Catching up–Bartlett Style

Posted by Aline on September 8, 2016

I have been not performing, blog-wise, up to the standards I set for myself this summer. If I had met those standards, two topics would have been set before you already and the third would have been pulled together for today. The problem, as often happens, is just when I gather my thoughts and my photo illustrations, I notice something in one of the paintings that I must, MUST fix. Then after the fix, a new photo must be taken. It has been a summer of revisions and regrets.

One topic was to have been: best and worst plein air (marine) painting of the summer, covering why I thought one was good and the other not–but wondering how I could have rescued the one that was awful. A second topic was to have been the rest of the works resulting from the Stuart Ober course–you’ve seen the portrait of Sparkle, but I did a bunch of other stuff that never would have got started but for the impetus of taking a course called “Explorations in Oil Painting.” One of them could have been a topic in itself, as I worked on a 12 by 36 of “Impressions of Manhattan from the Whitney Museum”, a complex skyline with streetscapes that can always be improved or added to. I’m still adding.

This week, I hoped to be posting all the Figure in the Garden paintings from David Curtis’ garden, 2016 edition. Those paintings are finished, but the last one still needs to be photographed. I scaled up to 16×20, making the photographing more challenging.

And now, as topics pile up, I just got back from a workshop up North with Michael Chesley Johnson, for which blog I made promises. I feel a little like Mickey Mouse must have felt in the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice”. (Disney movie “Fantasia”)

I am going to take the advice I always gave my tax delinquent clients: do current returns first, then the past-due ones. Therefore, today without further ado, without messing about, I am posting photos of the three plein air paintings from the last two days, showing what I can accomplish in the approximately two hours available for each, before stopped by lunch and/or rain. Raw footage, as it were.

Excuse me while I go snap photos of each one with my iPhone.

. . . .

Eight students gathered at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett NH to learn plein air painting from Michael Chesley Johnson, of Campobello and Sedona, for perhaps the shortest workshop ever–two days. We were lucky with the weather, in that the rain held off Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning until I was able to get one painting each time close to completion. I produced a third painting during the Wednesday rain. . .storm is too strong a word. Rain Event. More of that later.

Tuesday morning MCJ opened with a demo of how to paint rocks. We piled into a gazebo near the Jackson Historical Museum– it was shaded, just the right size for 8 students and a teacher, next to a rock-filled Wildcat River, and near our next stop: a preview of the museum’s upcoming show. Then lunch at a local deli, then back to the Wildcat, a river responsible for the phenomenon known as Jackson Falls. We got some sun, but mostly clouds, so we got experience with painting en plein air on overcast days. How to find a “hook” when there are no lights and shadows to create drama? Well, falling water is always interesting. Unfortunately, New Hampshire has been suffering a record drought, so instead of impressive, thundering cataracts of water, we got meandering trickles.

(MCJ photographed me working at the Falls and posted it to Facebook, if you are interested. I was wearing my usual distinctive hat, so everyone who knows me recognized me. I could probably link to it, but I don’t have time to learn how to do that! Got to get this post done.)

Jackson Falls, v. 5 or 6

Day Two, or Wednesday as most people know it, we headed down into the Valley to experience the location of Albert Bierstadt’s “Moat Mountain, Intervale, New Hampshire”. That is why I have titled this painting Bierstadt Meadow. Most of us chose to paint the ledges that are to the right of my scene, but I’ve a bee in my bonnet all summer about the pinky-purplish grass that shows up at this time of summer. It is most prevalent along highways. It was not present in this meadow, but there were other plants sporting colors in the same family, so I thought I would try to fake it.

Bierstadt Meadow with Bluebird House

We were treated to very little sunlight, but the weather forecast did not include rain. Nevertheless, Sharon (Sharon Allen, who organized this workshop and spends half her life painting around Mt. Washington Valley) “felt” it would rain and urged us to move to a sheltered location–under a bridge in Conway from which we could paint a red covered bridge from below and to the side. When we got there, most of the river (Swift and Saco merge near here) was, well, absent. We were going to get more practice painting rocks. However, a puddle under the bridge reflected the red covered bridge, and I chose to make that the subject of my painting.

Under the Bridge, of Another Bridge

All of my paintings were painted on the carton paper sold by Judson’s plein air supplier. The paper slows me down a little because it absorbs paint, making it harder for me to cover the surface. But once my surface is juicy with paint, I can go to town. The geometric shape on the right is the stanchion [is that correct term?] of the overhead bridge. When the rain blew in [is Sharon a witch?], it disturbed the puddle and handicapped me. Oh, well. Had to fake it.

Since I probably will not get to the topic, best and worst marine painting, and I cannot NOT show you the best, I will now show the best. Two “tall ships” came to the Portsmouth area. August 12 was the day I chose to visit them. One docked in Portsmouth for people to tour. The other docked in New Castle for people to ride. I would have bought a ticket to ride if my timing were better, but as it was, I had to wait for the “Harvey Gamache” to return to port before I could grab a photo of it. Meanwhile, I painted its expected path from New Castle’s Grand Island Park. In my studio at home, I added the sailing ship using my photo as reference.

The Harvey Gamache Passing into New Castle

I have some happy news: two of my pet paintings will be part of a nationally juried exhibit in a museum! The museum is the Annmarie Sculpture Garden and Arts Center in a place called Solomons, Maryland. The Sculpture Garden is affiliated with the Smithsonian! The two honored paintings are “Sparkle”, which had been sold but the owners have agreed to lend the painting for this exhibit; and “Partners in Crime”–the two tuxedo cats on a cat tree.

Partners in Crime

The exhibit’s theme is “Fur, Feathers, and Fins–Our Faithful Pets”. It will run from October 7 through January 29.

Other places where you can catch a few of my paintings are:

NH Antiques Coop in Milford NH
Ellis River Art Gallery in Jackson NH
Bartlett Inn in Bartlett NH
Red Jacket Resort in North Conway NH
Bernerhof Inn in Glen NH
Mesmer & Deleaut Law Firm in Manchester NH

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

If you want to add a public comment to this blog, go to the bottom of this page where it says “Leave a Reply”, and enter your comment in that box. I love to get public comments, so don’t be shy!

Portsmouth Paintings

Posted by Aline on August 4, 2016

Since my last post, I feel as though I have been feverishly busy, but most of the painting time has been studio time. Not many of my plein air landscapes have come inside without need for improvements. I am enjoying the process of making improvements–well, I hope what I’m doing improves the paintings,–but worry about why the need. Am I getting pickier? Am I getting slower? What’s up with all this tinkering, etc.?

I hope I’m getting smarter, that I see more ways to improve when I get the painting home and can assess its defects dispassionately, without being influenced by reality. I suspect I am also getting a lot slower in painting, as in everything else I do. I can’t even get dressed in the morning without straying off the rails into some distracting musing. Maybe that’s late onset of attention deficit disorder, but when I am painting, I am able to keep my focus on the painting and the scene.

So, last weekend–oops, two weekends ago!–I participated in the annual Portsmouth paintout put on by the NH Art Association, which is a Portsmouth outfit. I believe that makes the fourth year of my participation and I haven’t missed a year yet. I couldn’t complete the event on Sunday because of my commitment to Sundays in the Gloucester garden of David Curtis, but I managed to produce three 12×16 paintings, which is pretty large for plein air.

The first painting took me from about ten in the morning until about two in the afternoon. The heat was enervating. I had a good concept for my painting: under the drawbridge with the drawbridge raised to allow a tugboat to pass through. My brain wasn’t working in top gear, however, so it took me a while to realize that if I took a photo of the raised drawbridge, I wouldn’t have to wait for it to be raised to see how that changed the elements. The product as “finished” in those four hours (a pretty long time for me to need for a plein air painting) had good bones, but it was rough–very rough. The sky paint did not even cover the gray ground.

The second painting was from the same vantage point but a different perspective–closer to being under that drawbridge, which is called Memorial Bridge, with a view of the other two bridges from Portsmouth to Maine: another drawbridge and the elevated highway bridge even farther back. Someone called me on the phone about one o’clock and commented that I did not sound well. Interesting. Did I mention it was very hot that day? I told her I was fine. As fine as someone who has become dehydrated without being aware of that fact. It was a hint, and eventually I took it– I got the elements of those three bridges down in an hour and then quit. As you would expect, with all those excuses, I had to do a lot of improving when I got the two back in my hands. Here are the finished versions:

Comin’ Through

Three Bridges, Portsmouth NH

For my third Portsmouth painting, conditions were better. I didn’t even try to get started before noon. I spent only two hours. I was in the shade. There was a breeze. For those reasons, perhaps, I have not felt the need to tinker with the painting produced at the Elks Club of Portsmouth:

At the Elks Club in Portsmouth

Just a few days ago, I went back to Cape Cod to pick up the painting that had been shown at the Addison Gallery’s show “Found my Park”, and to paint something new somewhere on the Cape. The old painting looked better than I remembered it, so there’s another example of getting ‘er done outside, but it was 11×14, much smaller than the Portsmouth ones. Here is what I’m talking about:

View from Salt Pond Coast Guard Station

To find another good spot for painting, we watched for likely signs–to beaches or parks. We chose to explore Nickerson State Park in Brewster. An amazing and huge tract of wildness. No ocean, no dunes anywhere, but glimpses of water. I finally went online with my iPhone and found a map that got us to Cliff Pond and Fisherman’s Landing. There was nobody there when I set up my easel, but soon we were inundated with children and dogs. I had a dog with me myself. It wasn’t a problem, but I did not feel inspired. After I got home and had a chance to sleep on it, I knew what I had to do. I had to add stronger dapples of shade and sunlight throughout, including on the figures of my companions.

Sun-Dappled Afternoon

I have to confess that my dappling in this painting may have been influenced by my recent trip to the Peabody Essex Museum’s exhibit of Childe Hassam’s Isle of Shoals paintings.

I want to thank all of my followers who took me up on the offer of free paintings. I am grateful because can you imagine the humiliation if I couldn’t even give away my paintings? Ouch! But it’s just a drop in the bucket, so if you have been hesitating because of some reluctance to take advantage, the offer is still good. I am limiting to paintings 11×14 or smaller, simply for ease in mailing. The priority mailing cost is $12.00. Stake your claim!

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

At the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the New Hampshire Antique Co-op in Milford; and at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester.

A Spate of Painting Leads to Opportunities for Rescues

Posted by Aline on July 20, 2016

The clouds have lifted, the sun is shining, and I find myself back in the groove of painting. It’s a good feeling. I’ve ordered in a huge supply of panels. If I fill them all with paintings, my problem of finding homes for them is going to be exacerbated. This problem is similar to the problem of cat and dog overpopulation. On the one hand, puppies and kittens are so lovable. On the other hand, dogs and cats take up space and require some minimal maintenance. Curbing the reproduction of the animals via spay-neuter programs is the solution to that problem. Will I have to curb my production of artworks?

I am painting for the joy of it, not expecting to make a living at it. Once the painting is finished, my happiness does not depend on keeping it nearby. In fact, I’m happiest when I find a loving forever home for my artworks. If you would like to give a home to one of my puppies, let me know. I ask only that you pay for the shipping. Of course, exceptions will have to be made for certain special projects, ones that I want to give to family members or submit to an exhibit or prize competition.

My latest crop (litter?) includes a bunch of plein air paintings and the still unfinished Manhattan Project, which I had hinted at in the last blog. (Surely that term is not copyrighted after all these years.) I’ll delay discussion of the Manhattan Project until it has been completed. I just hope the final result justifies the suspense that I am building. Suspense is building, right?

Continuing the practicing for a weekend paint out in Portsmouth, I painted this street scene, which truly was empty of people and cars most of the time:

Bottom of Court Street, Portsmouth

I added the telephone wires after the painting had dried. I discovered that if the brush left a glob of excess paint, I could pick it up with the brush and my medium (Gamsol), thereby thinning the line and keeping it wispy. I won’t be able to do that during the paintout since the underlying paint will not be dry enough, so I’d better pick a different scene for the paintout. This fact is disappointing because my other choice involves lots of little lines–bridges. Maybe I can come up with another fine-line technique because once I get a subject into my head (inspiration strikes), nothing else will be good.

Last week, Sharon Allen, Betty Brown and I responded to a call for artists to paint the Cape Cod National Seashore in celebration of the 100-year anniversary of the National Park System. We found a charming B and B in Eastham to put us up two nights. Of our three days on the Cape, only two halves were dedicated to serious painting. The rest of the time we were reconnoitering. And eating. Good place to visit if you like seafood. Duh! Just before we headed up North homeward bound, we stopped to paint at a town landing which didn’t qualify for the national park paintout. So I have a total of three paintings to show for the trip. My “best” one got left there at the Addison Gallery for the big reception. It was also the first one I painted:

View from Salt Pond Coast Guard Station

My eye had been drawn to the drama of the light green sea grass (that’s what I am called the grass that grows in the dunes down there, and around the salt water pools) against the deep blue sea. Add the interesting group of buildings perched (precariously, I am told) atop a high dune, and you’ve got solid inspiration. I set up in a traffic island in front of the Coast Guard Station. To my right and way down a hill (guess that’s obvious) there’s a beach full of people and umbrellas. That was a second choice for a subject, despite the view being severely limited. Sharon nevertheless took it on. Betty, meanwhile, climbed the fire escape and perched herself with her easel up there to create a semi-abstract rendering of marshes and pools.

My second serious painting portrays another Coast Guard Station, this one at Race Point. The perspective bothered me so I tried to correct for it, but I’m still dubious. I had intended the front of the building and all lines parallel to it to be level with the horizon, which is what appeared to be the case. But now I think I should have superimposed an imaginary vanishing point off to the left–that is what my eye was reaching for, demanding, despite the evidence of my level.

Race Point Coast Guard Station

Here is a reference photo that I took of the same building, showing the way I really wanted to paint it. I’ll do it too, but on a larger canvas:

Doesn’t that evoke Hopper? Edward Hopper lived on the Cape and painted many of the buildings. I haven’t been able to find that he painted this building, but I’ll bet he did. How could he resist? Yes, I moved the flagpole. Had to be done.

The little quickie I did on our way out of town owes its life entirely to the lavender color of the turned-over boat I spied.

Orleans town landing: Readiness

The other thing that is going on here is the attempt to convey the peekaboo effect of the foreground tree, hanging over the two boats. It’s not easy. You can’t really paint each individual leaf, but you can’t mass them together too solidly either. I’m not sure I got the balance correct here. If only the sun had been coming in another direction, I could have had shadows of leaves on the boat. That would have been cool!

The other thing I’ve got going on is Figure in the Landscape, like last year. Every Sunday in David Curtis’ Gloucester garden. I will wait until I have four accumulated and do a separate blog about them. The trouble with painting a lot is it leads to writing a lot in the blog. I coulda been paintin’ instead!

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

At the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the New Hampshire Antique Co-op in Milford; at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center in Manchester, part of the Healing with Art program; and at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester.

Six Years of Incubation

Posted by Aline on June 15, 2016

In order to keep something going on my easel, I am taking a summer class at the Institute with an instructor new to me. Stuart Ober is leading a course called “Independent Explorations in Oil Painting”, a scope broad enough to cover just about any subject matter and any style. If I want to, I can switch between new abstraction experiments and long-shelved realistic projects.

First up: a double portrait that I started maybe six years ago, before my first class with Cameron Bennett. I had been using a photograph as reference, and so lost interest in it after being introduced to the joy and challenges of painting from life. But it was a quite large canvas, gallery-wrapped too, so not something to be discarded. It had haunted my studio from the window sill, and one of the cats had thrown up on the top, so the dried up vomit cascaded down the front of the canvas. Charming. My first job was cleaning off the vomit.

I do have photographs of a small study I finished all those years ago, when I was still more of a fumbler, and the start of the larger painting. You’ll have to imagine the vomit for yourself.

Study, 9×12, of Two Girls

Charcoal start to large painting of Two Girls

The girls are my two granddaughters, Tabitha on the left and her younger half-sister Natalie on the right. At the time of the photograph, Natalie was about 13 years old, yet she looks older than her 22-year old sister. Photographs do lie.

Photo of two sisters on Newbury Street

Newbury Street in Boston was the location of the photo. I had taken the two girls down to Boston for a First Friday tour of the South of Washington art scene (SOWA)*. To get them to accompany me, I had to promise a nice dinner out on Newbury Street. The wall between the restaurant and the street had been removed. We were lucky to get a table next to the sidewalk. Over their shoulders you are seeing the lights of street activity.

At this point, I have spent two classes attempting to bring the large portrait to a conclusion. It is so much better than it was when I cleaned it off, and even if I never get around to perfecting it, I’m not embarrassed by it.

After photo taken in Newbury street restaurant; Tabitha and Natalie, probably 2009

But I long to “finish” this painting in the academic sense, examining every edge. Too hard? Too soft? There is no deadline.

*Originally I had written (erroneously) “Market” for Washington, lapsing back to the days when I haunted San Francisco, where the Market Street delineated the artsy area from the more commercial areas of the downtown. SOMA is San Francisco, SOHO is NYC (South of Houston St.) and SOWA is Boston (South of Washington Street). SOWA is to be distinguished from the higher rent artsy district found on Newbury Street in Boston.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

At the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the New Hampshire Antique Co-op in Milford; at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center in Manchester, part of the Healing with Art program; at the Bedford Library; at Bentley Commons in Bedford; and at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester.

ONLY A WEEK AWAY: Wednesday, June 22 is the reception at Labelle Winery in Bedford for the Petals 2 Paint show whereat floral designers create live flower arrangements inspired by a painting by participating East Colony artists. This has been an annual event of the East Colony Fine Art artists for many years. Since the live flowers last only a few days, you might as well plan to come for the reception (5-8 Wednesday), but the paintings and their floral complements will be on view the next day.

Abstracting the landscape, Part 3

Posted by Aline on May 27, 2016

Faced with two conflicting imperative tasks this morning, I chose the more unpleasant one: unburden myself of excess items of apparel so as to unjam my closets and drawers and feel I could die without embarrassment. The accomplishment of such a task has such great rewards in terms of mood. I feel ever so virtuous, and lighter. More rewards in terms of delightful discoveries: By giving away half my wardrobe, I have unearthed a new wardrobe. With all that out of the way, perhaps I will be able to write a better blog, or at least a more cheerful one. (Finishing this blog post was the other imperative task.)

I have three new plein air paintings to discuss this week. Ummm, mostly plein air. I have made corrections in the studio to all of them. In cases 1 and 3 I had to eliminate exasperating details and in case 2 I actually added details that I could not see clearly on site.

Cases 1 and 2: Friday a small group of artists from the NH Plein Air group collected on the seacoast, morning in Hampton and afternoon in Rye. Our snowbird, Flo, joined us for the first time this season. Flo and I chose to paint the same scene, the rocky shoreline with a sliver of beach curving around to create a small cove. Instead of trying to describe it, here is a photo of it.

Hampton Beach NH

I reverted to my usual style, not trying to do anything but translate the scene to paint:

work in progress

After a day of contemplating the above painting, I came to the conclusion that the houses ought to get smaller in the distance, and fuzzier. Godlike, I brought the sky down over the more distant buildings. Then, and only then, did I refer to the photograph above. Ouch. The painting was accurate before I tinkered with it. I got out the OMS and wiped out what I had just done.

Hampton Beach painting, final

The layer underneath was partially dried, so it stayed put. The buildings got fuzzier. Fuzzier was good. However, my current struggles to steer my subconscious artistic leanings in the direction of abstraction can claim only the smallest victory in the case of this painting.

Having got that impulse toward reality out of the way, I was ready to abstract when we set up at the Odiorne Park boat launching area. A thin strip of bright green caught my eye across the marsh–the golf course on New Castle island. The sky was intensely blue, which blue was reflected in a few pools of water in the marsh. The trees in the distance made dark bars against the green of the golf course. The pattern was pleasingly haphazard. Using a palette knife, I quickly moved paint onto my canvas to compose these abstract elements. But something else made a play for attention: a herring gull posed on a large isolated boulder in the middle of the marsh. He stayed there pretty much all afternoon, making short trips off to do whatever, once calling on his mate to join him for a few minutes, always facing in the generally westerly direction. We speculated that he was watching over a nest so carefully hidding in the marsh that we could not see it. For a member of the animal kingdom, he was a very good model. However, he was too far from me for me to capture more than his shape and shadows.

the herring gull at Odiorne park

When I got back into the studio with my gull, I worried about some of the finer points, like, where should the eye be, how long is the beak really. Enlarging the photos I took weren’t helpful, so I studied all the images I could find online. Wouldn’t you know, none of them matched the position of my gull, but I was able to refine his eye.

On Guard

I think it’s OK to abstract the background and refine the focal point in the foreground. I’m the artist and I can do what I want, even if rules get broken in the process.

Case 3 comes from a farm. Sharon and I drove (well, she drove) all the way out to Keene, west of Keene actually, to Stonewall Farm. We had been invited to paint there Sunday. Rain was in the forecast but we took a chance, and lucked out. Although we went hoping to improve on our cow-skills, we both ended up painting the horse yard and the Belgian horses–two brown and one light tan– in the yard. Here is what the horses and the yard looked like.

Belgian horses at Stonewall Farm

Horse yard at Stonewall Farm

The tan (palomino?) horse was the one posing for me. One of the problems I had was the background–a large tan (straw-covered) surface upon which to paint tan-covered horse. I knew that wouldn’t work. I could have made the ground more of a dark brown, as if muddy, and kept my horse a light tan. Or the opposite, which is what I chose. Of course, the difficulty of getting the horse’s anatomy correct when his position would change every few minutes is painfully obvious. Plein air painters are taught not to chase the light, i.e., we don’t adjust the light and shadows just because the sun has moved. I tried not to change my horse’s leg positions just because he moved them. Then there was the bloody fence. At first, I welcomed the fence, thinking it would provide some interesting patterns. But getting it to cross my horse’s body where I wanted it to was proving impossible.

I was so unhappy with my painting that I couldn’t wait to tackle it at home. Unfortunately, in my zeal to get started deconstructing the painting I forgot to photograph it. Take my word for it, every element in the painting got sacrificed to abstraction and simplification.

Horse Yard, Stonewall Farm

My proudest moment was when I painted out the bloody fence. Now you have to imagine where it might have been. Now nothing comes between the viewer and the horse. Also, by blurring the edges of the horse, I imparted, I hope, a feeling of movement. More movement than in fact there was, but don’t tell anyone that!

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Please save the date of Wednesday, June 22 for a reception at Labelle Winery in Bedford of the Petals 2 Paint show whereat floral designers create live flower arrangements inspired by a painting by participating East Colony artists. This has been an annual event of the East Colony Fine Art artists for many years, but this 2016 show seems likely to be our last as a group. Since the flowers don’t last more than a couple of days, you might as well plan to come for the reception.

Abstracting the Landscape, Part 2

Posted by Aline on May 18, 2016

Having recently come off a weekend devoted to abstracting the landscape (see previous post), during which we painted from photograph, imagination, memory, music and purely abstract concepts, I resolved to apply my newly acquired abstracting skills to actual landscapes. No, more correctly expressed: I resolved to TRY to apply those abstracting skills to actual landscapes. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. The spread of nature’s delights is so seductive that it is almost impossible to reduce a painting to a few good non abstract ideas.

Upper Ammonoosuk Falls, wip

Upper Ammonoosuk Falls, final

The photo on the left is the result of my painting for two hours at Upper Ammonoosuk Falls, getting sucked into the whole nature thing, trying to capture all the rocks and water rivulets. Fighting with myself. Until finally I heard myself remarking to another artist, by the way of encouragement, that depicting falls, boulders, etc. was hard because of the clutter. Clutter. Such an important non abstract concept. I went back to my painting and swept the water down over all my clutter. And it worked. So what if the scene never looked quite like that!

This morning I went over all four of my weekend paintings to see if any adjustments were needed. In the photo on the right you can maybe detect minor but important touches: the large rock slab in the virtual center was grayed back so as not to compete with the white of the falling water; the indeterminate brown area in bottom right was darkened and sharpened so as to clarify that it sits higher and in front of the falling water. I also added a few strokes of white water to the cascade, just to gild the lily. (By the way, while spell-checking Ammonoosuk I discovered YouTube videos of this spot, featuring reckless youths diving into the pools. Here is one of them.)

