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.

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!

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:

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.

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.

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.

Race up Mount Washington

Posted by Aline on April 22, 2013

I’m sharing with you this week a magnum opus WIP (work in progress) that has been in progress for over a year now. It’s not that I’m lazy, at least I don’t think so. Or that I have too many other projects going. I just stopped working on it for many months, waiting for my desire to finish it to return. I explained this in my blog of a few weeks ago, here if you want to read it.

Usually, I am fast to paint and perhaps too fast to declare my painting done. I don’t have time to get bored or the scope to get intimidated. But I almost always have one big painting in the works, and it usually takes me a month or two to work out the problems and declare it finished. This one has been a totally different experience. It has intimidated me with its scope, size and complexity. I now have barely got all the canvas covered, and am only beginning to try to pull it all together as a whole.

Mt. Washington Phase 4

No smart aleck mountaineer (my son) has yet asked, but perhaps I should make it clear that I am not going for accuracy in the configuration of the mountain ranges depicted. The people are, however, based on real people whom I observed at the 2011 Race to the top of Mount Washington. From the hundreds of photos that I took while waiting for my son to finish (33d–that’s really good!), I picked out some vignettes to incorporate in this panoramic scene. I have drawn and/or painted most of them before I started on the present mammoth. (OK, it’s 30×40, not really mammoth, but quite big for me.) Here are my studies, in no particular order:

Fans

Awaiting the Stragglers (3-legged dog)

View of race with vista

Whew! (a top female finisher)

Andy with bike

A Very Special Guy

Bike Race spectator on Mt. Washington (Find him in the magnum opus)

These small paintings are more faithful portraits of the mountains and the infrastructure at the finish line. The two portraits are of my favorite cyclists, the ones I was there to cheer on.

Mount Washington is often referred to, fondly and respectfully, as “the Rockpile”; if nothing else, my painting does give the viewer a sense of why that is. Despite all my practice paintings, I’m still not satisfied with my technique for depicting rock piles. I also intend to enliven my landscape with many more spectators and cyclists. If you examine the distant road, you will see, you might see–some indistinct blobs of color; they are supposed to suggest more cyclists on their way up with spectators along the route.

I would not want to leave you without a nude this week. For the past month or so, I had been sticking to 8×10 and 9×12 canvases for the Tuesday and Friday sessions with live models. Last Tuesday, counting on having my model in her pose for two straight weeks, I brought a larger canvas to work on–16×20. I was using a piece of oil-primed linen from a Centurion pad. If I don’t like all of it when I am finished, I can always cut it down. So I started large.

Figure in Turban and red drape WIP

So far, so good. I have high hopes for this one, but am a bit perplexed by the color of the background. I think I would prefer something that more closely echoed the colors in the turban. Or perhaps a much darker background to set off the figure and the turban. Stay tuned!

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester (Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at Stella Blu American Tapas restaurant in Nashua; at her law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

Paintings by Aline

A Painter's Progress

Tag Archives: landscape

October 2015 Artists’ Getaway Weekend.

Practice, Practice, Practice!

Dissatisfaction

Lupine Worship

Race up Mount Washington

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