Frozen Moments

Posted by Aline on January 28, 2013

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

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

Mt. Washington from Rte 302

Heroic Effort (Sharon’s)

Heroic Effort (Aline’s)

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

Mt. Wash. from 302

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

Plein air? Not.

Glen House Painters

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

Indoor painting of Mt. Washington

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

Artist or Terrorist? (Sharon)

Frozen Stream

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

WIP Sharon

Jackson Community Church, looking west

Jackson Community Church looking east

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

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

The Friendly Goats of Jenness Farm

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

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

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

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

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

Standing Tall

Breaking Bad

Posted by Aline on January 14, 2013

My weekend was dominated by my iPad (Christmas gift) and my discovery of the HBO series “Breaking Bad”. Apparently it’s been around since 2008, but only recently came to my notice. Convergently, my iPad excels at downstreaming (if that the correct term) episodes of Breaking Bad from Netflix, 46 episodes starting in 2008, each about 48 minutes long. I made only a small dent. Needless to say, not much art got created. So in a way, I acted out in my own very small way the title of the series, which refers to the conduct of a high school chemistry teacher who breaks bad and sets up a secret lab to manufacture crystal meth.

Thank goodness for Nita and Nancy, my fellow Circlers, who have provided images of their creations to flesh out this sorry specimen of a blog entry. All three of us painted Tuesday morning, and Nita painted Friday as well, while Nancy and I were gallivanting to Boston for the Symphony and the MFA. Let’s start with Friday and go backwards for a change (it’s good for your mental agility, they say):

Nita’s Friday Project

I’m so impressed with this portrait. It is well drawn, and the lips in particular are so delicately painted (and accurate for the likeness, if that matters–it matters in the sense that you score more points for a likeness, but doesn’t matter in terms of quality of painting). The modeling of the facial structures is also well done. And the eyes are good. Skin tone, really good, well I could go on, but you get the idea.

Because we were a smaller than usual group on Tuesday, we gathered around the brown leather sofa, on the sunlit side of Adrienne’s studio.

Nancy’s pastel painting

Nita’s Oil Painting

My Oil Painting

I took this painting to a collegial critique on Wednesday and got some really useful suggestions, which I promptly implemented, all except one which I forgot about until just now (add red reflection of the drape on his thigh). My handling of the pillows and the sofa itself drew more admiration than the figure. Here are some–perhaps all, at least all that I could locate–of my prior interpretations of that sofa:

The Feet Have It

Owning the Brown Leather Sofa

On the Brown Leather Sofa

Vote for your favorite brown leather sofa painting by commenting below. If you want to. Don’t feel obligated!

I will be participating again this year in the McGowan Gallery’s annual “Love, Lust and Desire” show–it’s a Valentine theme for the month of February. The reception will be February 1, from 5-7. The show is unique, or at least pretty unusual, for the limitation on the size of the artworks: 2D, no larger than 8×11. The prices are accordingly affordable. McGowan is a superb, high-end gallery, worth regular visits any time you might be in the neighborhood. 10 Hills Avenue, Concord, NH. My contributions to the exhibit are mostly small oil paintings on treated paper. I included two copies of master’s portraits that I am particularly proud of. One is a self-portrait by Pietro Annigoni , the other a detail from a painting by Jacob Collins. I love this black and white closeup of his model’s head almost better than the original half-figure-in-color version.

After Jacob Collins (detail from Carolina)

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

This week’s nudes

Posted by Aline on January 7, 2013

I’m risking a “same old, same old” reaction from my followers, but I really have no choice. Nudes are what I did this week, so we are stuck with it. I regret not getting photos of the others’ paintings as well, but that’s not what I’m thinking about at the close of a session when we are cleaning up, packing up, making arrangements for our next meeting. On Friday, our model continued the pose that you have already seen two weeks of, from every possible perspective. But today you get one of those perspectives from me.

a different perspective

As chance would have it, I grabbed a sheet of 16×20 canvas simply because it was handy, and I had only one session to produce something on it, so I knew I could not finish anything. But I should at least have got the proportions correct, and I see problems with that aspect. Nothing prevents me from working more on this painting at home (=studio) and bringing it closer to a state of completion/satisfaction. Whether I will feel like doing that is the question.

Our Sunday sessions are back. I took in a smaller canvas this time–12×16, same size as the successful one from the last two weeks, “Artists and Model“. 12×16 is a good size to work with, because I don’t have to use it all. I can carve an 11×14 painting out of a sheet that is 12×16. This time, however, I wanted all of the sixteen inches of available length and less of the width. So I carved away (not literally–I just drew a line) about 2 inches from one side. My composition was improved, but maybe I was just too lazy to contemplate filling the space behind the model. There were no artists on the other side for me to inspire me.

Leaning pose

Because of my pruning, if this painting turns out to be a keeper, I will have to order a custom-sized frame for it. Pondering that result as I was painting away Sunday, I suddenly understood why so many of the masters’ paintings were odd-sized–not just 22 x 31, say, but 22 and 3/8 by 31 and 1/2. They must have cropped their paintings to achieve the optimum composition for each. For the Old Old Masters, the frame sizes were not standardized anyway.