But did I really abstract my landscape? I did a better job than usual in reducing details. It’s a start. Maybe I’ll do better on the next one?

The next one turned out to be a panorama of intensely green fields dotted with intensely yellow dandelions, backed by periwinkle mountains, covered by gray clouds threatening rain. Because of the high chance of rain, we had driven south to Conway, where there is a bridge overpass that could provide us shelter from the rain while giving us a river’s edge view of an old-fashioned covered bridge. But we each of us got sucked in by the dandelions, and set about creating rain shelters within which to paint. I was riding with Sharon, so we had to find two ways to create painting studios out of one SUV. She had the tailgate. She also had the bright idea of creating a shelter for me out of my big yellow poncho and the two doors of her vehicle. Here’s a photo of me getting set up under my yellow tent. 20160513_152644

The tent cast such a strong yellow light over my painting (but not my palette), that I thought I was losing my mind when every time I scooped up a big blob of white paint to use in the sky, it turned yellow as soon as it hit the sky. The yellow tent had to have affected the rest of my painting as well, but it was only obvious in the sky. As a result, I had not much of a good idea of how my painting was coming along. This is not a good situation to be in, for a painter. However, I was trying to be abstract, so maybe, I thought, hue doesn’t matter. I blocked in the elements I wanted: the intense green pasture, the intense yellow dandelions, the intense blue mountains. Added a few tree and shrub features. Still a result not so abstract, but the important thing was, I was thinking abstractly.

Dandelion Field, wip

Dandelion Field, final

The one on the left is the painting as it was on Friday afternoon; the one on the right received some help today. It needed more yellow in the dandelions since it no longer had the benefit of a yellow poncho glowing all over it. I cleaned up the sky a bit. The photos do not do justice to the yellows and greens. Oh, well. Just keep in mind ALWAYS–the original looks so much better than the photo.

For my third painting, I was fortunate to be able to pick the group’s subject of the morning, and paintings always go better when one is inspired by the subject. There is a railroad that goes from North Conway north through Crawford Notch to a station near the base of the Cog Railway that climbs Mt. Washington. To get through the Notch, the train must travel on rails cut into the granite sides of the pass, and in this particular place, also bridge a gap in the rock face. Especially with the morning light casting a shadow of the rails onto the granite, the tracks create a pattern both arresting and intriguing.

No. Conway RR trestle, wip

RR Trestle in Crawford Notch

On the left side is what I got done on site. We were painting from a parking lot surrounded by growing things in various stages of greening (the trees budded out almost before our eyes–not just overnight but over lunch), so my view of the area below the trestle was obscured. I had installed rough representations of that obscuring growth, but I was bothered by the fact that you could not tell how far away the trestle was, nor how high it sat on the side of the granite face. So I scrubbed the growing things and tried to transform them into rock face. At home, today, I tried to improve on that aspect, as well as the rock formations above the trestle. I’m not convinced that my changes improved the perspective.

For our last outing, we chose a spot not far from our home base (the Bartlett Inn). As before, I resolved to think abstractly, just capture the shapes and colors that represented the site. The color for this one was blue. Intensely blue sky, intensely blue water reflecting the sky. A nice snaky curve in the waterway, good aerial effects for the more distant mountains. Simple elements that I should be able to use for an abstract landscape. Alas, the landscape had other ideas.

Saco River, wipe

Saco River, Bartlett, final

As an abstracted landscape, a pretty miserable failure. But more than passable as a normal plein air landscape, so I forgive myself. The changes I made this morning to the earlier version on the left were mostly in the light greens and the sandy shores. I don’t understand why the blue of the water looks so different now. I think there might have been too much contrast in the first photo. You can tell I have played around with the photo’s color cast, trying to match up with the original painting. The truth of the water lies somewhere between the two versions.

My companions for the weekend were my roommate, Betty Brown; chauffeur, Sharon Allen; colleague from Snow Camp, Suzanne Lewis of Rhode Island; young artist Stephen S from Hooksett; new members Leslie and Paul, from Massachusetts, and of course, the esteemed organizer of this semi-annual Getaway Weekend, Byron Carr of Contoocook. Some if not all of these people have websites where their paintings of the same scenes may or may not be posted.

If you are a regular reader, you have noticed I am employing a different format for the paired photos. WordPress has added new options, and I am learning how to use them. You can click on the above photos to enlarge them and to read their captions. Do you like this format?

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Kickstart

Posted by Aline on May 9, 2016

I have continued to be Very Bad and Unrepentant. Finding oneself takes time. I had to write an artist’s bio last week, and instead of reciting biographical facts about myselves, I skipped merrily over past incarnations to state affirmatively–I’m all mixed up but happily so. Here is how I put it:

Pursuing a profession in the arts is inevitably a struggle because excellence is never actually attained. One is always reaching. Aline has found herself reaching in more than one direction at a time, which for a long time has confused her and perhaps worried her followers. But she now has decided to embrace the diversity of her subject matter and styles and celebrate each on its own terms. Her style ranges from loose and impressionistic to refined and deliberate. Meanwhile, she has served notice that she will be experimenting with abstracted landscapes as well.

And indeed I do today have something to show for that last bold statement. I attended a three-day workshop on Abstracting the Landscape with Barbara Danser, who teaches at the NH Institute of Art but last weekend (yes, including Mother’s Day) was teaching for the Currier Art School (an offshoot of the Currier Museum of Art, which I serve as a docent). Barbara started us off slow, with a photograph that we chose from many that she had ready. Then she had us paint the same scene without referring to the photo. I believe the purpose might have been to divorce us from the details and focus us on the big picture (so to speak). Also to this end, I believe, she imposed time limits as a way of weaning us away from detail in our paintings. In the beginning, the limit was fifteen minutes for each effort. Later on, she allowed us 30 minutes, perhaps even more when she saw us close to accomplishing something.

From Photo

From memory of photo

After that one use of a photo for inspiration, Barbara gave us “Prompts” as inspiration. The first one involved a female walking on a beach in the mist.

Beachwalker in the mist (6×6)

For the next one, she played some music. I wish I could remember what it was–classical for sure. Debussy?

From a musical prompt

I deployed my palette knife more than usual because that is a faster way to lay down lots of paint. Once I had the paint on the panel, I could move it around. I had been using paper to paint on, but with the one above, I used a panel that I had previously painted on. There is no trace of the original painting showing through.

After lunch on the first day (Friday), Barbara gave us another photo to work from: that of a wave. We had a choice of waves. I chose the more dramatic of the two:

Wave from photo

Naturally, we then had to paint the same wave from memory:

Wave from memory

After the wave, we got no more photos to use as references, but we examined the works of other abstract landscapists to get us in the mood. I also found myself mentally referring back to paintings I had painted years ago, which was a little spooky.

The sequence of the next seven paintings, and the specific prompts for each one, has gotten a little muddled in my mind. What I can remember about each one I have put in the caption, which I believe you will be able to read if you click on the image. All of them were either 8×10 or 9×12, but I have accepted WordPress’s suggestion for varying the apparent sizes.

Light drenching land and sky alike

another music prompt

Trees, spring green

no idea where this came from

New Mexican artist, minimalist

Trees, avoiding green.

Rain drops, musical notes. The Last One.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

And save the date of Wednesday, June 22 for a reception at Labelle Winery in Bedford of the Petals 2 Paint event whereat floral designers create live flower arrangements inspired by a painting. This is an annual event of the East Colony Fine Art artists and seems likely to be their last show as a group. The flowers don’t last more than a couple of days, so you might as well plan to come for the reception.

Sabbatical?

Posted by Aline on March 2, 2016

Bless me Father, it has been three months since my last confession. Forgive me please? (My Catholic upbringing surfaces at the weirdest times!) Or maybe we can just say I was on Sabbatical. Artists are notoriously moody, say some people. I’m not sure that’s true–or appropriate under the circumstances. After all, this was my first Sabbatical in ten years. Heck, I’m not even sure I can call myself an artist at this point.

However, I am sure of one thing: when people create something they like to call “art”, they desperately want to share it, unless they fall into a very small category of Hermit Artists (I’ve only known one in person). Trouble is, in sharing their creations with others, artists become vulnerable to failure of reception, even rejection. Take me, for instance. Ten years working hard toward greatness, not there yet, not even close– must be due to a lack of talent. That no-talent suspicion caught up with me last December. I didn’t stop all creating. I slowed down, and I didn’t feel much like sharing any of it online. It didn’t seem important anymore. I considered becoming a Hermit Artist. That is still an option.

Two other changes have impacted my ability to blog: First, I’m working the tax season at H&R Block, preparing tax returns. When I was still practicing law, preparing tax returns was what I did to relax–it was nice to have a moderately challenging puzzle to put together and call it complete. But the hours working are hours I can’t create either art or blog entries.

Second, I’m obsessed with solving a problem faced by all artists–display opportunities. East Colony Fine Art is virtually kaput, although we will go out with gusto, putting on a final Petals to Paint at LaBelle Winery in Bedford, sometime in April. We (East Colony) couldn’t keep our gallery open because the artists had to cover expenses such as rent and utilities, but, after nine years of experience, it became clear that the sales were not sufficient to justify the expense for artists, not all of whom had trust funds to support them. Something was fundamentally wrong with that whole model. Artists should not have to pay to display their works, however much they crave to do so. The display of artworks–not only those by famous artists in museums but also those by the local artists–benefits the community. Such public benefits should be supported by public means. I am working on a model (working on it only in my head so far), and am investigating grant possibilities. Just don’t have enough time right now to formulate a concrete proposal.

Meanwhile, to pick up where we left off in December, perhaps you would like to see what became of the Work in Progress I was calling “After the Wedding”. It is currently to be known as “Two Takes.”

Two Takes

Weeks had gone by without an opportunity to complete “After the Wedding”, so when we went to paint Natalie in a new pose in the same chair, I decided to place her in the foreground of “After the Wedding”. I kept my strokes quick and intuitive so as not spoil the spontaneity that I had enjoyed in “After the Wedding.” I now have an unusual product for me, one trending toward the loose, barely suggested, portraits of Caroline Anderson, which I admire so much. (Mine leaves a lot less to the imagination than hers does.) It has been suggested that I darken the hand and chair on the right side of the picture, to keep eyes focussed on the actions in the center. What do you think?

Here’s a charcoal drawing I did last night in Deidre Rilely’s class at the Institute (NH Institute of Art), Advanced Figure Drawing:

New model (Jon), new paper (Niddegen), and dramatic lighting combined to inspire a pretty good job of it. So that kind of brings you up to date.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

At the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the Audubon Massabesic Center in Auburn, as part of an exhibit of Manchester Artists Association paintings and photographs; at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center in Manchester, part of the Healing with Art program; and at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester.

The In-House Model

Posted by Aline on December 9, 2015

When, a few months ago, I faced the fact that not enough artists were coming to my Monday morning life sessions to cover the cost of the model, I struck a deal with the model who lives behind my garage: my 19-year-old granddaughter Natalie. She now sits for me for free in exchange for her room behind the garage, and still gets cash when other artists join me for a particular session. She does not pose nude, but frankly, I was getting weary of painting the nude body anyway. Moreover, as I never tire of pointing out, paintings of nude bodies are difficult to exhibit. Americans are such Puritans! Except for museums, which unfortunately do not have room for a learner such as I, people running exhibit spaces are paranoid about the possibility that children might clap their wide eyes on a picture of a nude human being.

So you will see Natalie more often now. For the first pose pursuant to this arrangement, I had her dress up in her mother’s wedding gown. The gown had been hanging (literally) around since we cleared out attic and closets for a big garage sale that I had in early October. I retrieved it from the sale items along with some vintage items of clothing that deserved to be memorialized in paint.

Natalie was at first resistant. The gown was old-fashioned with lace and puffy sleeves, and covered her up to the neck–definitely not something that a modern girl like her would choose to wear anywhere, much less to her wedding. But the gown fit her like a glove, and after a while she got into the costume spirit of the enterprise. She has now spent a total of four Monday mornings in the thing.

The first week was just me and one other artist, so access to a good perspective on the model was not an issue. I chose a 18×24 panel and took my time, expecting to get a few more sessions with this pose. But more artists showed up the next week, so we had to move her out of the corner to get more good vantage points. But I have not given up on the first pose. I like the concept of the bride with her bare feet up, hair all frowsy, head thrown back in exhaustion:

The Wedding is Over (WIP)

The second pose is more formal. Natalie applauded the change because it got her closer to the fireplace and was more comfortable than the first pose. We all five started on portraits that were, at most, 3/4 length, so what she did with her feet was immaterial. (The feet were clad in slippers and resting on a toolbox stepstool.) I took photos at the end of the second and third weeks, then took a photo of her so that I could finish the piece using that as my reference. Today, I fixed some details and took another photo, its status today, which might be final. All four stages are shared with you below:

The bridal portrait (WIP)

The bridal portrait (almost done)

Bridal portrait–the real thing

The bridal portrait–finished, maybe?

Two days ago, we started on the third pose. Two other artists were with me, and we agreed to go at it again next Monday, but I think I’m finished with the face and hair at this point.

Snuggled up by the fire (WIP)

The snuggle for real–photo of the model in her pose

Natalie is all wrapped up in a blanket in front of the fire, the best pose ever, according to her. Next Monday I need to rearrange the folds of the blanket for the sake of the composition, bringing the back folds across her body instead of running down into the corner. Also, I feel that the blanket should be more in the shadow, competing less with the light on her face. I don’t want to bring the face into a more “finished” state. In fact, I’m afraid I have already lost a certain fresh quality. Here’s an earlier state of the painting:

snuggled early version

Another part of the scene that bothers me is the chair. I’m thinking maybe I should get rid of it. Or change the color. To what? I hate it when I find myself in a color quandary.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

At the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the Center for the Arts in the New London Inn; at Apotheca, in Goffstown, NH; at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center in Manchester, part of the Healing with Art program; and at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester. My painting “Darkly” (link to it here) has finally donned a frame and can be viewed at E.W. Poore Framing Studio in Manchester, as part of the Manchester Artists Association “Artist of the Month” program.

Continuing through December 24 is another popup from East Colony Fine Art: at Salzburg Square on Route 101 in Amherst, NH, open Thursdays through Sundays, 11-5.

October 2015 Artists’ Getaway Weekend.

Posted by Aline on October 19, 2015

WordPress keeps track: it has been 21 days since my last post. Oh, dear! I could look back at my calendar to nail down exactly what happened in these three weeks, but I know you’d rather not hear about physical therapy and closet cleanouts and yard sales. Or mishaps with cars. That last event will have long-lasting repercussions. My auto insurance company does not want me as a customer anymore. I feel humiliated. I’ve had a bunch of smallish accidents–fender benders, we used to call them–followed recently by my backing out of my garage with the hatch back still in the upright position. For safety reasons, cars crumple when they meet resistance, so the old-fashioned fender bender is now a very costly proposition. I never used to have any kind of accidents; in fact for many years I went without auto insurance and I never had reason to regret it. But now I am leasing a car and boy! that insurance coverage is a necessary resource. I am now thinking I need to find a way to survive without the luxury of car ownership. I won’t have to decide until June.

Last weekend Sharon Allen was my ride. She took me and my painting gear with her up to Bartlett for the Fall Artists’ Getaway Weekend. Besides Sharon and me, and Byron Carr of course (he organizes the event), we were joined by Betty Brown (Wolfeboro), Michele Fennell (Kensington), Suzanne Lewis (Rhode Island), Morgan Murdough of Henniker, Sean Carroll, Elaine Farmer of Amherst, and Beverly Belanger with her husband Joe. Our best day was the Thursday travel day. We painted from overlooks first on the Kancamagus Highway and then Bear Notch Road, which is a shortcut to Bartlett when it is not closed for snow. Sharon sold one right off her easel. While she was working on her 6×12 vista view, I was working on a tall tree portrait on a 16×12 panel. The blue peak in the far back is Mt. Chocorua:

Portrait of a Tree in Autumn

Our next stop on Bear Notch Road produced this one from me, more of a vista on a smaller panel (9×12), very representative of my style.

Bear Notch Road overlook

Friday we spent the day at train stations, first the depot in Crawford Notch, then the big station in North Conway. The weather was threatening rain all day, so we chose spots where we could seek shelter and still paint, ergo, train depots. My morning painting never got finished, but it has potential. Trees need skeletons to hold up those leaves. Note the tiny hikers emerging from the path up Mt. Willard.

At Crawford Depot, WIP

It was not finished because after only one hour, all of us agreed that it was simply too cold for us, and besides, we were hungry. We returned to the Inn to eat leftovers from Thursday night’s dinner and get ourselves warmed up for the next round.

The weather seemed somewhat improved after lunch–the rain seemed to have ended and all we had to contend with was clouds and wind. We did not need another train station for shelter, but for some reason, we ended up there. Silly artists! After the afternoon train pulled out of the station for its leisurely trip north to Crawford Notch–the very spot we had abandoned that morning–three of the four of us started a painting that depended on those tracks remaining clear of trains. What were we thinking? And I had deployed a 20×16 panel to work on–way too big to finish in an hour, which is about how much time we had before the train was back. Not a good day in terms of results. But did we learn anything? Beware of tracks bearing trains.

Block-in; clouds over N. Conway

Friday night most of us dined together at the Red Parka and returned to the Inn to drink wine and talk, talk, talk. I held out until the end but it was getting pretty hard to keep the eyelids propped open. It wasn’t even ten p.m. and I usually stay up past midnight.

Arriving late to join us was Ginny Barrett, an artist I know from the Manchester Artists Association. Ginny is not a plein air painter. She was there to do a story about plein air painters on her local access TV program. Her videographer was to join her Saturday and they would be conducting an interview with each artist over the course of the day.

Saturday: Interview Day. To keep all of us in the same general area for the sake of the interviewers, we gathered at the meadow west of North Conway, via the road signed as “Balcony Seat View”. Albert Bierstadt was somewhere near this spot when he painted “Moat Mountain”, a beautiful and accurate vista that hangs in the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester. I learned something about the sun, my eyes, and the deceptions practiced upon me by both. You see, I had discovered years ago that when the sun shines directly on the surface of my painting, I paint too dark. So I avoid that situation, sometimes by using umbrellas to shade my work space, sometimes by turning my back to my subject matter and peeking over my shoulder. And sometimes by facing the sun so that the panel creates its own shade. Saturday morning I could have used an umbrella and faced White Horse Ledge, but I decided to face the opposite direction, and paint what I could see in that direction, which meant the third option: I was looking right into the sun. Imagine my shock and horror when I later discovered that my painting was just as dark as if I had the sun shining directly on it, instead of into my eyes. Michele said it probably had something to do with the narrowing of my pupils in the sun. Here is the result–the painting looks like a nocturne (painting of night scene).

Accidental Nocturne

The cold and wind chased us out of that spot too, so the softest of us (that would include me) decided to try our luck at Glen House. In January a few years ago, when Sharon and I tried to paint en plein air up north in the dead of winter, we had sought shelter at this oasis across from the Mt. Washington Auto Road, and they allowed us to paint inside, looking at the weather through their floor-to-ceiling windows. This time we came in with four painters plus Ginny and Paul (the photographer), but we were again allowed to set up and paint inside. Having already wasted two 16×20 panels, I wisely brought out a 9×12 to use for a modest painting of the clouds and peekaboo mountains. It was snowing on top of Mt. Washington, and the clouds swirled in and out, obscuring then revealing first this ridge, then that one, and the sun occasionally found a hole in the clouds with which to torture us with brief glimpses of light.

The Start of Winter

This was a fun and rewarding project–from the inside, where we were warm and sheltered from the wind. Outside there was rain, there was sleet, there was hail, and of course, some snow. I’ve decided I paint much better when I am not totally miserable. Must be age. Used to be that a little misery took me out of myself and allowed purer artistic instincts to emerge.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

At the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; and at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester. For the month of October I have two paintings in the Womens Club of Concord, part of a three-part 20th anniversary exhibit by the Womens Caucus for Art. However, the hours during which the WCC is accessible to the public are unpredictable. You can visit the other two parts of the 20th Anniversary exhibits at the Kimball Jenkins carriage house and the Concord Chamber of Commerce.

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

When Something Ends . . .

Posted by Aline on September 28, 2015

Something else comes along to fill the vacuum. Last week, I had to announce to all on my list of figure artists that I was ending the Monday Life Group, after more than five years I think. It does not work as a drop-in kind of thing unless a sufficient number of artists are willing to show up a few times a month. I needed five artists to break even at the other studio, three to break even at my home studio. When times were good, more than the minimum would show up, and I would have extra money to tide me over those weeks when not enough artists showed up; but when you get down to three, there’s just no slack to work with.

Being forced to paint every Monday from the live model was very good for me and for my progress as an artist; I feel lucky to have had that experience for so long. There is a silver lining though, in the opening up of a whole half day in my calendar. I’ll have more time to lead tours at the Currier, work on my blog and finally get to more floral paintings. Perhaps flowers will replace figures.

So here is the last of the MLG output: my granddaughter Natalie.

Natalie on arm of sofa

I booked her for only two weeks, and it just proves that two weeks is not quite enough to complete a portrait, no matter how loose the style. I would have like to do more work on the hair and skin tone, but I pressed to get a face in. It is a pretty nice likeness, right down to the pained expression. Her hip was hurting.

My other output last week was in Canterbury, the town center of Canterbury. I have many times painted in Canterbury Shaker Village, but never before in the town of Canterbury. We (plein air artists) were invited to paint during the Farmers Market and bring some works to sell, but Flo Parlangeli and I went out there in the morning, before the Market, so as to have something of the town to show, maybe sell. We were warmly welcomed by the people of Canterbury, especially the hospitable librarians. Chocolate cake with vanilla icing left over from a library anniversary party the night before! And bathrooms! The Market itself takes place in the Library parking lot. To paint our first painting, however, we set up outside the general store, called the Canterbury Country Store. I later learned that the Town owns that store, probably because it’s not really a going proposition. But it sells good ice cream! There was a constant stream of residents stopping in for one thing or another. That was when we noticed one coming out with the ice cream cone. We had to immediately take a break and try the ice cream. Also the storefront looks adorable:

Canterbury Country Store

Maybe I can count this as a floral painting.

We moved downhill to the Library and the Market mid-afternoon, where we were joined by Sharon Allen, Mary Crump and Ann Traynor Domingue. The Market was fun. School kids were given some kind of scavenger hunt which required them to ask an artist what “plein air” meant. That’s why we were invited!

I was at that point a little tired, and being pleased with what I had already painted in the morning, not in the mood to stretch myself. I looked for a convenient subject, one that allowed me to keep my easel shaded and the table with my paintings for sale nearby. By facing toward the sun, I can keep my painting shaded, and the painting itself keeps the palette in shade. The subject I found when I faced the sun was Sharon:

Sharon at Canterbury Market

I don’t know why she needed two things protecting her from the sun–her canopy chair was backed up by her ShadeBuddy–but my depiction is accurate (as always). Notice the plastic bag that she throws her oil-smeared paper towels in. She uses those blue shop towels, as do I, because they are much sturdier that ordinary kitchen paper towels, even Viva, and I wish I had got the blue towel more prominently present in the picture. Sharon has burned her name onto the back of her Guerrilla pochade box. See that orange straw coming out of the plastic cup? Sharon keeps Dunkin Donuts in business single-handedly. I believe, but am not positive, that Sharon was painting the musician who was playing his heart out just behind me. I could have done him instead, but it would have been complicated since I could not use my ShadeBuddy on the hard macadam surface where I was so comfortably chilling’ out. Yeah, I was just lazy.

