).  Got good marks on one and failing marks on the other.  He didn’t like the quick head sketch one bit.  Not one tiny bit.  The other, the whole figure pose, was “charming”, but the head too small and the neck too long.  I received orders to fix that.  He gave me some really interesting suggestions on how to go about fixing a head that was already very good, just too small.  The best one:  take a photo of the original painting and use that to copy a larger version onto the original.  I never would have thought of that.  Here is that painting again, so you can see what we were talking about:

Adrienne in her tough guy outfit

He especially liked the feet, by the way, singling them out right away as a major contributor to the charm of the gesture.  Yea!  (I had started with the feet because they were my favorite feature of her pose.)

In other news from that class, I may have finished the reclining nude that I started last week.  Her head is looking too small to me now, but it is farther away so maybe I can argue perspective.  I labored over painting her face with just enough definition and would hate to have to start that over again.  You might recall that this is one of the heads that Cameron did not like in the original charcoal version of it.

With about a half hour left in the class, I started on another translation from charcoal to oils, this time looking for some new aspect to try out, to make my work “contemporary”.  I decided to paint the skin tones without white–or less white–and to isolate the red and yellow ochre ingredients.  Red for the shadows.  I ran out of time just at the point where I had wiped out the face in order to start it over, so what you will see below is truly a “work in progress”, not just an almost finished work needing a few tweaks here or there.

Study in Perylene Red and Yellow Ochre WIP

I also managed to put in a few hours this week tweaking older paintings.  One that is nearing a finished state is my original portrait of Sammi and Noodles.  I added yellow reflections in Noodles’ eyes, which gives away the origin of the image as a photograph.  But so what?–the image just cried out for that yellow in just that place.

Sammi and Noodles No. 1, almost right

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; at the McGowan Fine Art Gallery in Concord; and at her studio by appointment.

Link to website: www.paintingsbyaline.com

Two Steps Forward, One Back

Posted by Aline on

Adrienne in her tough guy outfit

It was a great week in terms of activity.  Wednesday the Granucci workshop group met for 4 hours of live nude drawing.  Thursday the Bennett class met for painting the contemporary portrait.  Saturday the Saturday Life Group met for its usual three hours of live nude drawing.  And Sunday I joined a new group that meets for three hours to paint or draw from a clothed model, who keeps one pose for the entire time.

Peter (Granucci) started us on shadows, and I am happy enough with my results to share with  you for the first time some of my drawings from that workshop.

Two quick poses from Granucci workshop

Exercise in Shadowing

Thursday night, I took in my drawings from Saturday and Wednesday in order to choose one to use as a basis for painting.  I narrowed it down to two:  the more developed one above, and one from last week, the reclining figure.  I was happy with both of the faces on these two, until I asked Cameron (Bennett) for advice on which to choose for my painting.  He didn’t like the faces.  I was so taken aback that I forgot to ask why.  Anyway, together we chose the reclining figure to paint:

Translation into Oil

Our model on Saturday was the same person who was modeling for SLG the first time I joined.  That was perhaps 4 years ago, and she hasn’t changed a bit.  I have mentioned before how I just accept a bad angle and try to make the best of it.   This week I tried, but I did not make the best of it.

Rear View

Extreme Foreshortening

In fact, I may have done better with the shorter poses, which were in pencil:

Series of poses from SLG:--5, 10, 20 minutes

Sunday morning I  joined up with my friend Bea to go paint at Adrienne’s studio, the same studio where we meet for the Granucci workshop.  Adrienne had arranged for a Sudanese model dressed in her native regalia, and Bea in particular was looking forward to painting the dark skin tones–she even prepared a special palette.  But the Sudanese model never showed up–signals got crossed or were not even received, apparently.  So Adrienne herself modeled for us, too upset to paint anyway, she said.  She held the same pose for the entire three hours, with generous breaks every 20 minutes or so.  I finished a small painting of her entire figure (the painting that leads off this post) and had a half hour to spare, so I started on a painting of her  head.  I was hoping that the limited time would push me to capture the essence with minimal strokes, a la Caroline Anderson (whom I have adopted as my muse, as recounted in earlier posts).

Alas, on my way home, the tape I had used to keep the full body portrait secured to its support came loose, and smeared the head portrait.  In the course of repairing the head, I lost the freshness and simplicity of the original.

How to Sport a Fedora

The full body one was easy to repair, and I don’t think I lost anything essential to it.

So I am kind of down in the dumps at the end of a relatively productive week, which is probably why I couldn’t bring myself around to getting this post out on time.

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; at the McGowan Fine Art Gallery in Concord; and at her studio by appointment.