The rest of my week was taken up with so much interference: meetings, exhibit chores (I was appointed chair of an exhibit in Concord — see below), physical therapy (I’m going to solve the new knee problem and maybe even the old lower back problem that keeps me from standing to paint). At my age, because of my age?, I am productive only half the time I am awake; the rest of the time I am chillin’ out. I like to think of chilling out as restorative, but worry that it’s not restoring anything useful.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

At the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; and at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester. I have also had a painting at the Red River Theatre all month, which I had overlooked in previous posts, but it comes down at the end of the week. And for the month of October I have two paintings in the Womens Club of Concord, part of a three-part 20th anniversary exhibit by the Womens Caucus for Art. However, the hours during which the WCC is accessible to the public are unpredictable. You can visit the other two parts of the 20th Anniversary exhibits at the Kimball Jenkins carriage house and the Concord Chamber of Commerce.

Fresh Air painting

Posted by Aline on September 17, 2015

We hit two locations last week: Wednesday at St. Gaudens National Park in Cornish, NH; and Sunday near Mt. Washington and Crawford Notch. Both times I was with Sharon Allen and Betty Brown, and on Sunday, Mary Crump and Jim O’Donnell joined us. Sunday was Day Three of the annual International Plein Air Painters (IPAP) paintout. I had to skip Days One and Two because of schedule conflicts. I think that was a good thing–I was fresh and rarin’ to go on Sunday.

Augustus St. Gaudens was a sculptor. His two most famous sculptures are the Shaw Memorial, which sits outside the State House in Boston; and Diana, the largest of which lives at the top of Madison Square Garden. A small Diane graces the Currier Museum in Manchester, NH, and another large one is on display in St. Gaudens’ studio. This is the view of her that I could get from the doorway; I was not allowed inside because of my canine companion, Justice.

St. Gaudens’ Diana

Justice was with me as a treat for him. When I leave him at home, I have to lock him in the bathroom because nothing else seems to contain him when he gets the urge to defecate in the living room. To the list of outdoor painting problems, therefore, I have to add the possibility that your dog will scare off strangers who might want to see (maybe buy?) what I am painting. He was pretty good on Wednesday; only chose to bark at two people. Nobody was interested in what I was doing anyway–they were there to see St. Gaudens.

The statuary found in the gardens outside his home were not his pieces. However, he chose the statues to decorate his garden, so they must have enough artistic merit to justify a painting of them. For my first painting at St. Gaudens, I followed Betty’s lead and painted a statue of Pan standing over a fountain of sorts and surrounded by plants with huge arrow-shaped leaves, similar to a house plant that I used to cultivate but whose name has slid out of reach in my memory. Here is my photo of the statue, followed by my painting.

Pan’s Garden

Statue of Pan

Mind you, the light had changed between the time I took the photo and when I got to the point of lighting my composition.

For my second painting (usually I paint two in a day when we are out for the whole day), I wanted to include St. Gaudens’ house. I also fell in love with the light hitting an ornamental grass that graced flower pots that line up to lead down from the house into a semi-secluded outdoor room. Here is my first taste:

Line of sun-struck grasses

Just as I got set up to paint, a rain cloud arrived and slowly passed over. I checked my iPhone, and as far as it was concerned, the sun was still shining. So I sat tight, using two sun umbrellas to shelter in place. Justice was not pleased. I suggested to him that he could get under the chair I was sitting on for pretty good protection, but no, he had to rely on my easel/palette tray.

Here is what my subject looked like for about 20 minutes.

St. Gaudens home in the rain

As a result of the rain shower, and perhaps also the complexity of my subject, I could not finish the painting of the house and garden. I may use photo references of the grasses later to complete the floral grouping in the foreground.

St. Gaudens house and garden (WIP)

Justice did not accompany me on Sunday to Crawford Notch. On Saturday, a friend took him away to Massachusetts for sleepovers, but that left the Great Dane, Honey, all alone. I lined up a few people to let her out periodically.

On our way up to Franconia Notch, the weather was concerning–cloudy, drizzly. Then it perked right up as we continued north of the Notch, on past the Mt. Washington Hotel, which coincidentally was hosting a major art fundraiser for the northern forest. We had to get to the Willey House because Betty and perhaps others would be meeting us there for IPAP. The weather deteriorated. Clouds were very low, and it felt as if it might drizzle at any moment. But it didn’t! We stuck it out. My painting seems to have darkened as it dried, which is odd. If I had had sun lighting my canvas, I would have painted too dark, but I certainly had no sun that time.

Webster Mountain under cover

The ducks were bobbing around back and forth all day, and whenever a new person approached the duck food (actually fish food but apparently good for ducks too) feeding station (25 cents a pop), they would swarm toward that person. I had to have a few ducks in the painting. Those white blobs represent the white feathers. The rest of them–grays, browns– kind of get lost in the water. Here is a different photo of the painting, a little too red but without that bleached out spot and better for discerning ducks:

Webster Mountain under cover

After having lunch at the Willey House, we headed up to the Mt. Washington Hotel. The sun was still shining on the Hotel, but the mountains were still obscured with clouds. In addition to sun, this spot had wind. Most of the artists who were there painting not for IPAP but for the fundraiser were set up on the leeward side of the wide veranda that encircles the hotel. Betty and Mary joined them, while Sharon, Jim and I went in search of an angle from which to paint the horse that we had spotted as we drove into the hotel. It wasn’t easy because of the distance the horses were from the road, and the impossibility of getting any closer. That last line of defense for the horses were cattails, ergo wetlands. The closer vegetation was probably infested with ticks. Wimps we were. And when I sat to paint (which is how I have to now), my line of sight on the horses did not include any legs. Perhaps just as well. I have not painted many horses, and all I had to worry about was the body, neck and head. Legs and feet can come later.

Horses under gray sky

I painted the horses on a panel toned with cadmium red. You can see hints of that red here and there. The sky was the last piece I put in. I liked it with the bright red sky. I hated the whitish gray sky. So before it dried completely, I tried wiping out the whitish gray.

Horses with Pink Sky

Red appealed to me I think because it is dark, and I wanted a dark value in the sky so as to increase the attention paid to the field. It is hard to determine the value of red as juxtaposed to other colors. I supposed I could make a dark blue sky.

So that is what came from two days of painting outdoors in the fresh air, sunny and cloudy and sometimes wet. Before I close, I know that Bad Cat acquired some fans, so here is another shot of him in my bed. His real name, by the way, is Blue. Bad Cat Blue.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

At the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; and at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester.

Fabulous!

Posted by Aline on September 4, 2015

Duveneck Reader

“Fabulous” was David Curtis’ word for this painting, completed in his Gloucester garden as the last figure-in-the-landscape event. As if to prove he was not using the word casually, he added that it was a “prize-winner” (or “award-winner”–same thing except some awards don’t come with any prize other than the glory). I took that pronouncement as a challenge–I went home and entered it in the Artist Magazine competition for Artists Over Sixty. Doesn’t that narrow the pool so as to benefit my odds? On the other hand, artists who have been painting all their lives are pretty darn good by the time they attain the age of sixty, which hurts my chances. If/when I get passed over, I get to tell David Curtis he has been overruled.

The title, “Duveneck Reader”, arises from the fact that the book her right hand is resting on is titled “Duveneck”. It is an art book about the painter Duveneck, who was affiliated with the Boston Painters. As such, he occupied a middle ground between academic painting and impressionistic painting–pretty much what I do too. Anyway, David was so pleased that I included the book and actually thought he could read the word “Duveneck” on the spine of the book in my painting, that he might have been biased in his assessment of the overall quality of the painting. Hence, I felt I had to include the name in the title of the painting. (There’s not much logic involved in titling paintings. Numbering them seems like a cop out to me, so if something just pops into my head, I accept that as a valid title.)

For the competition, I didn’t rely solely on the one painting. As long as I am entering, I might as well include two more of my recent figures (at the cost of $20 per image). I chose the Bridal Gown as one, and a nude that I have just completed after three Monday sessions. The nude furnishes a good example of how very tiny adjustments can improve (I hope!) the overall effect of a painting. First, here is the painting after the end of the first session:

After one session

I knew I was going to have two more sessions (each is three hours) with the model in this pose, so I concentrated on getting the proportions and angles correct, in other words, the drawing of the figure. I could afford to leave the skin tones, facial features, hands, and drapes for another session.

After session two

After two sessions, the painting seemed almost complete. Thinking back onto Steven Assael’s demonstration, however, I knew I could improve on the skin tones.

At the end of the third and final session, I had this.

After session three (try to ignore the shadows at top, from my easel)

My artist companions thought the hands were too small. The size of the hands had been on my mind throughout as problem areas, and I had measured them against her face, taking into consideration the fact that she does have small hands, and at least one of them was extremely foreshortened in my eyes. But I accepted the verdict of Laura and Nancy, so after they left the studio, I opened my palette back up and got to work enlarging the hands.

American Beauty (final)

Nancy had suggested I just make the foreshortened hand wider. I did so, and also blurred the left edge. The other hand, which had been so difficult to render in the first place, now had to be re-rendered without help from the model’s presence. Insane. But the very fact that I had painted it dozens of times with her present enabled me to recreate a slightly larger version without her present. I think it actually turned out better.

You might have noticed that I hardly touched the red drape after roughing it in the first week. The shapes of the drapes changed drastically not only between weeks but also between poses–even during poses at one point. During the second session, one of my cats became enamored of my model and the drapes. He explored the possibilities and ended up carving out a napping spot behind her hip. Wiser the following week, I locked all four cats up in my bedroom.

Bad Cat

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

At the Library Arts Center in Newport, NH; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the Firefly American Bistro on 22 Concord Street, Manchester; and at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester.

Practice, Practice, Practice!

Posted by Aline on August 28, 2015

This week I have hardly painted at all. I’ve had three doctor appointments, several projects left over from when I was a tax lawyer (translation: I’m still preparing tax returns for old clients), and various minor household emergencies to deal with. Nevertheless, I do have something to put out there for your consideration.

I have been messing around with older paintings that never made the grade. On two of them, I painted an abstract landscape over, and inspired by, the painting underneath.

Red Leaves against Early Snow

Purple Mountain Majesty

On yet another, which had failed to excite because it was a party scene with no people in it, I set about inventing people. Seems to me that I should be able to come up with a method for faking believable people in a loosely painted scene. I have looked at some of Sargent’s paintings of his friends logging about on picnics and such, and I observe that there are many spots in his paintings that are totally undefined. Sargent could paint loosely with confidence. I am thinking that if I start by just getting figures in the frame, I can worry about developing a confident style later, after I have the general technique down. This attempt is actually my third; several years ago when I was on my-bike-race-up-Mt-Washington kick, I included crowds of people in the backgrounds of two paintings. Both attempts were highly successful. Both were largely abstract. It should also be noted that I had photographic references for both. I am pleased to show you:

My son, the biker.

Fans

This, my third attempt, could not be abstract because the people are the foreground and the building in the background is pretty sharply delineated. The buildings started out as the focal point, and now I’m trying to plop these figures in front of it and have it come out looking kind of reasonable. I made up my mind that this exercise did not have to result in a successful painting.

I started with an ocherish color on my brush, and painted in silhouettes of plausible figures. I found it hard to invent animated gestures. Maybe that will get easier with practice. Then I painted other colors, representing clothes and hair, on the silhouettes. I threw in a few floppy hats and one striped striped. Here is the result:

Lawn Party at Exeter Inn

I hate to admit this, but I also tinkered with a couple of paintings that I had deemed presentable enough to post on this blog as decent achievements. With the tinkering I have spoiled them. I would go back and restore what was obliterated, but I am afraid the paintings will never get back the freshness that made them so pleasing to begin with. What can I say? Lesson learned. Oh, you want to see? Here is the saddest one–I did have to fill in the background, which is what got me started with the tinkering. First the original posted version, then today’s:

Natalie 2

Natalie after Retouches

All I can say is, thank God I didn’t touch the hair. But isn’t it curious that by toning down the natural redness of her cheek, chest and arms, I drained the life from her. Surely that is another important lesson: let the color chips fall where they will.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Color Me Encouraged

Posted by Aline on August 20, 2015

Last week I was bellyaching about how dissatisfied I was with my paintings, and Fate apparently paid attention, showering me with encouragement this week. Just a little, no “tens” on the ten-point encouragement scale but maybe, considering all, a solid seven.

First, I partook in the 4th Annual Essex (Massachusetts) Paint Out on Saturday. It was my first foray into this event but I had heard that the auction was widely supported. We painted Saturday and handed in the wet paintings before leaving Essex to go home. On Sunday we returned (I was already in Gloucester for my Figure in the Landscape workshop with David Curtis) for a Silent Auction (4-6) and a Live Auction (6 -7). About 18 works had been preselected for the Live Auction–works by popular local artists. About 100 paintings were entered in the silent auction.

Here’s how a silent auction works: the artist declares a value for the painting (in my case, $325 for each 9×12 wet painting, unframed); the authorities (actually, some computer, they alleged) use that value to peg the minimum/opening bid (in my case, $125). Each painting is accompanied by a bidding sheet. The top line states the opening bid. A bidder writes his/her name on that line. Thereafter, other bidders could come along and bid higher by writing their names on the next line, and stating the higher bid next to their names. The first bidder must lurk in the area, watching for such an eventuality so as to strike back with another bid if he/she really wants the painting. So that is the Sunday scene.

Now back to Saturday. Flo Parlangeli and I sought out a scene with marshland (for her) and buildings (for me). Based on a tip I got at registration, we drove to the end of the appropriately named Water Street. From there, we had a view upriver (the Essex River) to the Town of Essex (buildings, including a steeple, de rigeur for a New England town), and a view downriver toward the bay, eventually toward the ocean. Downriver was Flo’s choice.

View of the Town

Essex River–Highway to the Sea

The edges of the Essex River are very marshy. Its pace looks relaxed, and its path meanders and splits off to form separate pools here and there. When the tide is low, mud flats are exposed. The Town is celebrated for its clams, dug out of those mud flats.

We were welcomed by two brothers who had inherited the house at the end of Water Street, and encouraged to go anywhere on their land, either side of the road, despite the No Trespassing signs. They also regaled us with inside stories about our location and the town. The bottom of Water Street had once been called Callahan Point, Callahan being their great grandmother’s maiden name, or Clay Point for the industry of brick making that once thrived there. Associated buildings are long gone and the land is now all under conservation never to be despoiled again.

Soon we were joined by another artist–from New Hampshire! Total coincidence. She was a pastelist and left after lunch, never to be seen again. We looked for her painting at the auction but could not find it. I suspect she was a victim of Dissatisfaction. Speaking of lunch . . . Wow! I volunteered to go collect the lunches for all three of us since I had finished my first painting. That turned out to be quite a project. They served clam chowder (of course), tossed salad, sandwiches of every description, homemade chips, cookies, water and condiments. I had to choose what kind of sandwiches and figure out how to transport three lidless clam chowders cups to Water Street.

Flo was working all day on one larger piece looking downriver, and didn’t finish until about 4 o’clock. With that extra time to think, it occurred to me that between us we had two extra tickets to the auction event, so we offered those to our hosts. One of them said he would bid on my upriver painting, and indeed he did, and he won it for the opening bid. My other, downriver, painting also sold, to a local art photographer whose stunning sunset-over-the-marshes view was in the live auction. (Unless he got outbid–I have not received any word yet of the final bids.) Unfortunately, Flo’s painting did not find a bidder. Indeed, a quick glance around the barn of the items up for silent auction suggested that less than half were finding bidders–not exactly what had been anticipated based on prior years’ performances. I suspect the large format of Flo’s painting might have put off savvy buyers, who are all too familiar with the cost of framing.

We stuck around for the live auction, at first because David Curtis had one in it and I thought I might get a David Curtis painting for an unrealistically low price–what a coup that would be! However, I fell in love with a different painting and had to go my limit ($300) to get it.

Wildflowers in August by Carole Loiacono

This artist spends half the year in Florida, apparently. I guess she was not at the auction. Neither was David Curtis, and by the time his piece came up for bidding, I had “shot my wad”. Sorry, David.

Riding on the crest of my Essex success, yesterday I embarked with Sharon Allen and Jim O’Donnell on trip up to Wolfboro for the annual paintout sponsored by the Governor Wentworth Arts Council. This paintout also ends with a sale of some sort, sometimes an auction, other times, a straight sale. One time, I sold in the silent auction format–$100 for an unframed 8×10, which I had to split with the host organization. My buyer that year had guarded my painting so that no one else could get near the bidding sheet to compete with her. I didn’t really mind, because it’s not about the money for me. I was flattered.

This year we were allowed to set a price, and to be consistent, I put the price of $325 on my 9×12 painting. Yes, only the one painting. We had to turn them in at 2 o’clock and I had picked a difficult subject that took almost all of the 4 hours available to me. There were no buyers for $325 paintings. $60 paintings, yeah. I would have attributed my failure to find a buyer to buyers choosing against me, but for the fact that I WON People’s Choice!!! I now know how Sally Field felt accepting the Academy Award for Norma Rae. I had not even voted for my own painting, assuming it wouldn’t even be in the running. Instead I voted for Jim’s excellent painting of the water vista. And Jim came in second! I am so glad I voted for him. Fate rewarded me.

Proud Winners

My painting was of a statue in Cote Park called “Sharing”. It features two bronze figures and a park bench, which visitors use like a bench for photo opportunities. If only they’d stay long enough for me to incorporate them into the painting. The title of the sculpture must refer the “sharing” of the experience of eating ice cream cones by grandfather and boy. It should be noted that there is a place to buy ice cream down at the docks. After handing in my painting, I availed myself of a cup of something chocolatey. A rather large cup. Turns out, I deserved it!

A Moment to Treasure

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Dissatisfaction

Posted by Aline on August 13, 2015

Dissatisfaction seems to happen like depression–is it a result of some mysterious collision of hormones or synapses (I’m not a scientist!), or is it justified by perceived failure? I am of course referring to my art. I can look at a painting that I created and quite admire it if I pretend it’s not mine. But knowing it is mine, and it is not completely successful in terms of what I had hoped to achieve, I am dissatisfied. This is very discouraging. The only way to escape discouragement is to find encouragement from the outside world. The best encouragement–say the “ten” of encouragement–would be if multiple admirers were competing to purchase a painting. A “one” on the encouragement scale would be sincere praise. I don’t mean to devalue sincere praise, but let’s face it, like is not the same as love.

The search for encouragement is why artists exhibit and seek to sell their paintings. (If they are looking to make a living, they teach, or pursue a career in illustration or graphic arts.) I think encouragement is also a prime factor in artists taking workshops from other artists; sure, you go to learn, but what you hope to learn is how good you already are! It’s as if we need a constant infusion of encouragement to keep us going. I know there are hermit artists whose work sees the light of day only after they are gone (gone=dead or institutionalized), but I cannot imagine how they keep plugging away with little or no input from the outside world. Such people must be so strong willed, propelled by such an inner vision, that they can only be compared to saints, as celebrated by the Catholic Church. (I was brought up Catholic and was a pretty devout one until I got out in the Real World where, after two children, birth control became a necessity.)

All is this is a preamble to this week’s collection of recent paintings with which I am not satisfied, completely. First, here is Margaret back again, after a three-session pose:

Margaret in Blue

Three sessions is long enough to get it all right. I had to repaint her leg and arm in the third session because I had the perspective so wrong that her leg looked as if, in the words of a fellow artist, it were coming out of her belly. So it is correct. But is it inspired? After the first session, there was (I think) a freshness and spontaneity that is now lost. How did Sargent manage to labor over his portraits and produce paintings that seem to have been painted casually albeit perfectly with the first stroke?

Two more figure in the landscape paintings have entered the world as the result of workshops in the garden of David Curtis in Gloucester. First, the orange one:

Figure in Orange

She was holding a red parasol, the same parasol that I painted last summer, but this time, we had sun flowing through it. The two-piece dress is Indian, a saffron yellow-orange. Do I have enough light? No, it does not pop like it should. Is the green unrelenting? Maybe, but it’s not the problem, is it? Orange and green should produce quite an impact together. Perhaps the figure should have been bigger. So I resolve to go bigger with the next one:

Figures in White

This set up is similar to last summer’s red parasol.

My angle on the figure is so similar, but this time I have more of the face. Red has been replaced by white. We are all thinking about Sorolla, who was especially admired for his whites. The first impression of this painting is pretty good, I’m hoping, but I hate the little area where her right hand comes to rest. And I wish the parasol sun dapples came across better. Wish? That’s what I’m reduced to, wishing it were better. OMG!

That’s enough dissatisfaction for this week. Last week, I enjoyed the highly encouraging turnout for my reception at the Firefly last week. I didn’t count heads, but the place was full and I didn’t have any leftover food to take home. Thank you, all who showed up and seemed to like it. For those who didn’t quite get there Monday night, you can still view the paintings at Firefly before September 9, and I recommend you make a reservation to eat in the gallery room. Their food is excellent!

This weekend there is an event in Essex, Massachusetts, that you should consider attending. Saturday artists will be crawling all over the town making paintings, and Sunday these paintings will be displayed and offered for sale. Essex Paint out and Auction Facebook page with all the details. I am getting up extra early Saturday morning in order to drive down there and participate.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

At the Library Arts Center in Newport, NH; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the Firefly American Bistro on 22 Concord Street, Manchester (reception August 3–5:30 to 7:30–all are welcome); and at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester.

July in New England–outdoors in the heat of the sun

Posted by Aline on July 21, 2015

I feel a little as if I have been running around without purpose, just answering one call after another to paint outdoors. But now, looking over my output, I see there must have been other things absorbing my time and attention. Nevertheless, you are not likely to want to see the entire three weeks’ of artworks, and I am in the happy position of picking my favorites to talk about. I have painted in Manchester, Goffstown, Newport, Portsmouth, Rye, and Newington, all of New Hampshire, plus Gloucester, Massachusetts. Here are the best of the lot:

Uncanoonuc Garden

This location is on the side of a hill called Uncanoonuc. Actually, there are two hills by that name, next to each other, and even Wikipedia avers that they are “mountains” with impressive views of Manchester to the east, the Wapack range to the west, and on a good day, Boston to the south. From Manchester, the Uncanoonucs resemble the mounds of a woman’s breasts, and Uncanoonuc is a native American word meaning just that. One Uncanoonuc boasts a road upwards. Along the way is a retail plant nursery that has installed groupings of shrubs and flowers to show its customers how lovely is a good landscaping plan. The blue spruce caught my eye, in part because much earlier in my painting career, I had recreated another Little Blue Spruce.

Little Blue Spruce–Putney VT 2008

Well, I don’t think I can say my blue spruce technique has improved at all since 2008! The earlier blue spruce was growing at the studio of the “Putney Painters”, where I was taking a workshop with Albert Handell. Albert liked my spruce but thought I had crowded it too much with the other trees. I usually take the advice of masters to heart, but maybe 20 percent of the time, I stay true to my own original intent. I see his point, but I also admire the pluckiness of the baby spruce staking its own territorial claim under less than ideal circumstances. I’ll bet today it is crowding that building in the background.

In Newport, in the course of delivering and picking up a painting for the regional show at the Library Arts Center, I got myself invited to participate in the Garden Tour, as a painter. They had about ten different gardens open for tour, each with different attributes. I told them I cared only about the flowers, not interested in mountain vistas or water features, so they sent me to the site of an abandoned gravel pit. The homeowners have been reclaiming the land patch by patch. As each load of topsoil was dumped into a pile, stuff got planted . I chose to paint the pile devoted to the memory of a beloved dog who had passed the year before.

A Boy and His Dog . . .

The message set forth on the rustic sign reads “A boy and his dog are joined at the hip and heart forever.” So instead of flowers, I found myself focusing on hardscape elements of rocks and sculpture, so easily is the artist’s intention waylaid. When I had finished A Boy, I made another stab at featuring flowers. I went in search of a floral closeup.

Flower Box

I knew I was doomed to fail at the task of matching the glowing fuchsia reds of the petunias, but set out to try anyway. The next day, after the paint had set up a little, I was able to add cleaner, brighter color here and there so as to convey the sense of color, even if the exact color remained elusive. The straw strands in the basket came mostly out of my head, or rather, out of my memory of my favorite painting by Jamie Wyeth–Hay Bale.

Isn’t that the most lovingly portrayed hay bale ever? A living, almost breathing, hay bale. Don’t you feel like you could stab it with a pitchfork right on your computer screen? Just imagine how it looks in person, as I saw it on the wall of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts last year.

I have one more Exeter painting to show–it was painted “live” just before a lawn party at the Exeter Inn. I painted another during the lawn party, but I don’t love it so much.

Exeter Inn

I was pleased with the flowers in this painting, and I hoped my handling of flowers in the landscape might be improving.

Portsmouth and its environs saw a lot of me the past few weeks. And I saw just the tiniest fraction of paintable spots, so rich is Portsmouth in architecture and marine attractions. I accumulated three favorites:

Inlet, Boat ramp

Entering Prescott Park

The Zinnias are perhaps too carefully depicted. Reality is my downfall.

Wentworth by the Sea

The biggest challenge here was the shoreline–how to show the transparency of the water’s edge lapping on the rocky beach.

Again this year, David Curtis is giving his workshops on painting the figure in the landscape, in his garden. Our model was dressed as a bride:

Bridal Portrait

I’m growing weary of green! Note that the landscape portion of this figure in the landscape is not much more than fuzzy suggestions of landscape. I felt it had to be thus.

But not all work was done outdoors. Our Monday life group met twice:

Natalie 2

Sheridan

All in all, the lesson I have taken away from these three weeks of fairly intense painting is renewed awareness that I still suffer from a deficiency that has plagued me all along. I’m not “loose” (messy) enough. Is it that I’m so fast a painter that I end up wasting my time on “cleaning” and straightening and perfecting? For example, the windows behind the window box were never “finished” because, thank the lord, I realized I could not improve on their rough state. But examples of overpainting are too abundant. When will I ever learn?

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

with the East Colony artists for the rest of July at 163 (167) Water Street, Exeter, NH; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the Firefly American Bistro on 22 Concord Street, Manchester (reception August 3); and at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester. Also, on July 23, from 5 to 8 p.m., the doors to all art galleries in Manchester are open and served by a old-time trolley. I am participating as a member of the Manchester Artists Association in a one-day exhibit at the Rines Center, on the Trolley route. It’s all free! See the Open Doors Trolley Night website for more information and a list of venues that have a show going on that night.

Lupine Worship

Posted by Aline on June 20, 2015

Every year in June, our NH Plein Air group organizes an outing to Lupine country. “Lupine country” in NH means primarily Sugar Hill, because Sugar Hill encourages the propagation of lupines in support of its annual Lupine Festival. Sugar Hill is a drive of about two hours from Manchester, where I am. But great lupine patches do exist elsewhere. You might therefore think we are a little mad to drive for two hours to find paintable lupines when we could find a closer patch, or even create our own patch at home, given proper conditions. But we plein air painters are a travelin’ sort, and we would hike into the wilderness for miles when younger and just as mad. For an example of such a mad artist/hiker/camper, see this blog.

(“Lupine”, also spelled “lupin”, is pronounced with a short “i”, although one online authority allowed as how the long “i” is OK when the word is used as an adjective. For example, we went to lupIne country to find lupins. I only bring it up because there seems to be a difference of pronunciation in these here parts.)

My companion on this year’s lupine hunt was Flo Parlangeli. As if a two-hour drive wasn’t long enough, the adventurous spirit in which we set out Wednesday morning motivated us to take a detour around the Pemigewasset Wilderness, through Crawford Notch, where we had heard of a glorious lupine patch in years gone past. Alas, tales of its demise had not been exaggerated, but enough remained to justify a quick painting from each of us.

Lupines in Crawford Notch

Flo’s Crawford Notch lupines (a quick iPhone snapshot)

Lupines are predominantly blue or purple up here, but pink and white exist in small numbers. As you can see, I prefer blue lupines to purple lupines, so I exaggerate in that direction. The blue of lupines has been something that has frustrated me from the beginning. Back in 2009 on my first foray (just before I started blogging, so there’s no entry recording that experience), I thought it was the Ultramarine Blue that was preventing me from getting just the right shade of violet. Today, looking back, I realize that my red must have been the culprit–it must have leaned toward orange, so when mixed with blue, the hues were neutralized toward brown. My next stab at lupines occurred in 2011, with better results, I just revisited my blog entry and found this tidbit of wisdom, which I had forgotten between then and now:

I have never been satisfied with the color of my lupines in paint, but got a clue from Michael Chesley Johnson in his recent blog on painting lupines in New Brunswick: when the blue of the flowers is applied to a surface of wet paint, the blue sinks into the paint underneath, muddying the blue; so the painter must go back after the oil paint has set up a little bit, with fresh blues to represent the glorious blue of the real life flowers. This I did, and I also blended in a tiny portion of a rose color that I don’t take outdoors with me, to achieve the purply blue lupines.

Unfortunately, the image that I used to illustrate the above statement does not now seem to me to be effective in that regard.

Field of Lupines in Jaffrey

Then in 2013, Stab No. 3 but I was still not entirely satisfied that I had captured the essence of Lupinness (Lupinity?):

Lupines in 2013

Wednesday, I took with me Magenta and three blues (Cerulean, Ultramarine and Cobalt). After squeezing them all out on my palette, I kind of swirled them together in an effort to get the impression of purply blues in various proportions. (Taking a leaf from the Impressionists playbook.)

After that hour in Crawford Notch, we headed back west to Sugar Hill country and proceeded to get totally and inexcusably lost when we were within only a few miles of our goal. Another hour wasted! We remained cheerful because it was a perfect day in June and we were surrounded by wild loveliness, some of it the color of lupines. After returning to Sugar Hill, we explored its usual offerings, but settled in a unexpectedly cozy spot across from the Sunset Hill Inn, next to the golf course parking lot. (Sunset Hill House was the scene of two Snow Camps that I blogged about in years past. Then it failed, and we ended up for Snow Camp last January at the Bartlett Inn. But Sunset Hill Inn has opened in the same location, with renovations ongoing, solar panels installed on the roof, and a very welcoming Brit in charge.)

Lupines with Irises

Flo’s Sugar Hill lupines (another hasty snapshot)

I must say that the photographs that I took of my own two paintings in my studio do not truly convey the lightness, the sunlightness, that exists in the originals. But what else is new! The only times I have seen photos that looked as good as the paintings is after they have been converted into giclee prints of the painting.

So what have I learned as a result of the lupine hunt and the writing of this blog? Impressions of lupines work better than portraits of lupines. Flo’s color sense is so amazing–notice how it led her to emphasize the deep purple of the flowers and the yellow tint in the gnarly tree. I must work harder on not being literal.

Flo would say that hers are not finished paintings. She intends to work them up in her studio, I think. I considered making improvements to my two but decided against it. Not that they are perfect, but they are what they are–an impression of a string of moments in a delightful spot on a delightful day in June.

However, I will be taking a second look, with Michael Chesley Johnson’s rediscovered advice in mind. It is true that you can’t avoid getting some yellow from the surrounding greenness mixed into the blue–which grays back the purplyness (purplity?)

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

with the East Colony artists for the rest of June at 163 (167) Water Street, Exeter, NH; at the Bedford Public Library; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the NH Institute of Art, 77 Amherst St., Manchester; and at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester.

Ah, Youth!

Posted by Aline on June 11, 2015

There must be a trick to it, one as yet still being kept secret from me: How to portray youthfulness? I have hear it posited that the facial features of children fit into a smaller area of the head. As we age, the features enlarge and spread out. But what about a teenager? When do their features settle down in the spots preordained for their adult selves? Why is it so hard to portray rosy young woman without making her look like a made-up hussy? I guess it’s really the same old issue, that of getting a likeness, just with the added complexity of pinpointing an age range.

Monday’s model was my nineteen-year-old granddaughter. This is how the camera renders her.

Natalie in pose

For most of Natalie’s life, and certainly all of my [ten-year-old] life as an artist, I have been trying to capture her on paper. Every time I try, I fail. She always comes out looking older, more sophisticated than her much-older sister. Monday was my first opportunity to paint her from life and I sure hoped that would make a difference. One issue seemed to be the length of her nose (as I was presenting it), so I shortened it by bringing down the level of her eyes. That did help. Note that this adjustment is consistent with the theory that children’s features are closer together.

As I griped throughout the session, Laura opined that youthful features are best barely suggested as opposed to carefully implanted. It certainly did work for her painting. And now, in hindsight, I can think of some great paintings of children where that is certainly true–e.g., virtually all of Sargent’s paintings of children. Sigh. Sometimes it is harder to do less. No, it is always harder to do less!

Towards the end of our session, she asked me for a photo of her posing next to my painting, for her to send to her social networking sites:

Natalie as model

And here is the final. I would not dare to try to correct anything at this point, so glad I am to have got this close to the goal.

Study for Portrait of Natalie

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

with the East Colony artists for the rest of June at 163 (167) Water Street, Exeter, NH; at the Bedford Public Library; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the Sharon Arts Center in Peterborough, NH; at the Buttonwoods Museum in Haverhill, MA; and at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester.

Monadnock

Posted by Aline on June 3, 2015

“Monadnock”– a word applied to a lone mountain rising from the land. Wikipedia claims it comes from a native American word, but I have my doubts. Maybe the “nock” portion, but come on, “mona” must be from “monos”, the Greek word that we combine to signify singularity–monopod, monocle, monotony. Mount Monadnock in western New Hampshire is, they say, one of the most climbed mountains in the world–second only perhaps to Fujiyama in Japan. It provides a fairly easy day hike with a lot of bare rock face from which to admire the views. I used to do it once a year. My husband, in the sixties when we visited his aunt on Snow Hill, would run it in the morning from Snow Hill and back again. Before breakfast. Looking back, I wish I had gone with him, but I didn’t get into mountain hiking until decades later.

These days, I paint Mt. Monadnock, usually from ground level. Last Friday, however, Cindy, Fran and I drove to the top of Pack Monadnock to paint one of the many vistas presented there. All three of us chose Mt. Monadnock as our subject matter. Pack Monadnock and its neighbor North Pack Monadnock are East of Mt. Monadnock, and there is yet a third, Little Monadnock, to be found in southwest NH. We like our Monadnocks, but here’s the only one that has achieved star status:

Wapack Trail (Southward)

The black flies were unmerciful, but an occasional breeze and generous slathering of bug repellant helped to keep us focussed on our painting. The Wapack Trail is well-used, so we had lots of company complaining about the black flies. The State maintains the road and the vistas here, and charges each visitor by car $4 each–except “seniors”; I get a free ride. Thus is the manned fire tower cost offset, partially anyway. By the way, that yellow triangle painted on the rock in the right foreground is the trail marker for the Wapack Trail, which runs along the ridges of the Wapack Range, from Massachusetts to Greenfield, NH.

I could go on and on about my connections to Monadnock and the reasons I am drawn to paint it, but that would bore the heck out of most people. So here is a successful figure painting from Monday’s life group session:

Bridal Gown

Our model was Tam, who comes here from Vietnam. She posed for us in her wedding dress. She was exquisite.

Coming up in Exeter are two events worth noting: Bruce Jones has arranged for East Colony artists to exhibit their paintings at a storefront on Water Street, for one month, while the owner looks for a buyer for the space. Our exhibit will coincide with the first Friday Art Walk on June 5, and the American Independence Museum paint out on Saturday June 6. I’ll be participating in both.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

with the East Colony artists for one month at 163 Water Street, Exeter, NH; at the Bedford Public Library; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the Library Arts Center in Newport, NH; at the Sharon Arts Center in Peterborough, NH; at the Buttonwoods Museum in Haverhill, MA; and at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester.

Ups and Downs

Posted by Aline on April 15, 2015

Yes, it has been a few weeks since I last posted. No, I have not got sick again. But I have been floundering a wee bit. It almost seems that as I practiced my landscapes and learned my florals, I forgot how to paint a portrait. That disappointment cast a pall over all my work. But I’m following my own advice, the second major rule of art-making: Don’t Give Up. (I guess the first rule would have to be: So Try Already.)

It helps that I have a second successful floral painting to show off–what a high it is, to create something that surprises you with its beauty:

Floral Painting No. 2–Roses

This floral is the second of three projects that will eventually emanate from the Floral Painting course I am taking at the NH Institute of Art with Deirdre Riley. I missed three classes because of the Florida sojourn, but I needed only the two weeks remaining to me for this painting. Two weeks equals six hours of painting. I could actually paint a living floral arrangement and get it done before the flowers started to wilt. But I’m not that energized anymore. My batteries only last three hours.

Coincidentally, the annual Petals to Paint event comes this week–TOMORROW actually, to East Colony Fine Art. About 20 floral designers are designing and putting together a (live) flower-based sculpture inspired by the painting that each chose a month ago. One of the designers chose my “Nap, Interrupted” (the very large cat portrait) as her inspiration. If I had a six-hour battery, I’d be able to go in after hours at the Gallery and make a painting of her creation.

The reception for Petals to Paint is Thursday from 5 to 8 p.m., but the exhibit will remain up for the next two days. The address is 55 South Commercial Street in Manchester, NH. I’m very sorry to report that this will be the last P2P at this location, and one of the last receptions for East Colony at this location. We decided not to renew our lease because not enough of our artists were willing to commit to the continuance of the Gallery. On May 14, we will host our last reception, a kind of farewell party. Our last day will be May 30.

The portraits that I have been wrestling with are mostly of Margaret, although I have to confess my last portrait of Aubrey was no keeper either. I was trying so very hard to get a likeness of Margaret in two 3-hour sessions, that I lost my perspective over the works as entire pieces. I was going to post pictures of these failures but I lost my nerve. Just trust me–you don’t need to see them.

Of course, my response has been to try harder. At SLG (Saturday Life Group) we had a new model, a very young tall lanky guy named Andrew. I had wanted to concentrate on portraiture, but all I got was the back of his head for the first long pose (“long” in this group means 45-50 minutes).

The Back of Andrew

The last pose gave me the opportunity I sought.

Generic Head

The problem with this “portrait” is that it is largely invented. He held his head in this position for perhaps five minutes, then it started dropping, dropping, until finally his chin was on his chest. I continued with my original version, filling in what I already knew about faces, treating it as some kind of memory exercise.

This Monday, in order to conquer the whole problem of Margaret, I announced she was in it for a two-week pose. All I needed was more time, was my reasoning. But when I saw the pose, I could not resist included her gesture and the yellow dress. This is my Work in Progress:

Girl in Yellow (WIP)

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; and at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester.

Marco Island Part 6 (final): Kooky, Experimental

Posted by Aline on March 29, 2015

At long last I get to complete the report. I seem to have caught the same bug that laid me low for the month of February–probably from the plane home–and just hope that after only 8 days, I’m getting over this iteration of it.

I left you in my previous blog with 4 paintings to be posted. The first two are from one location on Collier Boulevard, farther South from our usual haunts. I discovered South Beach when we went in search of the beach wedding, and conceived the idea of one daylight painting showing the colorful, tree-lined boulevant with high-rise condo buildings behind, and a later one showing what happens at night, with lights lining the street and dotting the windows of the high-rises. Mary had other stuff to do that afternoon, so I was dropped at my chosen spot, by her always obliging husband, Frank. I set up in the swale between the boulevard and the sidewalk on the right side of the street. I got lots of welcome attention from low-rise residents from my side of the boulevard as they strolled by on their way to the beach. A few voiced a guess that I was painting the big, pink building that was my backdrop because I lived there. If only!

South Beach Residential

It certainly wasn’t a beautiful building, but it was an interesting building, and it was representative of the many such buildings lining the South Beach. (By the way, I decided to take these photos with my iPhone in order to be consistent with the ones already posted, but they didn’t come out as well as the ones that were photographed in the South Florida light. I was able to manipulate them so what you are seeing is pretty accurate–by reducing exposure, increasing contrast and saturation, and increasing red and yellow. Go figure!)

Mary came to pick me up after about 2 hours and we grabbed a quick supper at a nearby restaurant. By the time we had returned to the site, we had about 1 hour before sunset. I composed my picture by moving farther away and including more of the buildings on my left. I had basically a black and blue scene. Then the lights started to come on. Not in the pink building but on the grounds–Christmas-like lights wound around the three palm trees, fountains sprouted under spotlights, and walls and landscaping got their share of the drama. There were a few glows issuing from a few of the balconies, but very few.

South Beach Nocturne

Mary observed that many owners of condos on Marco spend only a few weeks at the time there since they tended to have many desirable locations to call home. It’s also possible that the windows are glazed with impenetrable coatings, like limos get. Anyway, the painting was my very first “nocturne”, which is what artists call a painting that depicts a night scene. Most nocturnes are painted in the studio, I’ll wager, but there are plein air nocturnists. I don’t know how they do it–shifting focus from darkened scene to lit painting seems impossible to me. I quit pretty soon after sundown. In order to pack up my gear, I deployed my cell phone flashlight, and one of my strolling admirers held it for me while I gathered up stuff. It was fun.

The next day was Tuesday, the day before my flight home. Every since I had been visiting Mary on Marco (2009), she had been mentioning her desire to paint a certain bridge. She already had one really good painting of it, but felt she could do even better one day. I asked her to make that day that Tuesday. So off we went, toward the Everglades, a road not heavily trafficked. I set up close to the road, so I got more of the dust blown our way by big trucks. It was a little unnerving to have the trucks barreling right at you, for we were on a curve. I have lived to tell the tale. It’s just what plein air painters have to do, you know, risking life and limb for their art!

My Bridge from Everglades, looking North

Here is Mary’s version in watercolor:

Mary’s Bridge

Since my flight wasn’t scheduled to take off until after 5 p.m. on Wednesday, we were able to meet up with the Wednesday Painters again, this time inside a private, gated community with its own beach and wildlife area. A marshy area caught my eye–the reflections mostly, but with a stray clump of marsh grass providing a great focal point. I set up with a view of the clump, next to the railings, and decided to include the railings in my composition. I suspected that the framing of the reeds by the fence contributed to my decision to paint the reeds.

Watery Home

Compare a cropped version without the railings:

Watery Home-Detail

So was I right? Or is the Detail better? Because I paint on paper, I can easily crop the painting for best presentation.

Here is a photo Mary took of me just before I started to pack up my gear–sorry about the absence of reds–fault of her iPhone sending, or mine receiving. The two wet paintings were ensconced in their Art Cocoons there to my right.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Snow Camp 2015

Posted by Aline on February 8, 2015

I’ve been “absent” for a few weeks, in part because of Stapleton Kearns’ “Snow Camp 2015”, which took place at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett, NH. Stapleton started with Snow Camp in 2010 and repeated it annually thereafter at the Sunset Hill Inn in Sugar Hill, NH. But last year, Sunset Hill Inn closed its doors. Stape booked the workshop at the Bartlett Inn, which a few of us had been urging upon him from the beginning as it is home base for the Great semi-annual Artists Getaway Weekend. When I learned of the relocation, I jumped to sign up for it despite my 2012 decision not to spend any more workshop dollars on landscape painting. Besides, “Have boots, will paint [outdoors in the winter].” Meaning: I spent the big bucks back in 2010 for my duck hunting boots and the only time I use them is when I am painting outdoors in the winter–a pretty rare occasion. I was a little concerned by the fact that I am now five years older than I was when I first braved the conditions of frigid temps and difficult terrain underfoot. Regardless of any other measure of the workshop, mere survival was this year going to equal success.

I did survive–maybe! Four of our company had been nursing various cold-like symptoms, and Wednesday night after being back home, my own version of the ailment announced its arrival with a sore throat. I have taken the previous three days off to rest and recuperate, getting nothing done. Still no recuperation in sight, alas! I still have a wretched sore throat, along with other miseries. My resilience was probably compromised by those five years of aging, not to mention the daunting weather conditions we braved over the weekend: temps in the minus column before calculating the wind chill; fierce wind gusts; and on the last day (Monday), a new layer of snow falling gently. I was very happy to stay over at the Inn an extra night.

Miriam and Nick (the Innkeepers) kept the kettle on all day for tea and cocoa and if the timing was right, an artist could go inside to find warm brownies or ginger cakes awaiting. We stayed on the grounds of the Inn to paint, same as we had done in Sugar Hill. Sunset Hill Inn had a spectacular view of Cannon Mountain and Franconia Notch, but at the Bartlett Inn we enjoyed a different kind of subject matter: trees, buildings, roads, all covered in snow. No vistas. That suited me fine.

Snow as a painting subject is surprisingly complicated. In earlier days, before I knew any better, I’d painted a lot of snow scenes from photographs, which doesn’t even get near the problem. My blog of 2010 and 2011 talked about some of the issues, but when I migrated that blog to this site, I never reposted the photographs of those paintings. I am remedying that oversight now, but I’ll post those earlier paintings here too. In chronological order:

Hammock in Winter 2010 (despite the title, it’s really about the shadows) 11×14

Plein Air Artists 2010 11×14

Franconia Notch 2010 (footprints were inserted back at home, I think) 16×20

Alone on the Trail 2011 (yes, it snowed on our Snow Camp that year) 16×20

Franconia Notch 2011 (what happened to the stone wall?) 16×20

Stape always does a demonstration painting in the morning. It’s harder to deal with the cold when you are not absorbed in your own painting, but at least you can keep your hands warm. I spent both afternoons of the first two days working on one scene. The first afternoon was largely wasted: I had “toned” my panel to cover up an old painting underneath, and the paint I had used refused to dry. As a result the toning color (tan) was muddying up the new composition. And it was so cold that I couldn’t even squeeze my white paint onto my palette. Stape had to do that for me. And the paint was so stiff that I couldn’t mix it or spread it. Stape told me to wipe it down to get rid of the bad underpaint, then use a lot of Liquin to soften up and dry the new paint. The next morning, I went straight to work, forgoing the demo. Because of the conditions, I quit pretty early, about 2:30 in the afternoon that Sunday. Today I cleaned up the faults still remaining in the painting, and this is the result:

Last Scrap of Light at the Bartlett Inn

Whereas the 2011 workshop had been about getting all the primary hues into the snow, this year the problem was getting the values right. I had to make sure that no spot in the snow bank was as light as the lit edges, and I darkened all the shadows in the foreground so as to heighten the drama. The scene is of the cottages next to the Inn itself.

The next day, it was snowing all day. I watched Stape’s demo in the morning and started a smallish (12×16) painting in the afternoon. Most of us felt limited to whatever we could grab as subject matter from the shelter of the porch; I was right on the edge of the cover. Light, flaky snow accumulated on my palette during the course of the afternoon. I didn’t worry about it though, because Michel (hearty and hardy Nova Scotian) set up down at the road with only an umbrella to shelter himself. Here’s my view from the porch of the Inn:

Driveway into the Bartlett Inn

In addition to Michel and the usual assortment of NH and Mass. artists, we had artists from Houston, Texas; Baltimore, Maryland; and “an imposter” from Huntington, West Virginia. “Imposter” because he was not a painter at all, but an author, engaged in research for his new novel featuring an artist. You can buy his first novel, about a musician, from Amazon: Song for Chance by John Van Kirk. I downloaded it to my iPad but haven’t been up to reading it yet.

Snow Camp 15 - 31

In the background you can see the cottages that I featured in my first painting. The tall guy in the orange hat is Stapleton Kearns. It’s the same hat he was wearing in 2010. The guy in the red hat is James, who has not missed a year of Snow Camp since it started. The guy in the light gray parka is Byron Carr, who initiated the Artists’ Getaways as the Bartlett Inn–back in 2005, I think. From left to right: me; Michel; Jack; Jason; Gina Anderson (fellow artist at East Colony); James; Suzanne; Stape (in back) and Holly (in front); Gary; Dave Drinon (buddy from many classes at NHIA); Byron; John the Imposter, and Debbie (the organizer par excellence!). Wonderful collection of people!

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester; at the McGowan Gallery in Concord, NH.

Fun and Struggles; Struggles are Fun?

Posted by Aline on January 16, 2015

Here is this week’s output of my Monday morning life group:

Paint, not charcoal

Strong shapes have always been Nancy C’s forte, conveyed in charcoal. The big news here is that Nancy brought her oil paints for the first time, starting out by doing a grisaille painting of the model, just as Jan did when she first started with us. (“Grisaille” means painted in monocolor, usually black but it can be any color.)