Link to website: www.paintingsbyaline.com

New Nudes

Posted by Aline on

Proud, in Color

I scored a few points in the contemporary portrait class Thursday, by painting from my own charcoal drawing titled “Proud”, which I featured in last week’s blog.  Keeping it loose, in the spirit of Caroline Anderson, was what I was after here.   I don’t know whether to call it a “work in progress” or an experiment.  I suppose if I go back to it to correct my mistakes, it was a WIP.  If I let it be and move on to another, it was an experiment.  Overall, I am not unhappy with my progress in losing my edges.  It takes a bit of acclimatizing.  I will get to a point that I think looks pretty good, but then I think I can make it a little better, and in the course of trying to make it better, I make it worse.  I’ll bet that sounds familiar to the artists reading this blog.  And that’s how I ended up ruining the head.  Sigh!

From Saturday Life Group, I could not decide which of two drawings I preferred to share with you, so I will share both.

Layabout

Layabout is a conventional, yet disturbing pose, which was hard to compose on the page.  My favorite part is her head.

Twist of Limbs

In Twist of Limbs, I got more aggressive with my charcoal, and I was enjoying the result.  However, you probably can’t see that her legs are crossed.  There must be a word for a section of an image that contains all the action compacted into one small area.  An area of concentrated complexity.  I took it on as a challenge, which is probably why I attacked the image more aggressively than usual.

You may or may not care to know that I finally attacked my big Mount Washington Bike Race painting.   I finished sketching in the major figures, leaving additional figures to the end where the composition may call for them, and I applied some paint, thinly.

Work in Progress

After finishing this sort of underpainting, my plan is to use this painting to experiment with some new techniques,  lost edges and palette knife.  Palette knife should be particularly useful in building the rocky surface of Mt. Washington.

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; at the McGowan Fine Art Gallery in Concord; and at her studio by appointment.

Link to website: www.paintingsbyaline.com

Concentrating on Portraits: Faces with no Features?

Posted by Aline on

Of all the works I labored over this week, the above detail from a charcoal drawing comes the closest to being an actual “portrait”.  It looks like the model.  In fact, the entire drawing could be called a portrait in that it not only looks like the model, but it conveys the model’s attitude, which I have called “Proud”:

Proud

If you are a regular reader of this blog,  you already know that I am taking a course in contemporary portraiting at the NH Institute of Art, with Cameron Bennett.  One of the points that he made in our first class was that anything representing the subject can qualify as a “portrait”–if that is what the artist intends.  (One out-there example brought up by one of my smartypants classmates was Andy Warhol’s tomato soup cans.  She/he said he practically lived on tomato soup; therefore the soup-can paintings could be considered self-portraits.)

So suddenly I feel free to call my anonymous figure paintings “portraits” too.  I’m thinking of the studies I painted from the photos I took at the  Mount Washington Bike Race, discussed and reproduced in several of my posts from last fall.  As you will see below, I’m still working from those photographs, and I’m still trying to work more loosely.  To that end, I have stuck printouts of Carolyn Anderson paintings all over my easel to help me remember how little I need in order to convey eyes, nose, etc.  (Forget the mouth altogether.)  All this fits splendidly into another theme or goal, which was urged upon me by various art teachers to whom I have paid good money to criticize and guide me.  And that goal is to eliminate the detail.  I was never quite sure which details I should eliminate, so now I am on track to eliminate all of them, so that should produce something like progress, eh?

Last week I was struggling with a portrait of Sammi and Noodles, which got way too detailed.  (To see it, go back to last week’s post.)  Thursday night, I went to class bearing that sorry effort, along with my photograph of Sammi, and my drawing from the week before.  (All in last week’s blog.)  But I (wisely, I think) decided to make a fresh start on a new painting of the same subject.   Again I was seduced by the dog Noodles.  (Maybe I should just give up and do nothing but pet portraits.)   The depiction of Sammi was horrible.  I can’t show you how horrible because I smeared it out even while Cameron and I were shaking our heads over it.  He got into the spirit and started moving paint around with his fingers too, in random and varied directions, to show me how Carolyn Anderson would probably have attacked the painting.  (I use the word “attacked” to convey both possible meanings.)  Then at home yesterday I practiced on both versions of Sammi and Noodles, and here they are as they exist today, side by side:

No. 1, version 2

Sammi 2

xxxxxx

xxxxxxx

I’m not satisfied with either one, but don’t you agree that version 2 shows me moving in the desired direction?  I decided it was time to move on and apply whatever I learned to another project.  Here is the result:

Fans

I’m feeling good about this one.  The paint is very thick and still very wet, which is why I could not get a decent photograph of it . .  .  also why the colors may be a little too muddy, but I’m not going to worry about that right now.  The important thing is, I conveyed the gestures and attitudes of these three people without painting distinct features on them.  My previous Mt. Washington studies (yes, this too is from that race) had started to become that kind of thing, what with the loosely painted crowds.   Notice the crowd depictions above!    Maybe too abstract?  Hey, I’m feeling my way here.

But back to the portrait, the real thing, that I started you with today, the charcoal of “Proud”.   My favorite thing from this week.  I believe–I could be wrong, but I do believe–that there is no offending detail in that portrait.  I am going to take it in to class this Thursday and see what Cameron has to say.

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