Jan's version

Well, Jan is certainly into color now! Bold, vibrant colors, strong shapes and brush strokes. . . . Interesting foot. (More on that below.)

Waiting Nymph

Nymph is mine. I had in mind “sleeping nymph” when we were setting up the pose, but she is clearly not asleep. The body part that I had the most difficulty with was her left arm. Getting the width of it just right doesn’t sound like rocket science, but for some reason, my brain does not always perform correctly. It’s important not to give up when that happens. Because I spent so much time fussing with the drawing of the shape, the painting of the shape fell a little short. But I still rate the painting as successful. Perfection cannot be the goal when you only have three hours minus breaks to complete a figurative painting from life.

Nancy and Jan were having a lot of difficulty getting the figure’s right foot looking like a foot, because it was so foreshortened from their angle that on the canvas it was coming out looking like a club foot. So we photographed it, and they are supposed to be working hard at home to render a believable foreshortened foot. Here’s the photo they are working from:

Pesky foot

I’m not sure, but I believe if you can get the toes to read like toes, the rest of the foot will become viable. I can’t wait to see if Nancy and Jan succeed, and they better bring in the paintings this Monday to show us!

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Very, very soon, the annual Love, Lust and Desire show at the McGowan Gallery in Concord opens! January 30 (Friday) 5-7 p.m. is the reception. Over 70 artists are participating. Unfortunately, I can’t be there because I signed up for another Snow Camp with Stapleton Kearns. (Concerned that I may be getting too old and fragile for such shenanigans? Me too.) I have ten pieces in the McGowan show, mostly nudes, all 8×11, all priced at $150 each. These are original oil paintings for only $150! So check it out if you like my nudes.

My Life as a Model

Posted by Aline on December 12, 2014

I was forced (gently) to pose for my Monday life group because our scheduled model just did not show up. That happens rarely, but often enough so that we know how to cope. The organizer, unless someone else volunteers, has to step up and be the model. Not necessarily nude. It was too cold Monday in the studio for a nude model anyway. Having nothing much else to think about while I was posing, I plotted to snap photos of everyone’s interpretation of me and use them for my blog post. And Monday was not my first rodeo, so I decided to incorporate all of my experiences as a model. It’s a theme.

Back in 2011 when the model was late to Peter Clive’s class on drawing with color, I sat for maybe 20 minutes while Peter did a demo. Peter gave me the sketch:

Peter has a new website here.

Then a few years later, Cameron Bennett asked me to pose for a project that constituted his Master’s thesis in the MFA program at Lesley University. (He got his BFA from Massachusetts College of Art. The many art colleges in Boston confuse me–are there some with alternate identities?) I knew I could do it since (they said) I had sat so very still for Peter. The duration of Cameron’s pose might have been as much as two hours. After many months –while Cameron worked on the very large painting that utilized, as one smallish element, his charcoal drawing of me–I received my “payment”–the charcoal sketch itself. Alas, his large painting cannot be found on his website here. I think he liked the charcoal study better than the finished product; he seemed reluctant to hand it over to me. It is pretty awesome. Note the length of the nose–it’s right on! (This becomes relevant later on.)

IMG_0029_2

Finally, what you have been waiting for: the six pieces created/inspired by my recent gig–a full three hours. Well, actually 2 and 3/4 hours since we spent 15 minutes waiting for the scheduled model.

Those who voiced any opinion at all thought I did good, especially praising my choice of colors when I got dressed that morning (lime green and cobalt blue). Even one who does not draw or paint in color appreciated the color scheme.

Pencil

Watercolor

Charcoal

Oil

Pastel

Charcoal

I didn’t attach names, only media, because at least one did not want to be identified with her product. Contributors are: Barbara, Nancy C, Jan, Cavaleen, Laura, Nancy H. Somehow Louise got away before I could get a photo of her piece.

And just for good measure, here is my most recent self-portrait:

Not very recent though–2011 is the date on the photo. I was still doing long noses then. Otherwise, I daresay it looks mostly like me, staring in a mirror with unprecedented concentration. Note the same earring shows up in Peter’s sketch. Those were my 2011 earrings. I have moved on, albeit reluctantly.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery and the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (both are in Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the New London Inn in New London; at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester; at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center in Manchester (but access is limited to patients and health care workers). And for the month of December, at the Currier Museum of Art, Manchester NH.

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

Celebrating Humanity?

Posted by Aline on December 5, 2014

In the context of the highly publicized current national and international events, humanity may not deserve a ticker-tape parade. On the macro level, humanity has little to brag about. But in the micro scale, the artist’s scale, things of beauty can still be found. Three different nuggets have tumbled together in my brain to form this topic.

Nugget No. 1: Have you ever stopped to consider what goes into the creation of a magnificent work of music? I was listening to the broadcast of a Beethoven symphony last week when the enormity of the achievement struck me: first, humans had to invent and perfect and pass down instruments; then an individual human had to come up with an arrangement of notes to be played on the instruments all together, only to be achieved after many years of practicing and learning and experimenting; then humans had to learn how to play the instruments and then how to play the notes as arranged by the composer, which required many years of practicing and learning and experimenting; then it all had to be pulled together so that the individual musicians played a complex composition as if they were a single organism. To bring the glorious sound to me, there’s the recording technology, the broadcasting technology . . . . My mind boggled. One symphony is an enormous human achievement–but an achievement by individuals working alone and together, all of the pieces contributing to the magnificent end.

Nugget No. 2: For marketing purposes, I have lately been mulling over and over a catch phrase to use to describe my own artistic output. Seeker of beauty? Finder of beauty? I was looking for some way to express the idea that I paint stuff that exemplifies beauty of everyday life, perhaps small stuff that ordinarily gets overlooked. No messages, no “concept” other than beauty. Sure, I’m an environmentalist, a landscape painter, convinced that we are hurtling toward our own doom by destroying our atmosphere, but I have no urge to paint, say, an oil refinery as a villain. If I were to paint an oil refinery, it would be to discover the beauty of the shapes, lines, and values to be found there. I went back to the mission statement offered to me by Cameron Bennett where he used the phrase “preserving humanity”. I think he means preserving a record of humanity, since I do not know of a way for art to actually keep us safe. Is there a dark thought inherent in the idea that such record might one day be needed? No, I rejected such a gloomy interpretation. Perhaps the combination of “preserving humanity” and “discovering/revealing beauty” could be expressed as “celebrating humanity”?

Nugget No. 3: last night I attended the reception for a show of works by Peter Granucci. The show is called “Memorial to Lost Species”.

Peter Granucci, Alone in Grief

The drama and anguish exhibited in the above image is repeated in perhaps 20 paintings, all with a human figure and many with the skull of a nonhuman creature. Peter created frames for each piece, which extend the grittiness and turbulence of the backgrounds of the paintings. The captions on the paintings are pointed references to the losses of species, and the grief we, mankind, ought to be experiencing as a result– humanity grieving for the species destroyed, grieving for the world lost, grieving, ultimately, for its own viability. Peter certainly had a message, and he wasn’t satisfied with just one painting to convey that message. Before inspiration took him into this deep dark place, four years ago, he was like me, painting beauty. He celebrated the beauty of the female form. His drawings of the female form are simply exquisite. But when an emotion overtakes an artist, the output has to reflect it. Think Picasso’s “Guernica”. Now think Granucci’s “Memorial”. The show will be up for the rest of December at the Art Gallery in New England College, Henniker, New Hampshire.

So I am a little shaken by Peter’s message. And the events on the news. How can I thank about “celebrating” humanity when humanity does so much that is wrong?

Nevertheless, I share with you the last two weeks’ of Monday life painting:

Better than Climbing Trees

The title is a reference to the fact that, after modeling for us in the morning, Robbie was off to climb trees in the process of cutting them down. That was the Monday before Thanksgiving, and that Wednesday we got hit with lots of wet, heavy snow that felled a lot trees over power lines–my family went without a Thanksgiving dinner this year. Just thinking, a little adumbration perhaps?

A Lovely Nude

We think this new model might be the answer to Rebecca’s “retirement” (have you missed Becky?). Interesting how she and Robbie are in almost identical poses, leaning against the wall.

If you remember my very large painting of a cat awakening from a nap (“Nap, Interrupted”) that I started last summer but shied away from finishing because I was afraid of the whiskers . . .

Nap, Interrupted

here she is with whiskers. I had to finish her because I promised her to the Currier Museum for the month of December. Here is how she looks on the wall of the Museum’s Community Gallery, on the lower level where the classrooms and auditorium are:

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery and the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (both are in Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the New London Inn in New London; at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester; at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center in Manchester (but access is limited to patients and health care workers). And at the Currier Museum of Art, Manchester NH.

New Muse

Posted by Aline on November 22, 2014

In Saturday Life Group this morning, we had a new model. Her name is Gwen. About halfway through the morning, I realized why she seemed so familiar to me: She had modeled for the figure painting class I took with Sean Beavers last June. You can see the results of that class here. I had recruited her for my Monday group, but, after collecting all her contact information, I forgot her name. What good is contact information if you can’t remember the name of the person you want to contact?

Anyway, everyone there this morning was just thrilled with her. “So graceful” was how Nancy put it. “Beautiful . . . everything about her is beautiful”, observed Steve, “even her pregnancy,” Gwen’s baby is due in February, so she is not all that large with child yet, but we will see her again in January, I hope.

For my part, I haven’t had this good an SLG session for months. I usually don’t bother looking at my sketch pad after I get home. Today I not only looked, I “fixed” (sprayed with fixative to prevent smearing of charcoal dust) them and removed a few from my pad in order to prep them for framing! Here they are, in order of importance, low to high:

Gwen in Five Minutes

Gwen in Ten Minutes

Gwen in Twenty Minutes

Gwen in Forty Minutes

The Ultimate Gwen (50 minutes)

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Three Pies on One Finger

Posted by Aline on November 11, 2014

The three pies are: Landscape en plein air; animal portraiture from photo; and human portraiture from life. I am happy with all three.

First, the landscape happened when I went down to Boston to collect the painting that was on exhibit at the Arboretum. A week ago, Thursday, October 30, was a beautiful day–yet another beautiful autumn day in New England–if this is climate change, it’s hard to root against it! Not willing to devote the trip solely for pickup, I brought my painting gear. The Arboretum allows me, because I hold a handicapped designation (walking disability–I can walk, but not real far, and even less far with my painting gear on my back), to drive into the garden and park wherever I need to for the sake of art. The top of Bussey Hill would have been inaccessible to me if I had to rely on my legs to get me there.

On Bussey Hill (in the Boston Arboretum)

From Bussey Hill, the highest point in the Arboretum, you can see the skyline of Boston, and that view was my original target. But when I got up there, the skyline view was mostly obscured with trees still hanging onto leaves, so I found a better one. The distant blue mound is probably Blue Hills, to the west of Boston. Painting foliage in this way is what I consider to be my forte. So far, the world has not beaten a path to my doorway in response, so maybe I need to find a new forte.

For portraiture, I have two examples since I have had two meetings of the Monday Life Group after my last posting. The model who posed pregnant and nude for us a few months ago has delivered of her baby, a little fellow named Montain. That’s a heavy name for such a small scrap of humanity, so I think of him as Monty. At only a few weeks old, he participated in his mom’s modeling gig. He was very well-behaved, but he did squirm. It was an extreme test of the artists’ ability to memorize gestures and get them down so as to create a recognizable babe in arms, not just a blob in swaddling clothes.

Introducing Monty

He lost a sock at one point, which delighted me. He actually sucked on a pacifier most of the time, but I managed to suggest a face without pacifier. Perhaps I should have gone with the pacifier? Inasmuch as it felt a little bizarre to have mom nude while the babe was fully clothed, we asked her to return next week prepared to pose for us clothed. The next image is the result:

Take Two: Mother and Son

Monty’s head is a bit misshapen, so this one must be taken as a work in progress. Funny how I never noticed that strange shape until I saw this image.

Finally, something different. I love cats. I own two female cats, and I live with another two male cats, which one of my granddaughters left behind when she moved out. The boys are quite young. Lively. Pushy. I have resorted to keeping them separated from the girls, who are exceptionally intimidated by them. The boys leave no stone unturned in their effort to make sense of the world around them. Causing stuff to fall to floor is one of their favorite experiments. But they have stolen my heart.

Partners in Crime (WIP) 16×12

Blue, the one on top, is just turning one year old this month. Milo is probably one and a half. Milo is more respectful of my space. Blue respects no one’s space, but he does not aggravate the girls as much as Milo does. Blue will leap on me without warning and just cling onto me until I cradle him. Bad habit acquired when he was more of a kitten.

I only have a little bit of work left to complete this painting, after which I will have giclees made of it since I have heard that animals sell. Whether the granddaughter gets the original or a giclee for Christmas remains to be decided.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Dazed and confused

Posted by Aline on November 1, 2014

I’m finding it harder and harder to keep all my balls in the air. The blog ball is usually the first to hit the floor. As my years pile up, I seem to slow down. All too often, I tell myself, “You deserve a break.” “Deserve” maybe, but “can afford”, not so much. Could the train of artistic success be slowing down to the point where it may become sidelined altogether? (I can’t resist mixing up a few metaphors. Trains, jugglers, they seem to go together OK, as in a circus somehow.)

Maybe it’s time to focus on the good stuff that has happened. Thinking . . . Well, I got into a regional juried exhibit at the Center for the Arts (CFA) in New London. To be more accurate, one of my paintings got into the exhibit (as an exhibitionist, I was always a nonstarter). The chosen painting is “Enchanted”, a 4-foot tall gallery-wrap. [You can see it on my page titled “Studio Landscapes.] I painted Enchanted quite a while ago, and it has hung at Hatfields, and at Kimball Jenkins, then briefly at East Colony, where I noticed how warped it had become. I knew I had to do something to correct that issue before taking it up to New London, so I decided to mount it on a larger, stiff board, like plywood. But plywood that large would be quite heavy. So I am using instead a large piece of foam insulation board, which I painted dark brown.

Enchanted, on foam board

The board, for all its stiffness and success in correcting the warp, is kind of a fragile surface. That’s worrisome, and I am now debating whether to glue on some thin slats as to mimic a frame, which would protect the edges. Such a project it has become!

frame added

The reception for the CFA exhibit is this coming Friday, November 7, 5-7 p.m. at the New London Inn, 353 Main Street, New London, NH. Unfortunately, there’s little chance I will get there. That Friday is one of my Boston Symphony Orchestra Fridays, and we rarely get back to Manchester before six p.m., and New London is another 45 minutes North. But if you are in the vicinity of New London next Friday night, do check it out and let me know what I missed.

Another upcoming date to be hyper-aware of: Saturday and Sunday, November 8 and 9, are NH Open Doors. My personal studio is not participating, but I will be at East Colony Fine Art Gallery on Sunday, demonstrating my painting. The hours for East Colony are 10 to 4, both Saturday and Sunday. The address is 55 South Commercial Street, Manchester NH.

I have two new figure studies to show you. One is Margaret, clothed in a striped shirt. The second is Nancy, clothed in a different striped shirt. Nancy is one of us artists, but graciously filled in when our scheduled model couldn’t get there on Monday. Nancy usually sets up the pose and lighting for us, so when it came to setting up herself and lighting herself, she was handicapped by not being able to judge how it looked. Looked pretty good, I guess. I’m happy with my result. I do love stripes! Why to people assume I’m being sarcastic when I say that?)

Margaret Sept 2014 16×12

Nancy as Substitute Model

Although it looks as if I had more time with Nancy, and therefore she must be on a smaller canvas, both paintings are on 12×16 panels. I was forced to paint in a background around Nancy because I was painting over an earlier painting, and I hadn’t covered it up with a neutral ground the way I had done for the Margaret panel. When forced, I can stretch.

But the Margaret was a struggle, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to show it on the blog. It does look better “in person”. (Note to self, must come up with better term to express personhood of a painting.) But today I couldn’t resist juxtaposing the two poses and their stripes.

Here is a Mark Your Calendar alert: The NH Institute of Art is holding “Art and Soul“, its 4th Annual Auction in Portsmouth this year. Thursday, November 13, 6-8:30, at Discover Portsmouth, 10 Middle Street, Portsmouth, NH. I have donated my Lotus Studies to the cause (see it on Studio Landscapes page), and the family of my recently deceased friend and law partner, Hilda Fleisher, has donated something from her large collection of contemporary NH art. I can’t wait to see what it is, out of all the pieces with which I became familiar during her life. This event is always fun, with great music and food, and artwork. Tickets cost $45–worth it!–and all proceeds go to fund student scholarships.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery and the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (both are in Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett and the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester; at the Manchester office of Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter; at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center in Manchester (but access is limited to patients and health care workers). Two Lowell Cemetery paintings are on view at the Arts League of Lowell, 307 Market Street, Lowell, Massachusetts. In a few days, Enchanted can be see at the New London Inn (address above). And in Portsmouth’s Levy Gallery, you can find 8 of my newest 6×6’s as part of the annual Women’s Caucus for Art 6×6 show.

New Hampshire’s Fall Foliage

Posted by Aline on October 21, 2014

Last weekend was the annual Fall Artists’ Getaway Weekend to the White Mountains, based at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett, New Hampshire. We had some rain, but we also had some glorious, warm sunshine. If only the wind hadn’t accompanied the sun, we would have had little to complain about. As it was, Byron Carr flourished, creating one of his most spectacular paintings (and that’s saying a lot) under threat of rain. Unfortunately, and as usual, taking a photo of it never occurred to me when it counted. So you’ll just have to take my word for it.

I have my own version of a cloud painting. This was my first painting of the weekend, Friday morning’s painting.

Pumpkin Patch under Cathedral Ledge

It was actually raining when we set up. Umbrellas intended for use against the sun turn out to serve also against the rain. Who knew? Gradually the clouds rolled away leaving the Ledge exposed, but I stayed with my initial impression, with the Ledge almost totally obscured. The green patch is surrounded by pumpkins but appears itself to have been freshly sowed in something growing bright green–a cover crop perhaps. The intense green is unusual at this time of year, but trust me, I even downplayed it a little.

Although I had driven up to Bartlett the day before, Thursday had been a solid, hard rain day. I left Manchester kind of late (around two o’clock) and arrived at Bear Notch Road about four o’clock, in no hurry, enjoying the views without any urgency to paint them. Bear Notch Road connects the Kancamangus Highway (a famed scenic highway) to Route 302 at the center of Bartlett–a great shortcut through the hills and woods. Bear Notch is a two-lane road with overhanging trees. The trees were still in full leaf, orange, red, and yellow. The rain was unrelenting. I felt as if I were floating through an orange cocoon, what with the rain slick on the road reflecting back at me all the oranges, red, and yellows of the trees. I studied the effect as best I could, trying to memorize the elements. But I didn’t stop to photograph it. Story of my life, right? (Well, it was raining pretty hard.) So, to get to the point of Bear Notch Road description, when I finished the Pumpkin Patch before my companions were ready to move on, I started a painting of my memory of the orange cocoon. I continued to refine and improve on it over the weekend, and again today. I added the white line, although Bear Notch has none, in order to facilitate identification of the ribbon as a road, not a river. My problem then was getting across the idea that what you are seeing on the road is water reflecting trees, not just fallen leaves. Only you can tell me if I succeeded.

The Orange Cocoon

Friday afternoon we relocated to Jackson, all the way around to the other side of what I think of as the Mount Washington wilderness. There are the two routes leading northward out of North Conway: 302 runs to the west of Mt. Washington, and 16 to the right. Eventually, each route gives access to Mt. Washington. The western route offers the Cog Railway. The eastern route has the Auto Road. All weekend we got no farther North than Bartlett on the West and Jackson on the East. This was kind of strange, but the weather did limit our painting time somewhat, so we tended to stick closer to home base.

In Jackson, the Jackson Falls are always a big draw for artists. But we had another motive: reception at five in the Jackson Historical Museum, for exhibit opening and sale of White Mountain paintings, both old and contemporary. Yes, there were many Champneys for sale. Here is proof. Upstairs in the Museum are paintings from its permanent collection, grouped by the area of the Whites being depicted. In the center of this room is a topographical map with the locations identified. A treasure. Downstairs I discovered that I really like the works of Edward Hill, but could not afford to buy any. Upstairs, I discovered I really like William Henry Hilliard, especially this work of his called Eagle Cliff.

Eagle Cliff, by W.H. Hilliard

I have my own version of Eagle Cliff from Profile Lake, which I call “Profile Lake”, the cliff being not a prominent feature in my painting. See it here.

The food at the reception was outstanding, by the way.

Ah yes, my Jackson painting. Sharon and I set up in the parking lot of the Museum, in part because there were good views of the town center and of the river that flows down from the Falls, and in part because we’d be on the spot, parked and ready for the reception at five o’clock. I chose to paint a small section of the river where artfully arranged boulders create happy little rapids.

This is actually a cropped photo. I will be cutting the painting down as cropped, which I can do because it was painted on paper. Guerrilla Painter “carton” paper. The top part of the painting is distracting and irrelevant, and I shouldn’t have wasted my time or paint on it.

Saturday we revisited May Kelly’s. My idea. Last Spring we painted in the back of May Kelly’s, an Irish pub-type restaurant. My painting was of the back of May Kelly’s. See it here. Around me, other artists had been painting a terrific view of the valley with the Saco River with White Horse Ledge looming over all. Shortly after I got home in May and photographed my painting, the May Kelly painting went missing, never to turn up again. Perhaps one disadvantage to painting on paper. Anyway, having lost the earlier version, I was eager to paint another version of the back of May Kelly’s. As before, other artists’ attention was focused on the valley view. We got rained out, and headed indoors for lunch and reconnoitering. Terrific lunch! By the time we finished eating, the rain had let up a little, but instead of finding a new location, we went back to the Inn and worked on our unfinished paintings. I had taken a reference photo of the back of May Kelly’s just before the rain hit (finally, I remembered to take a picture), so I was able to finish that painting using the photo. In fact, the photo was enormously helpful because it revealed to me how wrong one of my angles was.

May Kelly’s, v. 2

After finishing May Kelly, I worked on Orange Cocoon some more, getting advice from anybody who was willing to give it, about how best to convey the rain reflections. Saturday night, per our tradition, we got pizza in for supper and reviewed all the paintings that we had created over the weekend. Byron as usual and as appropriate (he organizes the weekend) had the most, and one of the best. Byron Carr. Link here to his website. Other great artists participating: Elaine Farmer from Amherst, Sharon Allen from Derry, Bruce Jones from Exeter, Diane Dubreuil from Connecticut, Penny (sorry, can’t remember her last name) from Maine, and Phil Bean from Milford.

Sunday I meandered my way home, looking for a spot that needed painting. I didn’t find it where I expected to, along Route 153 through Eaton and Purity Springs. But on a whim I left the main road (I think I was on Route 28 at this point) to explore up a hill to a place called Moultonville, and happened on just the right spot: an eye-catching scene accompanied by place to park and another place to paint, all without risk to life, limb or property. According to one of the interested residents who stopped to engage me in conversation, the subject of my painting is owned by an artist, last name unknown.

Moultonville Home

So another productive weekend in the company of some of my favorite people comes to a close. You can’t ask for better.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery and the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (both are in Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett and the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester; at the Manchester office of Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter; at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center in Manchester (but access is limited to patients and health care workers). One painting is hanging this last week in the Boston Arboretum visitor center. My two cemetery paintings (seen here) are on view at the Arts League of Lowell, 307 Market Street, Lowell, Massachusetts. And in Portsmouth’s Levy Gallery, you can find 8 of my newest 6×6’s as part of the annual Women’s Caucus for Art 6×6 show.

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

If you want to add a public comment to this blog, go to the bottom of this page where it says “Leave a Reply“, and enter your comment in that box. I love to get public comments, so don’t be shy!

Double courses, Double helpings

Posted by Aline on September 5, 2014

I’ve been painting so much lately that I have not had time to blog. Today’s blog, therefore, will cover a lot of activity. On the menu are three pure landscapes and three figures in the landscape. You have seen earlier versions of two of the latter, so we’ll start with those even though my changes to the originals represent my most recent activities.

The Black Kimono, Take 2

I felt I had to fix the arm in Black Kimono. That is kind of a dangerous thing to do, especially since I had no photo reference, or if maybe I did take one, I forgot to look for it. I just plunged ahead, building a right arm where I felt it should be, given where the left arm was. The right arm still disappears behind her thigh, but the angle is more natural, and the plumpness of the forearm conveys the message better. I am not declaring Black Kimono “done” yet because I am considering whether to add some pale streaks of lights reflecting off the kimono, so as to better delineate the leg underneath. I hesitate because the result will be gray, and that can just look messy.

I have not had much experience with black. In fact, I used to not carry a tube of black with me at all. If I needed black, I would just mix the darkest available colors, usually ultramarine blue and burnt umber. I learned that in one of the first courses I took at the Institute. Peter Dixon was teaching color theory and Renaissance painting, and combined both of them in the same room at the same time. So I picked up basic color theory along with grisaille and glazing. Black was not used for either course. Since then, I have encountered many other teachers who make “black” with their own combination of darks.

Yesterday morning we met again in the Lessard garden with our nude model. You’d think with another three hours to work on something that seemed really close to finished after the first three hours, that it would be perfect now, and I even could have started a second painting. Alas, not so. I’m less happy with it now than I was last week. Maybe happiness is a function of the number of hours expended on something. Longer generates higher expectations, perhaps higher than achievable.

White Floppy, Take 2

Her new face is what bothers me the most, but I also see background “errors”. And one of the reasons for spending the extra time–improving the patterns of light and shadow on the figure–just don’t dazzle like I hoped. It seems that just when I feel I am making significant progress of that ladder of artistic proficiency, I come up short and get knocked back a peg or two. Did I just mix a metaphor? How embarrassing! I used to be so good with the English grammar stuff.

While we are looking at figures in the landscape, let’s check out the Last Pose of Summer–the last one in David Curtis’ garden. Our model Mary Ann brought a costume reminiscent of Gibson Girls–between Victorian and the Roaring Twenties. On top of her filmy white gown, she wore a dusty pink lace coat. Dusty pink is close to the color of skin in shade. How hard will that be to depict!

The Last Pose of Summer

I kind of think I nailed it. I would have liked to capture more definite leg shapes, but it was windy and the fabric kept swirling around her so as to prevent any sort of definitive anything. Go with the flow, I say. So I did.

For the pure landscape selections, we have another local back yard, one to dream of, a trip southward to a vista of brackish marshes, and tree portrait from the Boston Arboretum. However interesting these scenes might be to a viewer, to this artist they felt dreary for the lack of a human presence. Or even a dog presence. I have become quickly spoiled by my good fortune in David Curtis’ garden. Still it is good to be outside painting:

Elaine’s Back Yard

This really is in the back yard of a fellow artist, Elaine Farmer, who just moved to Amherst and invited us over to paint on her fabulous garden. But we can’t resist water. And there was a little foot bridge over the stream, whence I painted.

Cox Reservation

The Cox Reservation is located in Essex, Massachusetts. David Curtis and a group of his followers meet up there regularly to paint. I have actually painted this scene before, when Sharon Allen and I were exploring the Essex National Heritage Area. As I was driving down, I resolved not to get sucked back in with this vista, but rather to find something interesting, preferably with flowers, to paint close up. So much for resolutions. I hate vistas. They are so hard! When I started on this one, there wasn’t even any water to paint, but as the tide rose, it got better. But why was I even there? I don’t know. Something in my afterlife must have required it. No, I have it! I just compared it to the earlier one (linked above), and it seems my vistas have improved somewhat since 2012. Yea!

Smoke Bush at Arboretum

Finally, the Smoke Tree. I had to deliver a painting to the Arboretum anyway, so I decided to make a day of it and paint something. No vistas this time. I went looking for flowers, and found mostly flowering trees, which is not something very common at the end of summer. This bush (“tree” is reserved for bushes that grow a lot higher) was located at the top of Bussey Hill. Luckily, there was a road to get me there. (They let me have a driving permit because I couldn’t carry my gear all that way, and I do have handicapped privileges due to the arthritis in my back.) I labored over the Smoke Bush so much harder than I should have had to, and I suspect that is because I had the time to do so. Had a model been present to paint, the tree gets abstracted in the background.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery and the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (both are in Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett and the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester; at the Manchester office of Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter; a single painting is on view for one more week at the Radisson Hotel in Manchester; at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment (email: alotter@mac.com). You may also view paintings with prices and order prints at my Fine Art America page. If the painting you are interested in is not there, or if you prefer to bypass that experience, you may contact me using the private feedback form below. If you want to add a public comment to this blog, go to the bottom of this page where it says “Leave a Reply”, and enter your comment in that box. I love to get public comments, so don’t be shy!

Garden Magic

Posted by Aline on August 12, 2014

I get so caught up in my narrative blog content that I always forget the marketing bits, where I would be announcing I got into this show or that, and sold this painting or that. Such a waste of those small, ephemeral moments of triumph! Meanwhile I’ve been moaning about failures. Wallowing in failures. I hereby resolve hereafter to “accentuate the positive,” starting right now:

My painting of “Margaret and her Nook” has been published in an online mag called “Art and Beyond”; here is the link to the magazine; you will need to click forward to find my page.
5 of my paintings were accepted in the “Healing with Art” exhibit at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center in Manchester. (reception Tuesday Sept 9, 5:30-7:00)
My painting of “Fur” has found its forever home, after being on exhibit for only a few hours at the Bedford Library.
My painting of “Willow Path in Winter” has been accepted in the annual JPOS (Jamaica Pond Open Studios) exhibit at the Arnold Arboretum in Boston. Reception Thursday Sept 18, 6-8.
My application to apply to the Copley Society in Boston has been accepted–allowing me to apply for Professional Artist Membership, which requires a long checklist of images and written materials that I need to produce before a January deadline. Checklists? No problem for a former tax lawyer.

Listing the good things maybe once a month will at least boost my spirits, even if it doesn’t have any noticeable effect on sales. Sales are the ultimate boost in spirits. Nothing says “I love your painting” quite like the handing over of real money in exchange for the painting. One of my teachers had a standard reply to anyone who said “I love your painting”: . . . “It’s for sale.” But we can’t all buy all the paintings we love. I know that all too well. So it’s OK to keep telling me when you love my painting even if you can’t buy it.

So, down to the real business, that of creating beautiful paintings, maybe to sell. I spent two afternoons last week in a garden full of little nooks and pathways and whimsey. This garden is hidden behind an ordinary house in an ordinary neighborhood. It was created by colleagues of mine, a photographer/painter-husband/wife combo–although credit for the garden has to go principally to the husband. The wife, Dee Lessard, paints beautiful still lifes but has little experience with plein air painting (or gardening). Her husband, Guy Lessard, was pretty pleased to find Dee and me at our easels in his garden, immortalizing the beauty he had built.

Magic Garden No. 1

If you follow the path marked by the stepping stones, into the darkness beyond, you come upon a pool full of dappled sunlight and brilliant koi. I longed to see (and paint) a figure leaning into her reflection here. But saving that one for when I have a model, I chose this simple scene that melds so delightfully a half dozen different plant varieties. I completed this one in a two-hour afternoon, just before the skies opened up in buckets of water.

A few days later, we went back out, Dee to continue working on the one she had started and me to find another magical place. No. 2 is to the right and down a slight slope from No. 1, looking back at another path to get to the koi pond.

Magic Garden No. 2 (before adjustments)

The Fairy Chapel (Magic Garden No. 2, after adjustments in color and value)

Guy rescued the little church birdhouse in an antique store with steeple intact. But adverse elements had obliterated the steeple over time, so I was painting what could have been a New England meeting house when Guy came over and requested that I add the steeple. I was only too happy to oblige.

For both garden paintings, I had started with a surface toned dark, mostly with burnt umber. Very little of the toned surface still shows, but where it does, it enhances the contrast that makes a painting interesting.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery and the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (both are in Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett and the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester; at the Manchester office of Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter; two paintings are hanging at the Bedford Library as part of the Womens Caucus For Art exhibit “Summer Bounty”; a single painting is on view at the Radisson Hotel in Manchester for the summer; and at her studio by appointment (email: alotter@mac.com). You may also view paintings with prices and order prints at my Fine Art America page. If the painting you are interested in is not there, or if you prefer to bypass that experience, you may contact me using the private feedback form below. If you want to add a public comment to this blog, go to the bottom of this page where it says “Leave a Reply”, and enter your comment in that box. I love to get public comments, so don’t be shy!

New (to me) Teacher: David Curtis

Posted by Aline on August 4, 2014

Yesterday Bea Bearden and I drove down to Gloucester, Massachusetts, to attend a plein-air-with-figure workshop in a garden attached to the home of David Curtis. Although David, as we are encouraged to call him, is an anointed master painter (member of the Boston Guild of Artists), I had not been acquainted with him, his work, or his teaching before Friday, when I got the call from Bea and signed up for the workshop. I feel extremely lucky to have got the opportunity. For the past few years, I have not been signing up for plein air workshops (unless they involved the figure somehow). I’ve taken so many plein air workshops in my short career as an artist, and done so many plein air paintings, that I had begun to feel I could not learn anything new. (“Know it all” syndrome.) Besides, it is the figure that I wanted to concentrate on now, so that’s where my workshop budget went. However, in one casual Sunday afternoon (three hours) David Curtis conferred upon me new insights into plein air painting. The kind of insights where you might say, oh, yeah, why didn’t I see that before! Maybe you did see it, but I hadn’t, not consciously at least.

Here are my two favorite insights:

First: On an overcast day (that’s what we had yesterday), the light comes from overhead, not at any angle. Hence the tops of flowers, e.g., are catching the most light. Duh! you say? I know. Obvious when you think about it. But I had never thought about it before.
Second: Did you notice, in the Sargent exhibit at the Boston MFA a few months ago, that there were very few skies showing? The absence of sky, usually the lightest element in a landscape painting, allows there to exist in the painting a different lightest object–one not at the top of the painting, which is, after all, a damn awkward place to suffer a focal point (unless you are focussing on clouds). From this opportunity to create a lightest spot elsewhere on the canvas comes the power to be unusual, to be dramatic, to capture the viewer. We all want to capture the viewer, and hang onto her. Now we have a new tool–eliminate the sky as an element of the scene.

We were a group of nine students in Gloucester, all quite accomplished painters. On the way home, Bea and I congratulated ourselves on the fact that we held our own in this company. We will join them again for two more Sundays later in August, and I am so looking forward to it!

Due to the speed with which I work, my painting was completed within the three hours of the workshop. Even better, it is one with which I am very happy. The flowers gave me the opportunity to paint just the kind of landscape that I like best, and the lovely model with her coral dress and orange-red parasol were a feast for the eyes. Thank God I brought my cadmium orange and cad red light. And my perylene red and quinacridone magenta. All were needed for the many reds and pinks in this painting.

Did you speak?

I made sure that my angle on the stone cupid showed off his best side too. Can you tell that the flowers inside the ring of granite stones are impatiens? The dabbing technique to simulate flowers and leaves is something I adopted back when I was first studying landscapes with Stan Mueller, and he encouraged it. It’s not something I can always work into landscapes vistas, and maybe that’s why I prefer not to do vistas. I began this painting with a burnt umber ground, applied to cover up the Campobello Island seascape underneath. (I’m getting more and more ruthless in my painting demolitions.) The dark ground helped me speed toward completion.

Today I worked on another portrait of my daughter Nancy. The Group (Monday Life Group) agreed that we wanted to paint the blue patterned kimono that she uses as a coverup between poses. My parents had brought this kimono back to me from Japan in 1966 or thereabouts, and after five decades it is finally coming into its own! However, it was not possible to deal with the pattern in the time given to us. Moreover, the wet blue paint did not allow for adding fresh whites and pinks where needed. So this is a Work in Progress.

Nancy wearing a kimono

After the kimono dries, I will add the patterns using this photo I took with my phone.

Nancy in the blue kimono

I don’t know if I really missed the tilt of her head as much as the photo suggests, but someone did tell me recently (Paul Ingbretson, I believe) that we humans have a hard time overcoming an innate desire to untilt heads. I have noticed as much in myself before, so I was trying extra hard this morning to counter that tendency. Sigh! Regarding the size of her irises, that was a deliberate decision to exaggerate them in order to get across how one perceives Nancy’s eyes. They come across as large.

Last week Nancy had posed for us nude, but wearing quite a deep tan–from walking the dog, she claimed. Her droopy eyelids of last week caused me to bring her a large iced coffee this morning in the hope that we not get the sleepy look again.

Nancy wearing a tan

I almost want to hide this one from you, because I feel I butchered the nose. Still, it’s interesting as a study of skin tones.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery and the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (both are in Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett and the Bernerhof Inn in Glen; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester; at the Manchester office of Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter; two paintings are hanging at the Bedford Library as part of the Womens Caucus For Art exhibit “Summer Bounty”; a single painting is on view at the Radisson Hotel in Manchester for the summer; and at her studio by appointment (email: alotter@mac.com). You may also view paintings with prices and order prints at my Fine Art America page. If the painting you are interested in is not there, or if you prefer to bypass that experience, you may contact me using the private feedback form below. If you want to add a public comment to this blog, go to the bottom of this page where it says “Leave a Reply”, and enter your comment in that box. I love to get public comments, so don’t be shy!

Afterglow; Exhaustion

Posted by Aline on June 10, 2014

My show was Sunday. Many of you remembered that, and succeeded in getting there, for which I am most grateful. Others of you may have tried to come, but gave up when you couldn’t find a parking spot. If so, I apologize. I never thought to check my reception date against the schedule for the Fisher Cats games. I won’t ever overlook that detail again! [Fisher Cats is the name of a AA minor league baseball team, farm team for the Toronto Blue Jays; its stadium is pretty close to the building where East Colony Gallery lives, and its parking lot becomes a Fisher Cats parking lot on game days. The building owners tried to save us prime spots in the front of the Gallery; unfortunately, the normal signs there declare “Do Not Park”, so, in the absence of guidance, people were probably afraid to park there!]

Nevertheless, we had a decent turnout for our party, and I got to reconnect with some people I had not seen in a long time. Alas, I did forget to take pictures, but this was because I was too busy talking, so that was a good thing. Usually, at these shindigs, I am too shy to engage people in talking about my paintings. Having people there whom I already knew was such a blessing!

Meanwhile, I had an extremely busy week of painting: five-day workshop with Sean Beavers on figure painting; one night class with Deirdre Riley on the same subject; two paint outs, one in Exeter, New Hampshire, and the other in Goffstown. And the Monday life group met as usual yesterday morning. I’m sure it was good, in the abstract, to be painting so much, but it may not have been beneficial for the output. I was spreading myself too thin, especially as exhaustion began to take its toll. I must accept the fact that, at my age, I can’t keep performing day after day at the same high energy level.

The workshop paintings fared better than the landscapes. For Sean’s class, we had one model in the morning, doing one pose all week; and another in the afternoon, doing his same pose all week. Two completed paintings emerged, plus one half-done portrait:

Figure and Detail

After spending three days on the figure, I developed an urge to paint the model’s portrait. Since I had space on the same piece of canvas, and needed to fill that space with something, my decision to lay it down next to the figure was a no-brainer. Only problem was, I was really too far from the model to paint a decent portrait. I couldn’t see any nuances in the facial features with my uncorrected eyes from a distance of 15 feet. Moving my easel was not an option because (a) I would have obstructed views of the artists on either side of me, (b) my spot was my spot for the afternoon painting, and that would have meant two moves, and (c) let’s not kid ourselves–this is only for practice. The fact that I ended up doing close to the same thing for the afternoon painting just means I’m consistent.

Competing Lights

For this pose, Sean set up a spotlight with red cel in front of the model, and one behind the model with a blue cel, emulating sunlight. The effect was quite dramatic. Fun! I spent four days on this painting, and so had only one day to fill with a practice portrait:

Portrait version

Again, my inability to see detail that far away, and the shortness of time remaining to me, meant I could not produce a finished portrait, but I got the big pieces right. Sean was actually impressed! But bottom line, the face in my figure painting is more interesting that this “forced” portrait. (To me.)

The paintout on Saturday in Exeter ended with a wet paint sale to benefit the American Independence Museum, which had organized the event. We had a gorgeous day. Every other day last week it rained at least a little bit. My goal for this event was to paint something pedestrian but so well that someone would want to own it. I failed. Not in the pedestrian part but in the wanting part.

Exeter River with Japanese Maple

I’m not sure the name of the river is Exeter. I got many complements on the beauty of this painting, but no one wanted to own it. For the second one, I went even further Out There–Ashcan School?:

Municipal Parking

This painting quite simply failed to be beautiful for some reason that I can’t quite put my finger on. (If I could have identified the failing, I would have fixed it.)

Winding up the week, yesterday I did a figure in the morning and a landscape in the afternoon. Both will be getting more attention–we will repeat the Monday pose next week. Same is true of Deirdre’s class from last Tuesday. And the landscape, well, you’ll just have to wait for that report because, with luck, I shall have time during the week to bring it to a new level of Van Gogh-ness.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

You may also view paintings with prices and order prints at my Fine Art America page. If the painting you are interested in is not there, or if you prefer to bypass that experience, you may contact me using the private feedback form below. If you want to add a public comment to this blog, go to the bottom of this page where it says “Leave a Reply“, and enter your comment in that box. I love to get public comments, so don’t be shy!

Hung!

Posted by Aline on May 29, 2014

Frontispiece

I should have posted as soon as I got the pictures uploaded, but I wanted to expound on the process a little. Unfortunately, life, or more accurately, death, got in the way. Not a member of my family, rather the man who rented the room upstairs from me. I had to find the body, which was an unsettling experience. He will be missed around here for sure.

Meanwhile, my show is up. My colleague, Larry Donovan, and I had to agree on the arrangement on our shared wall, the wall that you see as you walk in the door. That is the photo I called “Frontispiece”. You can tell which are mine.

The longest wall is next to the entry, and I managed to hang 13 of my paintings on it, allowing Larry the remaining three, smaller walls. I had prepped 21 paintings with about five that I considered “must see”, but one of them didn’t make the cut. Freckles, my cat portrait, just didn’t look like it belonged with all those nudes and faces. In the end, what looked best on the wall determined which paintings won a place on the wall.

One of my new jobs for East Colony, which as a collaborative does require each member to take charge of one or more tasks needed to run a gallery, is as the keeper of the customer database. So as that person, I had to print out our postcard labels; then as the Featured Artist I applied half of the labels to postcards (Larry did the other half), bought my postcard stamps and applied those to my postcards, and put them in the mail, all of which I accomplished Tuesday. Now all I have to do get ready for the day itself: bring in a flower arrangement (one of the other artists volunteered to bring another one in), make sure I have enough wine at the ready (Larry’s goddaughter, a baker, is preparing eating treasures), figure out what to wear, and get there early enough to set up. I think I can handle it. Whew!

Next week my blog will include the half-done paintings from a workshop I have been taking with Deirdre Riley and possibly a plein air painting from Saturday, but the forecast is rain, so no promises.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery and the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (both are in Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn and Bernerhof Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester; at the Manchester office of Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter; in the lower level of the Bedford Public Library, Bedford, NH; and at her studio by appointment (email: alotter@mac.com).

You may also view paintings with prices and order prints at my Fine Art America page. If the painting you are interested in is not there, or if you prefer to bypass that experience, you may contact me using the private feedback form below. If you want to add a public comment to this blog, go to the bottom of this page where it says “Leave a Reply”, and enter your comment in that box. I love to get public comments, so don’t be shy!

Artists’ Getaway Spring 2014

Posted by Aline on May 20, 2014

As promised, I have returned from our semiannual getaway to Mount Washington Valley with landscapes of the North Country. Despite still feeling out of sorts, I pulled myself together enough to produce five small paintings. I felt inadequate, so I took only 8×10 panels and a packet of 9×12 carton papers. This morning I took the photographs, and I guess they aren’t so bad. All were dry, already! I use a lot of Michael Harding paints, which are slower drying than some for some artists, but for me, they dry fast.

Starting from the beginning, Friday morning, we gathered at “Fourth Iron”, a railroad bridge over the Saco River, near the highway (Route 302), with a parking lot made to order for painters and fishermen. We had four new painters with us: Bea Bearden, Kitty Clark, Jeri Bothamley, and Michele Fennel. The “seasoned” painters were Byron Carr (the organizer of the weekend), Sharon Allen (the keeper of NHPleinAir artists), and Jim O’Donnell. We were later joined by Morgan, a regular whose last name has not made it into my memory bank, and newbie Ruth Sears and her guy friend Joe. Add to that mix the innkeepers Miriam and Nick Jacques, and you’ve got quite a lively group, ready to paint and party.

Back to the Fourth Iron. Some of us, including me, painted the bridge; others painted the mountains; still others split off to paint nearby at the Notchland Inn, which, I learned for the first time, has a parlor designed by Gustav Stickley. I have a painting of the Notchland Inn somewhere in my piles of landscapes, and an earlier one of Fourth Iron. Before Hurricane Irene washed out the original road and trees, we had to hike in a little bit to get a good view of the bridge, or scramble down the riverbank to get this view we now get from the parking lot, which was created from the remains of the original road:

Fourth Iron

After lunch, we headed south to North Conway, to an area called Flat Rocks Conservation area, and found a spot on the shoulder of the road where we had nice, unobstructed views of the rocky stream flowing by. We were interrupted by a serious rainstorm, so I never “finished” the painting.

Discovered Bridge

After coming in for the evening, it is our custom to take in what we have been working on and lean them against whatever we can find back at the Inn, mantels, window sills, floors. Luckily, the dog Noodles pays no attention to the wet paintings (mostly oils, a few watercolors) on the floor, and he is not a shedder (“cockapoo”–I painted his portrait as a puppy years ago). A few artists told me they liked my “stone bridge”. They were not, I later learned, referring to the iron bridge built on the stony embankment. So a lousy rendition of a big rock is now officially transformed into the shadowed tunnel under an imaginary but charming stone bridge.

Saturday, Sharon and I went exploring for potential new painting spots in the valley. We stopped at two farmhouses to interview the farmers (of alpacas and strawberries, respectively) about a mysterious road that showed up on Sharon’s GPS. When that investigation bore no fruit, we returned to North Conway to paint behind the restaurant where we ate Thursday night. Mary, the proprietress had told us we were welcome to paint there anytime, and it was a fantastic view across the valley with the Saco River cutting through. I, however, turned my back on that view and took on the fantastical restaurant itself. Ambitious.

In Back of May Kelly’s

Mary brought us coffee and two huge slices of gluten-free chocolate cake, so that was lunch and so much for sticking to my diet. We finished up about two thirty and went back to the Inn (Bartlett Inn). A very tall, very old white birch was still standing on the grounds in front of the cabins, and it was slated for removal, so Sharon and I each painted a portrait of it, dead but still beautiful.

Last Hurrah

That evening, as is our custom, all of the artworks were produced for comment. This is when I learned of the Stone Bridge. When asked which of my paintings was my favorite, I said the birch. Either the company disagreed with me, or they were anxious to help me make it better–whatever, it elicited several points of criticism: the foreground rock was too prominent and should probably be removed totally; the background green was . . . too strong?; the tree on the left was too distracting–it should be de-emphasized by bringing in branches crossing in front, or perhaps (my own suggestion) soften its edges (that is magenta on its right edge!). What do you think?

Sundays we usually pack up, check out of the Inn, and look for one last painting location before wending our ways home. Thanks to Sharon the explorer, this year we collected near a marshy area south of Conway, at Dollof Pond, with a view of Mount Washington. I looked it up on Google maps and found another pond nearby that I wish we could paint just for its name: Pea Porridge Pond. Oh, well, cheating not allowed.

Blue View (off Dollof Hill Road)

Thus ended the tenth annual Spring Getaway. I felt strangely unfulfilled. The next morning, Monday Life Group got me out of bed and into the studio. I brought a used panel, not even sanded down, not even toned over. To reduce distractions from the old painting, I applied a layer of burnt sienna, then added Gamblin’s Fast Matte ultramarine blue. Of course, these underlayers would not dry in time for me to paint over them, so I was asking for trouble, double trouble. The photo below isn’t good either, because light catches the wet paint on all those little protrusions. I dialed the exposure down to minimize the light bumps for you.

Nude with Texture

Something about this painting really appeals to me. The flesh may be a little “muddy” but color is all relative anyway, so I’m not bothered by that. What thrills me is that her right leg looks so real, so fleshy! Her face isn’t bad either. If only I had just a little more time to bring all of it up to that level of accomplishment.

Now I am moving into Panic Mode over the imminence of my Featured Artist stint at East Colony. I have to “hang” this coming Saturday!! OMG. But then it will be done and all I have to do is enjoy. I am paired with Larry Donovan, an artist whose works I noticed long ago at East Colony, so I feel quite honored to be in this position. Who’d a thunk a few years ago, when I hardly knew what was up? We are looking forward to seeing all our friends and collectors at the reception on Sunday, June 8th, from two to four. He wanted two to five, but I am just not up to three hours on my feet, making nice.

I am looking forward to seeing YOU if you are at all able to come, if not to the reception, then at some point between May 24 and June 28. Let me know when you are in town and I will try to be at the Gallery.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

You may also view paintings with prices and order prints at my Fine Art America page. If the painting you are interested in is not there, or if you prefer to bypass that experience, you may contact me using the private feedback form below. If you want to add a public comment to this blog, go to the bottom of this page where it says “Leave a Reply”, and enter your comment in that box. I love to get public comments, so don’t be shy!

Final and Complete Report of Marco Island Painting Binge

Posted by Aline on February 19, 2014

After a snow-impeded itinerary, I finally returned to the winter wonderland that is New Hampshire. Another snow storm yesterday has locked me at home. The city didn’t bother to plow my little stub of a street until it was sure it could build a barricade at the bottom of my driveway worthy of good ol’ New England complaining. Still, I don’t mind . . . didn’t want to go anywhere today anyway, not when I have the lovely task of reliving my adventures in Marco Island, through this retelling.

All thirteen of my Marco 2014 paintings are painted on 9 x 12 carton paper, acquired from Judson’s Guerrilla Painter art supplies. Two paintings are candidates for cropping, as you will see. The first 8 were posted last week, using photos taken with my phone or my iPad. Now that I have new versions taken with my Nikon Digital SLR, I will include them again. A few have endured improvements since last week.

I would love to hear from my followers which painting(s) are their favorites.

Marco 2014 No. 1

This first painting is still one of my own favorites.

Marco 2014 No. 2

I added the sky and make other changes as planned. I can see room for more improvement–punchier lights on the foreground objects.

Marco 2014 No. 3 – The Beach

The quickest, simplest is the favorite of many people. I touched up the bird spots. Several had suggested making the spots into kites (the toy, not the bird), but I was concerned about bringing in that level of detail.

Marco 2014 No. 4 – Sea Grapes

Although I wanted to improve on the definition between light and shadow, I lacked the confidence to do anything about it.

Marco 2014 No. 5

The only improvement I made to No. 5 is the color of the shadows on the building. Less green, more blue.

Marco 2014 No. 6–Calusa Boat Yard

No changes to this one. But when I posted it last week, I didn’t include any narrative, and it deserves a narrative. On my right, over the railing, is a roof covering a shelf-like area where successful fishermen (women don’t seem to be into that kind of thing) can clean their fish. There’s a water spigot and a tube into which the waste is shoved, which apparently drops the waste somewhere in the water underneath, where the waiting pelicans cannot access it. There is a prominently posted sign forbidding the feeding of the pelicans. But they hover nevertheless. Because mistakes are made. Sometimes a particularly motivated fish escapes the grasp of the fisherman and dives in the waiting maw of a pelican.

I was in that spot because of the shadow afforded by the roof. So I was kind of in the way, but not so much as would require me to move. One of the fisherman wanted this painting, but he was willing to pay only $100 for it. I felt it was worth at least $200. I hope he’s sorry now!

Marco 2014 No. 7–Pond with girl and goose

I defined the figure of the little girl to show her posture better. She was a real little girl, but she never sat for me on the bank like that. The Canadian goose was one of a pair cruising around with a pair of Muscovy ducks. The walkway pavement really was a purply black.

Marco 2014 No. 8–dog walkers’ park

I reworked this painting a lot. The bridge alone got about four repaintings. A figure went in, came out; the original dog came out, a new one came in. I was looking for something expressive, trying to channel Van Gogh. Here was the previous version.

Marco 2014 No. 9

Mary lives on a golf course, of course. If you don’t live on either water or a golf course on Marco, you are doing something wrong. We reconnoitered the course but found nothing to inspire us to paint, but on our way back to her house, we both fell in love with this huge palm, catching light here and there, so that’s where I set up. It was close to the back door to her lanai (screened in terrace containing swimming pool–standard equipment in Florida). In the lanai, watching me closely, was her black cat, Tara. So I popped her in the painting. Jungle cat with green eyes.

Marco 2014 No. 10

Yet another park–the same where we had painted our picnic in the rain last year. Both Mary and I decided to paint the reflections in the lake. She draws in pencil, then paints in watercolor. (I had intended to take pictures of her paintings too, and share with you. But forgot until this minute. The fog of age.) Anyway, she takes a lot longer to complete a painting, what with all that drawing first. I was finished with mine, grousing about the difficulties (I have a list of them with respect to reflections), and was just diddling around with it when a huge flock of ducks swooped down and started swimming furiously around in circles. Whassup? I thought. A few of them climbed the bank over on the right, out of my frame, investigated, and returned to swimming in circles. Then arrived a man and woman laden with buckets. They dumped the contents of the buckets under the tree lately investigated by the scouter ducks, and a parade ensued. This was what the ducks were waiting for! Since I wasn’t doing anything important anyway, I stopped fussing over the ever-changing tree, grass and house reflections and changed up my pond to accommodate a representative grouping of circling ducks. Are the ducks too black? That’s how they appeared to me in that low light, silhouetted against the bright water.

Marco 2014 No. 11

Flo joined us, down from Cape Coral, and the three of us caught up with that same group of outdoor painters who go out each Wednesday to paint together at specific locations. This week’s location, the Esplanade, includes fountains, retail establishments, boats (moored to the right in this view), and lots of people. Rich people. We spread out. I chose to paint the bar because I thought it was time that I tried something really difficult. I had my eye on the bank of liquor bottles in the background. I spent all day on this one painting, and much of that time was spent repainting the elements, trying to get them to work together. Perhaps I overdid it. Does it look stilted?

Marco 2014 No. 12 – Vanda orchid

Although our weather was warm and sunny all the time I was there, one day was extremely windy. The three of us decided the better part of valor was staying in the shelter of the lanai and painting Mary’s Vanda orchid. I tried to mix up the color of the orchid from my various reds and blues, but it just wasn’t working–not even close–, so I borrowed some Magenta from Flo and voila! That made me curious about magenta–why wouldn’t it mix from blue and red? Turns out it is special; because blue and red don’t mix past purple on the spectrum of color–they don’t meet on the color spectrum. A synthetic red called quinacridone makes possible the purply red known as magenta or fuchsia. I am adding Magenta back to my palette and bowing respectfully to all quinacridones.

Marco 2014 No. 12 detail of orchid

Flo’s version of the orchid was more of a closeup, and just like a kid, when I saw her treatment, I decided I wanted that too, so here is my cropped version. Is it better than the one with roots in the foreground and swimming pool and palm tree in the background? By the way, I need to thank Deirdre Riley, who paints flowers awesomely; she advises what I call the big blob attack method of painting flowers, whereby you paint in the general shape of the entire arrangement, then pick out lights and darks to form the shapes of individual flowers. That approach stood me in good stead with this extraordinary plant with a single stem smothered with individual flowers.

Last, but certainly not least, here is the cut-down version that I prefer:

Marco 2014 No. 13 v.2 (6×12)

Before cropping, this is the painting:

Marco 2014 No. 13 (9×12)

I haven’t actually cut it up yet, so if you think I am wrong to do so, please tell me now. Not later!

The location is the Rose Marina, where I have painted before, but this time we explored our way around the water to a residential neighborhood that has this view of the action. Notice there is a major bow sticking its nose in at the right. While I was painting, this ship, the Marco Island Princess, got underway with its passengers for a sunset cruise in the Gulf . . . analogous to a Mount Washington dinner cruise on Lake Winnepesaukee, but much smaller. The foreground is a grassy knoll that drops down to the water out of your view (and mine), which complicates your understanding of what is happening. That’s why I prefer the cropped version. Yes, there are a couple of pelicans in the painting.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery and the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (both are in Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Gallery at 100 Market Street in Portsmouth; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester; at the Manchester office of Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter; and at her studio by appointment (email: alotter@mac.com).

You may also view paintings with prices and order prints at my Fine Art America page. If the painting you are interested in is not there, or if you prefer to bypass that experience, you may contact me using this feedback form.

Heady Stuff

Posted by Aline on February 3, 2014

I’ve been saving up my heads, maybe subconsciously in order to use some cute/puny title such as the title above. Good heads, bad heads. The bad heads are, it should go without saying, on me, not the model. My progress on head-making is not as fast as I feel it should be, so I am more often than not disappointed in my output. On the other hand, when a head turns out good, I’m taken by surprise. You could say my life is a constant trip from disappointment to surprised delight, and back again. Its’s a trip with no Arrival. What I ought to do is just shut up about it. So I will. I present these heads in no particular order, sans judgement. Maybe you will like one or two of them.

Serious Rebecca

I wasted a bit of time trying to convey the way her earring looked both metallic and dull. Sigh! What’s with me and the accessories?

Serious Margaret

My art buddy Tony would call this “trois couleurs” because he likes to throw around his French. It started life as black and white on toned paper, but after I added white for the highlights, I thought she looked too pallid–hence the pink. For the pink I used a piece of pastel. My drawing box contains various types of charcoal and charcoal pencils, white pencils and white “charcoal” (who do they think they are kidding?), and stubs of pastel-like sticks in several shades of pink and one blue. Don’t ask me why. It just happens.

This is Margaret again. I tried to tease a little “Mona Lisa” smile out of her, so this one is captioned “Not so serious Margaret”. Many models have a hard time keeping their eyes open. That doesn’t matter so much when you are concentrating on painting or drawing a figure, but it becomes mighty exasperating if you are doing a portrait.

Oh, the Hair

You are supposed to hear the title of this drawing with the same inflection as the newsman lamenting the Hindenburg disaster. (Oh, the humanity!) Not implying the hair is a disaster. Au contraire (Tony, I like to do the French thing too), the hair is wonderful but daunting. of course, in 20 minutes I could only suggest the presence of masses of hair and perhaps that is just as well.

Daydreamer

Ok, this is cheating a little. But there is more head there than body.

DSC_0605 - Version 2

Here is another example of the three colors, and another, real cheat–this is a zoom in on the head to make it fit within the topic. Here is the whole drawing:

Can you tell that she is pregnant?

This is an example of going against the measurements. Her chin and jaw as observed came across as too manly. I think it was an effect of the angle. I shaved it back to make her look more like herself.

While these heads are not all pleasing me, at least I have learned to get matching eyes. Mostly. Eyes are difficult because there are two of them. Both should be about the same distance from the nose and on the same horizontal level. Both should be the same shape. But usually you are observing them from a 3/4 perspective. One eye is farther away and on the other side of the nose. Its size, shape and position is greatly affected that that. Cookie cutter eyes don’t work. Picasso was on to something when he painted eyes from two entirely different perspectives.

19533_00_picasso_woman

Picasso’s “Woman Seated in a Chair” is in the collection of the Currier Museum of Art, here in Manchester. Since becoming a docent there, I have come to appreciate this piece more than before.

I am currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery and the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (both are in Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Gallery at 100 Market Street in Portsmouth; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester; at the Manchester office of Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter; at the McGowan Gallery in Concord–the all-too-short exhibit of “Love, Lust and Desire” in which both sizes and prices are severely limited; and at her studio by appointment (email: alotter@mac.com).

Getting Ready for Oscar Night

Posted by Aline on January 20, 2014

Illustrating Heroic Effort

Like Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront,” I “coulda been . . .”– not a contender but an illustrator. A life drawing professor (in my senior year at Cornell I lightened up with some “gut” art courses) encouraged me to go for graduate study in illustration. I brushed it off as totally inconceivable. Thinking back, I’m not sure why it was so inconceivable. Probably because my expectations of myself were so grandiose. I intended to accomplish something globally meaningful–foreign service and diplomacy appealed to me then. If only I had pursued illustration as a career, I would now be so much further along the road to artistic distinction.

My respect for illustrators has ballooned since I got into the art biz myself–their skills underpin both Illustration and Fine Art. [Aside: one of the pointless debates prevalent in the art community is how to distinguish Fine Art from (a) Illustration and (b) from Craft.] Many illustrators are also fine artists [i. e., makers of Fine Art]. Many of them stop pursuing commercial work altogether in order to concentrate on making Fine Art. They have to be among the best, or slightly nuts, or both. (I also suspect a highly compensated spouse factors into those decisions.) Illustrators tell a story? Illustrators paint by commission? That’s exactly how fine artists operated in the past. Monumental paintings depicting events and telling stories were always painted to satisfy a patron. Like the Sistine Chapel. Like Rembrandt’s “Night Watch”:

The Nightwatch by Rembrandt

Like DeBray’s “Antony and Cleopatra”:

Jan de Bray – The Banquet of Antony and Cleopatra

Commissioned or not, telling a story is illustration. Why is there even an effort to distinguish illustration from fine art? Photography–invention of–accounts for a lot of new issues besetting artists. Photographers can tell stories, produce portraits with a lot less effort and expense. Artists have had to find new ways, different markets, in order to survive as a full-time artist. Hence: abstract art. To sum up, the existence of abstract art is a reflection of the artist’s need to find a meaning in her art that is distinct from story-telling or portrait-making, now the role of photography. That’s how I see it, but bear in mind I have never taken a single course in art appreciation or art history. I have no business pontificating on matters of which I am uninstructed!

But I have wandered far from my main topic. My painting above results from an order to produce a painting that illustrates an Oscar-winning motion picture. Oscar Night at East Colony is March 1, the day before the actual 2013 Oscar awards ceremony. Each of the 30 East Colony artists is choosing a movie, and our patrons and followers will be invited to guess what movie is being illustrated by each of us. Winners will receive a cute little Oscar replica. Oscar Night: Saturday March 1, 4-7 p.m., at 55 So. Commercial Street, Manchester, NH.

Because of the contest, I can’t tell you what movie I am illustrating, but isn’t it all too obvious? I feel it is obvious because the movie was one of my favorites (along with “On the Waterfront”). Hint: this movie would have been nothing without its music .

To create my illustration, I looked for images on the internet that matched up with the figure I envisaged as my central figure. The blurring motion of the hands was suggested by one of those images. It’s not a slam dunk to suggest hands without actually painting hands. I think I got it. Even more important to the illustration was need the feel the runner’s huge gasps for breath, and his straining to keep his speed up. The shapes and value changes in his chest and neck achieve that, I hope. This painting is, however, not completely done. The background that I invented to stay in the background is nevertheless too dull– appropriately so in the story-telling sense, but a cop-out in the painterly sense. The background should be able to stand on its own as a painting, don’t you think? I have a week to get it right.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Pussycats and Ignudi

Posted by Aline on January 14, 2014

Fur. Final 20×16

I finally “finished” (I had to stop fussing with it because deadline to submit was Friday) Fur. Note the size of the painting–it is much bigger than life. I’m pleased with its furriness, and proud of the gold heart locket which I dreamed up without any help from a reference photo. Now, cross your fingers in the hope that the juror for this exhibit, Eric Aho, isn’t a dogs-only lover, and isn’t allergic to cats (but I am, so that’s not determinative).

I don’t often create something specific in response to a call for art, but in the case of Purr, oops, I meant Furr, I like to think the Call for Art got me thinking, which led to the inspiration to paint this particular picture. The title and theme is “LOVE”, and the juror is an abstract landscape artist whom I greatly admire, which made me stop and consider the possibilities. The idea of Love led, of course, immediately to the idea of Cats, and thence to the idea of the fur that makes cats so lovable. To tie more unmistakably into the exhibit theme(as if that mattered!), I included the heart locket. The claw showing at bottom left is my acknowledgement of the unpredictable and imperious nature of Cat, whose soft furriness conceals a weapon to punish whoever fails to give proper respect. All that thought, but the result is likely to be yet another canvas stashed away in a portfolio. That doesn’t matter. What matters is, I painted. I submitted. I tried.

Our model for Tuesday Life Group showed up armed with thumbnail reproductions of Michelangelo’s paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, from which selection we were to choose a pose. The pose we chose was one of the twelve naked, male figures lounging in the corners of each of the three major sections. Before going any further, I’d better show you the drawing that resulted:

After Michelangelo Ignudi

We were puzzled by the wreath—an item I associated more with Roman emperors than with Christian iconography. On a whim, I included it in my drawing, and was pleased with the effect–it added interest and weight to the top of the page, but I didn’t believe that had been Michelangelo’s purpose in so adorning these particular figures. So I was off to Wikipedia to find the explanation. Turns out the wreaths are acorn wreaths, and the figures wearing the wreaths are called “Ignudi”. And that’s it. No more knowledge to be had. There is a suggestion that they could be angels; angels don’t necessarily come equipped with wings. As for what the Ignudi were doing in the corners, I bet they are purely decorative. Those corners would have looked “naked” without the Ignudi. According to Wikipedia, the painting of the Ignudi demonstrates, more than any other figures on the ceiling, Michelangelo’s mastery of anatomy and foreshortening and his enormous powers of invention. So there you are–he was showing off. Not so different from the reason I included the wreath in my drawing.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

A Step Backward

Posted by Aline on December 23, 2013

I was shocked to realize that I had regressed last week, after having absorbed, I thought, the teachings of Steven Assael, this thought having been based on the successful portrait of Margaret three weeks ago. More Blue, more blue, was his mantra. Instead, last week, I saw red in the shadows of “Shadow Side”. And painted red.

Here are the Work in Progress from two weeks ago, then the “finished” RedVersion from last Tuesday (camera phone), and finally, the corrected version:

WIP No. 5 with camera

Red version

The Shadow Side of Rebecca 20×16

Fortunately, I saw my horrific error the same day, last Tuesday, and left the painting out on the cold (brrr!) porch so that the paint would not dry. Saturday I took it with me to work on while I was sitting gallery at East Colony. To amend the skin tone, I used Michael Harding’s “Kings Blue” and kind of massaged it into the skin with sable and fan brushes, little by little. You can imagine with what trepidation I embarked on this voyage, but I had determined that the painting was a total loss without this correction, so I had to give it a try.

I wonder why it is so hard for me to see the blue in what’s before me. Before I had my right-eye cataract surgery, I had never seen the blue and purple in shadows. I had been taking it on faith, assuming it was a convention adopted by artists, that making shadow colors cool was the true path. Imagine my amazement when I saw my first purple shadow on my street. Wow! So maybe the left-eye cataract is hampering my ability to see cool colors in living flesh tones. Why not in the paintings? People who are “color-blind” are so both in reality and in illustrations–I assume.

A number of weeks ago, I did a nice portrait of Nancy, my daughter. It was done practically in the dark. She was lit, but my easel and palette were not. Nevertheless, I am pleased with the likeness and the expression. Nancy has been through a lot of hard stuff, and something of that shows on her face, although it remains as beautiful as ever.

Pensive Nancy

I delayed photographing this painting because it generates impossible glare. Even as dry as it is now, I cannot find any angles or lighting that eliminate glare. I used my blemish retouch tool in iPhoto to smear away a lot of it, but the result is disappointing. Yet another puzzle for me to sort out. Life is good.

The most recent painting is from our Friday Life Group session.

On Yellow Drape

By this time I had acquired a little clip-on easel light. For a change, I could see what I was painting in the East Colony studio. (We have been keeping overhead lights off so as to increase the drama created by our spotlight on the model.) I had intended to paint another portrait, but was charmed by the pattern of light and shadow on her body. Full figure on a tiny canvas (10×8).

If you are reading this blog posting in a timely fashion, you are probably like me, a Christmas downplayer. At this stage of my life, I resent complications that distract me from the art and other appointed tasks. I will be so glad when it is over, and with two days to go, I am still pondering what I should do for my loved ones. Their walls must be reaching saturation point with the paintings I shower upon them. But I do truly wish all of you the best experience possible during these challenging days.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Up and Down, Back and Forth

Posted by Aline on December 11, 2013

Well, I committed an unforgivable sin last week. I forgot to go the EEE class! Forgot! Such a quixotic thing the brain is–simply because I had no Docent Training class in the morning (finally graduated), my brain relaxed, dozed off, and failed to remind me that I had the class Thursday evening. I need a calendar that punches me in the arm a half hour before I’m supposed to be someplace. But instead of class I had an nice dinner out with my daughter, who really needed to get some food in her system.

I had big plans for that EEE class, the next to last class in the course. Now I have only one left and no time to make up for the lost Thursday. . . because everything takes longer that it should, and so many unexpected chores keep popping up with regularity. Now I am going to have to execute on my big plans without the help of the EEE class.

And by “the class” I include not only the instructor but also my fellow students. Here’s why. A few weeks ago I posted a work in progress along with the finished version and cryptically (some might say “coyly”) asked you to ponder their merits before I commented myself. Well here is my comment: I was sitting at my easel trying the wrestle something out of the WIP version–my effort to go abstract with landscape, remember? Not feeling it, frankly. In an effort to achieve more drama, I was applying black paint (gasp! I used to not even own black paint) to the areas that had drawn my mind’s eye, and then kinda went nuts with the black, finding patterns to outline all over the place. Suddenly, I heard whisperings behind me, classmates talking about something they were admiring. I ignored, continued my Van Gogh-like thrashing. The classmates behind me moved in to stop me, called for Patrick to see what I was doing. The whole class stopped and watched as the piece was placed on an easel for all to consider, and Patrick immediately without much thought at all declared it to be an “award-winner.” I am virtually certain that now he has had a few minutes to think about it, he would take that pronouncement back. Anyway, I was not allowed to work on it anymore, and frankly, that was OK with me, because I was sick of it. It’s still in the classroom, left to dry, then there was Thanksgiving, then the class that I forgot. So my image is from the phone:

Imaginary Elements

My classmates enjoyed the stained glass feeling. I was enjoying (somewhat) the process of applying thick, dramatic paint, but when it was over, I did not get that singing-heart feeling that some of my paintings give me. Maybe abstract is not meant for me. Patrick already told me not to try pure abstract.

Meanwhile, on an entirely different track, I am trying to duplicate the success of last week’s “Margaret with her Nook.” Here is another look at Nook, with the background cleaned up:

Final–Margaret and her Nook

Yesterday I started on the Shadow Side of Becky, and remembered to take progress pictures with my phone. Next Tuesday, I hope to complete this painting, which is a large 20×16 oil on linen:

WIP No. 1

WIP NO. 2

WIP No. 3

WIP No. 5 with camera

I chose to be in the dark for this painting in part because I have enjoyed chiaroscuro effect that comes with drawing the figure out from darkness. Also because I have learned that to make a figure rounded, I needed to find a bigger range of light and dark. So far, I am liking it lot. I just hope I find it within me to bring it to the same level of finish as I found with Nook.

Reminder to those of you within driving distance of the Currier Museum: I have a painting hanging in the Community Gallery and you can get into the entire Museum for free if you arrive before noon on a Saturday.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Only People

Posted by Aline on November 19, 2013

I am still trying to paint an abstract landscape in the EEE class, but the current effort is kind of a mess and I left it behind to dry in the classroom. Fresh eyes this Thursday will, I hope, inspire me with what to do to make it something I can be proud of.

Meanwhile, I’ve been working hard on the figurative side of representational art. Some nude, some clothed, some full figure, some portrait. I am happier with the the painted ones, but I’ll start you off with the drawings –selected drawings. Some of them are disappointing and I don’t want the world to see how uninspired I can be. Here’s my favorite:

Map of the Back

Graphite, charcoal pencil and charcoal on drawing paper–not an ideal combination. I was feeling my way with the media. But I like the result moderately well. The next pose was a standing one, with the model’s head silhouetted against the bright window. Hard to see well enough to represent. I tried, but am sparing you the result. We (the Saturday Life Group which meets at the NH Institute of Art) are now drawing in a studio with side windows, instead of the studio with the overhead skylight. I prefer the side light, but it’s hard to take when it’s in your face.

Grumpy takes a cup of tea

“Grumpy” because he prefers to pose in the nude plus he can’t really enjoy that tea while posing. We promise not to make him keep his clothes on again.

Dennis in his clothes

It was cold in the studio that day, so we had to let Dennis stay dressed. He was happy about that.

Map of a different back

Mike is a new to us, relocated here temporarily from California. He’s a real pro, when it comes to modeling–comfortable and inventive with his props, like the pole and the “stool” he was sitting on. For the next pose, I chose to draw a portrait of him:

Portrait of Mike D.

At last, we’ve reached the paintings! There are two of them, both painted in the workshop studio behind East Colony Fine Art’s gallery. The challenge again is the lighting, but not from windows–either there’s too much fluorescent overhead, or you can’t see what you are doing. We are wising up and bringing task lights that clip on easels, or hang around artists’ necks.

Leaning against the wall

Challenging circulation

Well, that’s a stupid name for a painting. Sigh. Yes. Do you know how hard it is to distinguish one nude (painting) from another by its title? So many nudes, so many standing, so many sitting, so many reclining. Then you try identifying by the color of the drape. So many blues, so many reds, so many yellows, etc., etc. The major distinguishing feature of the last painting was the fact that Margaret’s leg kept falling asleep. Of course it did–what else could we have expected? But that became my idea for a title.

The first one is of a new model and I’m not sure she would be comfortable with being identified by name, which makes titling the painting even harder. The elements of this painting just came together so beautifully, and I quit working on it before I spoiled it. Always a good thing.

Both paintings were done in oil, on the brown carton paper sold by Judson’s Fine Art Outfitters, with very little medium. Does it appear to you as if I were working in pastels, not oils? I think it’s that combination of the dry paper with the unmodified paint. The paint drags across the surface of the paper. When you stop to think about it, that’s what pastels are: pigments without the oil binder. So when the paper soaks up the oil and leaves the pigment sitting on top, you get the pastel effect.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Two Projects Are Resolved, and a Theme Continues

Posted by Aline on November 11, 2013

Bear Notch sunset 24×36

Bear Notch Sunset (named for an overlook on Bear Notch Road in Bartlett, NH) is the piece that I started as an abstract painting inspired by Tom Thompson. Like all of my previous attempts to paint abstractly, it morphed into a recognizable landscape. But this time I collaborated–I gave in to my natural predilection in order to rescue the painting (after all, 24×36 canvases don’t grow on trees), but am still determined to keep working on the abstract angle. Proof: here is the one I started immediately after declaring Bear Notch Sunset finished:

Design Inspired by Nature 11×14

I had no photographic reference for Design Inspired. It grew from a mental image, which I tried to capture in paint, thinking if it’s successful as a design, I might do a larger version. However, I currently am not inclined to go big with it. Not that I didn’t enjoy the expressiveness of applying this thick, dark pigment. (I switched internally for inspiration from Tom Thompson to Vincent Van Gogh.) But I don’t feel like repeating that design; I’d rather come up with a new idea to use in the same manner. Maybe not a landscape.

Unfinished business: I promised images of my four paintings from the Blackstone Valley Plein Air Competition at the end of September, but I have only one to show you. Two of them were purchased, one to persons unknown, and the other to a nonresponsive purchaser for whom I have only an email address. A third I donated to the sponsoring organization (“Alternatives”). But the fourth has come home, and, alleluia! it was my personal favorite:

In the Shadow

The little community was aswarm with painters (25 but seemed like more), while I was tucked away in this secluded spot that the director had led me to. I felt very special. I was on the balcony of one of the red brick mill buildings that Alternatives inhabits. The roof over the balcony cast a huge shadow over the millstream below. It may help your orientation if I tell you that the waterway disappears over the edge of a dam on the right. The play of shadow and light on the water and on the aquatic plants intrigued me, but I worried that you couldn’t tell what was happening. Others have assured me that they easily “read” it as what it was. Was the subject matter too abstract for the customers? Or just not evocative of a landmark? Doesn’t matter, I’m happy to have it still in my possession.

The Alternatives event was outstanding, as good as Castine except with respect to the number of avid collectors at the finish of Castine. Both were first-time events, which makes the undertakings even more admirable and their success amazing. Alternatives treated the artists like kings. We got box lunches delivered to us in the field on the first day, and a buffet luncheon back at headquarters on the second day, and more food at the auction that night. High class all the way. I wish I had made a point of meeting the juror, Charles Movalli, but at that point I was on the edge of wipeout and still had the drive home ahead of me (2 hours at least).

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Smorgasbord of Art

Posted by Aline on October 22, 2013

My artistic output last week hit all the bases: nudes, portraiture, experimental landscapes, and plein air landscapes.

Skipping over Tuesday primarily because I don’t remember what I did and I do remember being unhappy with it, let’s start with Wednesday. Wednesday is usually a plein air day, but not last week. Adrienne held another one of her all-day figure study marathons, from ten a.m. until seven p.m. I had no pep, but was determined not to let my health issue stop me. But I could not keep it from slowing me down. Larry Christian and I were the only ones to stick it out to the finish, but I had to stop painting when I ran out of surfaces to paint on. For the last 45 minutes or so, I watched Larry working his charcoal magic on 10-minutes poses of the two models together.

I had two interesting compositions from a side angle:

Foot First

Girl Talk

Foot First was a pose of about two hours, I think. We were late getting up and running, and I had to cut out early to take my daughter to an appointment. The Girl Talk pose was maybe only 20 minutes. No, that can’t be right–it must have been at least an hour.

When the Girls next changed positions, they presented me with profiles of each. After 20 minutes, we found a compromise to keep me happy with long views of the profiles and Larry happy with frequent pose changes. Even as the models changed their poses frequently , they kept their profiles toward me. My view or angle would change slightly each time, but I managed to extrapolate from a current profile to the original profile.

Two Profiles

Thursday was the EEE class, wherein I am trying to discover abstract paintings in my plein air studies. The studies were 11×14. The class projects are 16×20. For both, I used a lot of paint applied with a palette knife. I love thick, juicily painted paintings, a la Van Gogh.

EEE No. 1

EEE No. 2

I was in the Mount Washington Valley and environs all weekend. The semiannual Artists Getaway Weekend organized by Byron Carr and sustained by Sharon Allen’s cohort of plein air fanatics brought together, in addition to Byron and Sharon, Bruce Jones, Sandra Garrigan, Patricia Sweet MacDonald, Jim O’Donnell, Elaine Farmer, a Gentleman Jim from Georgia whose surname I never got. I left for Bartlett after class on Thursday, taking only small panels (8×10) with me. I knew by that time that my fatigue will keep me from covering the usual amount of canvas. Sure enough, I finished only four paintings over Friday and Saturday, despite the fine weather we had.

Saco Riverbed

The Davis Farm

Thorn Hill Road View of Ledges

Mount Washington

The last painting, the one of Mt. Washington, took me only little over an hour, including nodding off time. ( Patricia caught me napping with brush in hand, so there’s no point in covering it up.) It is a simple composition, straightforward in execution. No broken color, no short strokes, no uneven thickness of paint. I was not surprised when many of my colleagues refused to believe it was mine. But they agreed I didn’t likely find it under the pumpkin truck either. I really could not have painted such a distant scene any other way on such a small canvas.

I have a new idea for this week’s EEE class: on my way back from Bartlett, traveling the Bear Notch Road, I took some photographs of the cloud shadows on the mountains up North and am planning to make something abstract out of those images for the class this week.

left center

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Have Brush, Will Paint

Posted by Aline on September 24, 2013

I haven’t gone far, but I did go, and that’s got to count for something. Or against something. Sometimes I worry that I am not painting enough stuff near my home. If I don’t do that, who will? I think of Van Gogh, Cezanne, and how they practically documented their surroundings. Both of them were certainly obsessive and almost manic. I wonder if that is what it takes.

First up is Wolfeboro. I participated in the Paint the Town event last year, painted two paintings and sold one. This year I spent all my time (I think they gave us less time) on a single painting and did a pretty good job on it.

Back Channel in Wolfeboro

But it didn’t sell. The blue building houses a hardware store. Even a painting of a hardware store would be desirable if it were painted by Van Gogh. I am not Van Gogh. Alas. When will I learn to paint a desirable subject?

For IPAP weekend, (IPAP stands for International Plein Air Painters, I believe), I started out well, subject-wise. This is the entrance to Beech Hill Farm, a good place to go for ice cream and other neat things tangentially related to farming. Pigs and sheep are present for the viewing as well.

Beech Hill Farm near Hopkinton, NH

I’m thinking of calling this “Portrait of the Artist’s Automobile”. Yes, it kind of ruins the picture for anyone whose car it is not, but I’m perverse that way. It being my car, I could have moved it, but I deliberately chose to include it. Please take note of the rain puddles too. It did rain, and I did persevere without pause.

Day Two of IPAP weekend was Saturday, and I could not give up my attendance at Saturday Life Group, so I arrived quite late at Wagon Hill Farm, in Durham. This Farm is conservation property, with beautiful rolling hills and a few antique wagons to provide some farming flavor. I saw no evidence of active farming. Indeed, I hardly ventured into the property before I unloaded and set up my gear with nothing but a rolling hill to inspire me.

Wagon Hill Farm in Durham NH

I like it.

Day Three we drove out of New Hampshire to Acton, Massachusetts, to the home of one of our members. “Home” does not quite describe the property. I did not even see her actual home. What I saw was old growth woods with one log cabin in decent shape and one tumbledown shack, with chairs sprinkled about, all on a big pond, large enough to be called a lake. I found a chair in front of the log cabin and painted two paintings from that spot. Next time I’m going for an area inhabited by lily pads.

Isabelle’s Rock, Acton Massachusetts

‘Belle really liked this one because she has herself painted that rock many times (like a mini version of Cezanne’s many paintings of Mont Victoire) and she felt I really captured it.

Isabelle’s yellow-orange kayak

In the title to this piece, I specified the dual colors of the kayak to make sure the viewer didn’t think I was confused. Getting that kayak right was challenging. Trees and rocks are so much more forgiving, but man-made objects have to be spot on. I am pleased with the shine of sunlight hitting the kayak but unhappy with the shadows cast by the tree branches. To me, the shadows look built in, part of the kayak’s surface. Note the lanterns hanging from the tree limbs. Windsocks and other whimsies decorated the property. She also served snacks!

In terms of bathroom facilities, always an important factor for us girls, Beech Hill gets the blue ribbon with real rest rooms. Wagon Hill had a portapotty in the parking lot. Nyala (that’s what Belle calls her woodland estate) boasted something else, I’m not sure what exactly, but I rank it under the portapotty. Still, better than going in the woods, which I have, on occasion, been forced to do.

In addition to the above official NH Plein Air events, I have been sneaking around with several of my classmates from the Cameron Bennett workshop. Four of us have been meeting up to paint on Massabesic Lake and at the Griffin Mill Pond and Dam in Auburn. One of the best paintings I ever painted was done at Griffin Mill Dam, years ago. I tried to duplicate that success.

Griffin Mill Dam 2 (12×16)

It didn’t happen. In some ways, this is the better painting technically, in that the individual elements are more expertly done; but the whole doesn’t jell for me. I realize now that I was not in the exact same spot, because this time I plunked myself down without a second thought right in the middle of a bridge. When I painted the earlier painting, I wasn’t so bold. Ah, age brings with it a certain devil-may-care attitude. That’s because Life IS Short now. Here’s the original:

Griffin Park dam (8×10)

Isn’t it lovely?

Here’s another from the Griffin Hill Dam, this time looking straight across to the barn up the hillside. That’s right, all buildings in New Hampshire are related in some way to farming.

Griffin Mill Dam 3

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery and the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (both are in Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at Stella Blu, an American Tapas restaurant in Nashua; at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester; at the Manchester office of Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter; at the Boston Arboretum Visitor Center, 25 Arborway, Boston; and at her studio by appointment.

Making do

Posted by Aline on September 3, 2013

This is not the blog I intended. This is a substitute blog, making do with unused photographs that I happen to have already uploaded to WordPress. The problem is computers. I have two computers at home now, resulting from my retirement. I call one the Office computer, for obvious reasons, so I guess the other one is my Home computer. Home computer is an iMac that I bought years ago, used, on eBay. Everyone who spends any time at all in my house has their own account on Home computer. It had been acting flaky, but only when it refused to connect to the internet did I take action. Maybe it is a coincidence, but running Disk Repair only made it worse. The repairs were not completed: the program stopped in the middle and said it could not repair the disk and that I should back up what files I could and then reformat (erase) the disk. That’s a scary message. I never made contact with that disk again. Well, maybe that is a bit overdramatic. I can’t get the damn thing to start up. I sure hope that I will be able to make contact when I get the cable that I need to connect Firewire between these two computers. I have a drawer full of Firewire cables. But Office computer is pretty new and has an 800 FW port, while Home computer boasts only a 400 FW port. So I purchased a $9 400-to-800 cable on eBay and am awaiting its arrival with a heart filled with hope. (Home computer has so many of my images, irreplaceable images.)

But in the meantime, I thought, I can bring the new images from the camera’s USB compact flash card onto Office computer, and from there to WordPress, using the card reader that used to live with Home computer. But Office computer refuses to acknowledge the presence of this alien card. I changed its USB cable just in case the problem lies with the cable. Yes, I happen to have another drawer full of USB cables with every configuration possible (except the one that would connect my two computers). Still no action. I can see a little light blinking in the card reader, but it looks a lot wimpier than the strong light I remember from when it was paired to Home computer. Another coincidence? Who knows! I am reeling. Almost gave up on blog altogether when I realized that this very situation may be worth blogging about, ’cause everyone relates to computer frustration.

But enough of prologue. Let’s see what I have in the media library that you haven’t seen yet.

Fletch under the Assael Influence

This is a fairly large (16×12) study (see, I am learning at least to consider them as studies!) from a recent Tuesday Life Group session. The Assael workshop had just ended, and I was very attentive to the shadows, making them as dark and as blue as I could. There is also a “philosophy” that I think I observed in Steven Assael, which now infects my own: get close, then closer, then closer, then closer, almost to infinity, until you are as close as you believe you can get. Close to what? Perfection, I suppose, but to break it down into parts: value, color, shape. Remember when he played on my painting, running over the shapes I had drawn, then left, instructing me to fix the drawing? (Revisit that post here.)

So here’s the Assael process as digested by me: you sketch in large shapes just to make sure the composition will work, then plug in the values and colors very roughly (as far as the drawing is concerned), then when those values and colors are “perfect”, you perfect the drawing by tightening up the shapes.

In this study of Fletch, I was trying to apply those principles without having first articulated the principles in my head, so it was haphazard. When I ever get my photos back onto a computer under my control, you will see in my last two figure studies something closer to the Assael process, although they will look rougher. Rougher yet closer to perfect? How can that be? It’s a puzzlement, and a delight, a never-ending search for the Way.

The other image I have been holding back is this work in progress–so much “in progress” that I was embarrassed to show it:

unfinished portrait of Becky

One of the images on my compact flash card is the finished–hmm, closer to finished–portrait of Becky. I corrected the wayward eye and worked on the values and colors. I carved back on the left side of the face as well. Dangerous to change drawing without the model as reference, but I felt I was making adjustments on the basis of information already there. Clearly the eye was too far to the right, so I only had to remember the shape and move it ever so slightly to the left. (Do wish I could show you now instead of later!) When I decided the face was too wide on the left side, I kept the same line and just moved it by millimeters (hope “millimeter” is small enough to be my meaning–let’s just say VERY small degrees) by painting the negative space: more hair, less face. I had to trust that the line itself was accurate. A leap of faith in myself. Well, I had no choice, did I?

So that’s it. I have nothing more held back, you know it all.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery and the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (both are in Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Kimball-Jenkins Gallery in Concord, NH; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at Stella Blu, an American Tapas restaurant in Nashua; at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester; the East End Art Gallery in Riverhead, Long Island; at the Manchester office of Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter; and at her studio by appointment.

Sidewalk Art Show in Portland, Maine

Posted by Aline on August 28, 2013

Bruce Jones and I tried again, this time in Portland. I had to get up at 4:20 a.m. in order to get myself and my helpers to Portland by 7:30. This was our second experience with outdoor art shows. Our first was the Beacon Hill Art Walk. We enjoyed Portland more. For one thing, we were not under the noisy, dirty elevated rail line. For another we were not in a wind tunnel.

Our spot in Monument Square

As you can see, we had an end location, thus enabling us to extend our real estate. We spread our paintings over three extra panel surfaces, and set up our table display out of the way of browsers. I stacked about 12 unframed panels on the table for bargain hunters. Bargain-hunting art collectors may be an oxymoron: People enjoyed looking but no one asked for the price.

Bruce and me waiting for business

The day was gorgeous–so crisp in the morning that my daughter brought two sweatshirts with her. But the temperature heated up as the day weathered on, and by the end of the day, I was sunburned. I carry sunscreen and insect repellant in my plein air pack, but never thought to bring those things to an art show. Another thing we didn’t think to bring was bags to put the art in if we sold something. Whew! Good thing we didn’t sell anything! I am now pricing clear bags with die-cut handles and wondering if they will be strong enough for a large painting in a heavy frame. I’d have to buy a box of at least 250 of them to find out.

I brought 20 paintings to hang on what turned out to be six display panels, and this time out, most of them were figurative. Half of the figures were nudes. Cameron will perhaps be pleased to learn that I hung 4 out of the 5 paintings I completed in his “Inspired by Cornwall” course. You wouldn’t think anyone would care about paintings of people whom they don’t even know, but my paintings and drawing of black women attracted the most attention. Also, consider that fact that someone bought my portrait of the black African girl (“Red Headdress”) at the Londonderry Art in Action. Pretty interesting phenomenon. My landscapes were almost totally ignored.

Side A: My Figures

Side B, my mixed side; Side C, Bruce’s landscapes

But in the end, the results were the same as Beacon Hill–no sales. We watched as the guy across the square from us sold his giclee prints like hotcakes; we had to admire his organization and salesmanship. We didn’t bring any giclee prints. But we handed out cards and may hear from those interested art lovers as a result of meeting them there. Probably not this one:

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Prescott Park in Portsmouth

Posted by Aline on August 12, 2013

Saturday I had a grand day, painting with an old pal, Flo Parlangeli, in the urban seacoast setting of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. We were taking part in an event organized by the New Hampshire Art Association. There were flower gardens and bridges and boats to see, with families, boaters, tourists seeing them. Later there was music to hear. Many also stopped to investigate what the artists were up to. I believe there were even a few sales. I thought the quality of all the artwork was pretty high. My first painting was a view out of a densely shaded part of Prospect Park towards the brightly lit homes across the street.

In Prescott Park

Some of the figures were suggested by the appearance of actual people, others I just made up. I am trying to develop a skill for making a few strokes of color suggest people.

After getting one serious painting under my belt, so to speak, I experimented with the next two paintings. I deployed my largest brush with my medium mix of Gamsol, stand oil and Liquin, and first covered my panel with creamy yellow paint, thereby creating a wet surface to paint into. Continuing with that big brush, I blocked in big shapes, working very fast. As long as feasible, I kept using the big brush. I never did move to anything smaller than a medium brush. It was fun and energizing. I don’t know if the results are anything to write home about, but these two paintings have a different feel to them.

Waiting for the Show to Start

People had reserved their spots by setting up lawn chairs and blankets along the front, but those chairs and blankets were empty because no one wanted to wait in the sun. There were plenty of people in the shady background, but I wanted to populate my sunlit chairs, and so I continued my experiment with slashes of color. Enough to suggest people? The water in the background is the Piscataquog River that separates Maine from New Hampshire. The Portsmouth Naval Station is represented by the buildings on the right, across the river.

Backstage at Prescott Park

Actually, this is behind the back of the stage–trailers, chain link fence, tent, stacks of wooden fencing (I guess–I didn’t really analyze what exactly I was observing here). I see a flaw that I would like to correct now–those dark “holes” in the staging should feel more like gaps through which you can just make out some trees on the other side. Yes, those multicolored blotches are trees. I was listening to my inner child.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery and the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Kimball-Jenkins Gallery in Concord, NH; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at Stella Blu , an American Tapas restaurant in Nashua; at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment. Two paintings hang in the Manchester office of Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter and a poster reproduction hangs in the Currier Museum of Art, also in Manchester.

Steven Assael workshop, cont.

Posted by Aline on July 14, 2013

I posted a mid-week report on this figure painting workshop, which you should check out before reading this post. The workshop was supposed to be five days, from ten a.m. to five p.m. That schedule was amended at the end of the first day, Monday, because Steve’s demo was turning out so good that he wanted to finish it before he left New Hampshire. Well, that’s my educated guess as to his motivations, which were really pretty transparent. First he determined that his model for the demo, Becky, was not available Saturday, so arrangements were made for her to come in Sunday! Saturday was therefore to be a group drawing day, with Margaret as our model. Margaret also modeled for the class Tuesday through Thursday. Monday and Friday and Sunday were given over to the “demo”. Plus we started at nine a.m. instead of ten, every day after Monday. I am wiped out and all I had to do was stay awake and focussed. (If I let my focus wander, I started to nod off.) Steve seemed to be running low on steam towards the end, but would not stop painting. Becky was released at 4:00 and I had to leave at 4:30, while Steve was putting finishing touches on the background. I hope they were the finishing touches.

As a result, I have so much material to show you and discuss that I could probably fill a week of posts. I will leave my own work out of the discussion for now.

Before the pictures, a commercial: please go here to vote for my poster if you can. The top 30 or something vote getters (that actually might be all) go on to another round of voting. It’s all too complex for my poor tired brain tonight. Just go there and vote! (Please)

The following four pictures were taken during the Friday “demo”.

The thing to notice about these “progress” pics is that he rather cavalierly blurs previously articulated shapes in the course of finding the hue and value he is looking for. Also notice how he uses the painting itself as an auxillary palette. The black and red drapes were added to break up the expanse of blue, but not much attention was given to painting them. Yet.

The rest of the pictures are from today. I have captioned each with the time I took the photo to give you some idea of the passage of time between one and another. You might understand better why it was hard to stay focussed:

10:30

The first thing he did was get rid of the blue drape altogether by covering it up with a brownish patterned one. I’m quite sure that if he had another couple of days to work on this painting, the pattern would be beautifully represented.

11:00

He cleaned up the background–uh, palette–and placed a red crescent about where the red lamp shone. Take note of that because I like to think something I did on Thursday may have inspired this bit.

See a little bit of patterning in the brownish drape? And her face is back–sort of. The black parabola emerging in the background has us all wondering. The black drape is so subtly beautiful that I’m afraid you can’t see it. Steve is a wizard with black.

1:23

Sunday’s session was supposed to end at one o’clock. Becky agreed to stay on and, I presume, the Institute agreed to foot the bill.

2:23

Not quite sure but I think the reflection of the black drape on her back and continuation of the red drape towards the background are new.

I have a few more images that I would like to show you, but I think I have exceeded some kind of daily limit–Wordpress is not accepting any more uploads. I will try again tomorrow.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery and the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Kimball-Jenkins Gallery in Concord, NH; at the Bedford Library in Bedford; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at Stella Blu , an American Tapas restaurant in Nashua; at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester; at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center in Manchester (part of the Healing with Art program); and at her studio by appointment. Two paintings are also hanging in the Manchester office of Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter.

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