Upon further reflection today, I realize what a handicap we modern, thrifty painters accept, those of us who strive to paint to a standard size frame. My very best frames come from a company that sells only standard sizes, and you have to buy of lot of them at one time. Their frames have “closed corners”, which means the frames are put together before the finish (gold leaf, e.g.) is applied. You won’t see a seam in the corners. The other kind of frame is “chop” or something like that, and on those frames the seams are discernible. When a painter reaches the level of selling for $50,000 a painting , he or she will order a custom, closed-corner frame and pay thousands of dollars per frame. I’m not there yet.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

More from the Circle of Six

Posted by Aline on December 31, 2012

Artists and Model

I completed this painting last Friday, and there seems to be universal agreement that it is one of my best, knocking last June’s “In the Artist’s Studio” out of the top spot. What makes it best is, I believe, the additional interest contributed by the figures in the background, and I surely do hope I did not go overboard in depicting them. I was acutely aware of the need to not compete with the central figure of the model, and I therefore had intended to be much sketchier with the artist figures. But, as happens so often to me, the painting wrested control from me. So far, no one admits to thinking the background figures are too prominent.

As I laid it out for you last week: Tony is still the one on the far left, and Steve is the one across the room from me. Both of them started over on new works this week. Here is Steve’s, and after it is Tony’s–in paint this week (hurrah!):

Steve’s drawing

Tony’s painting

Continuing around the room counterclockwise, next is Fletcher’s painting, then Nita’s.

Fletcher’s painting (awesome knee!)

Nita’s painting

Heather was not with us this week; she was a casualty of the snowstorm we had the day before. Elizabeth couldn’t make it either, a worrisome thing; I hope you will eventually get to see some of her work.

I’ll keep it short and (hope-you-agree) sweet this last day of the year 2012. Happy New Year!

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester (Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the Soo Rye Art Gallery in Rye NH; at her law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

Circle of Six, Sometimes Seven

Posted by Aline on December 24, 2012

Gentle readers, particularly the artists among you, are you wondering at the many opportunities I get to paint from live models? How does that happen when there is no way could I afford it on my own? It happens because I am lucky enough to have friends who are just as obsessed as I am, and another friend slightly less possessed but able to offer us the hospitality of her studio. With the advantage of so much practice since last Spring, we have been progressing as artists. One by one, each of us has turned from drawing to painting. Suddenly, two weeks ago, I looked around the studio and discovered sights amazing and inspiring. Since then I have been collecting as many images from the stalwarts as I could, to share them with you.

So this week I celebrate the team, the Circle of Six (sometimes seven) who show up week after week, sometimes twice a week, each week producing better and better art, and now producing it better with paint.

Heather Lord was the original painting fool among us. I remember her years ago, bringing her paints to the Saturday Life Group, trying desperately to capture those short poses with oil paint. Daft, but the results were vibrant. It was her desire for longer, painting-possible poses that last April, led to our Tuesday morning experiment with 3-hours-as-default programming.

This Fall, with the consent of Peter Clive, our Friday workshop instructor, we continued with 3-hour program. Lately, for both Tuesday and Friday sessions, we have enjoyed double sessions on the same pose. We have just come off two straight weeks with Becky in one pose, and started on another pose that will continue next week.) I was lucky enough to get photos of Heather’s paintings of both poses, the second one still a work in progress.

From Heather, pose 1

Heather's painting of Rebecca [Work in Progress} week 2

Heather’s painting of Rebecca [Work in Progress} pose 2

My own portrait of Becky in week 1 of pose 1 was in last week’s blog, “Painting Faces“. Week 2 of pose 1 is toward the end of this blog.

After noticing what fun the two painters (that’s Heather and I) were having, the others decided to give painting a try too. Nita Van Zandt was one of the first to brave the new frontier of painting, and right away–way too quickly we first adopters carped–she began creating bold, vivid images, experimenting, of course, because painting is all about experimentation.

Nita’s, pose 1

Elizabeth Peck–no one works harder than Elizabeth to perfect her art. She takes countless workshops and can quote some famous artist on almost any point. However, she was too busy to furnish a photo this time. I hope we can catch her later.

For years perhaps, Fletcher Taft had been drawing with pencil or Conte crayon. He produced small, delicate images, quite lovely, but not “bold” or “adventurous”. Look at him now!

Fletch’s, pose 1

Fletcher’s pose 2

Nancy Healy has been at this longer than any of the rest of us. Her artistry was and is already mature, so “progress” is less striking and unnecessary for her. She favors painting with pastels, despite its drawbacks. (Pastel paintings are very fragile.) Like the rest of us, Nancy doesn’t worry about selling, and she is a master with her pastels.

Nancy’s pose 1

The sometimes-seventh member of our circle is Tony Fiore. Tony is a man “who knows a lot”. About everything. But not in an obnoxious way. He entertains us with random knowledge on those days when his sailing does not interfere with his art-making. Like most of us (except Nancy), he is a frequent student at the Institute of Art (the “Tute”, he likes to call it). He was the last of us to try painting, possibly because he refuses to paint in oils, but eventually he could not resist, and for week 1 of pose 1, he brought his acrylics to give it a go. Unfortunately I did not get a picture of his painting from that week, and he reverted to charcoal this week. For the time being, we’ll have to settle for his drawing.

Tony’s drawing pose 1

I had a particularly good week myself. I completed one on Tuesday that may be my best yet, and started one on Friday that I will be finishing up next week. Here they are:

Seated on Red Drape (Tuesday)

Seated on platform, WIP, Pose 2

I accidentally smudged the first one in the course of getting it home, but decided not to repair. I took a photograph at an angle to the second one so as to avoid glare, so that’s why it off kilter to the camera. But no glare! When finished, there will be a suggestion of the two artists painting in the background, and one of them is Tony. The other is Steve, who comes so rarely that despite his role as model for this painting, is getting no glory. Yet.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Painting Faces

Posted by Aline on December 17, 2012

Lately, in a change-up from the nudes, I have been trying to paint faces. I suppose in the back of my mind I had been harboring some hope of getting good enough at painting faces to paint portraits. The master of portraits is John Singer Sargent. I’m beginning to realize that I will never ever be good enough to paint a portrait that I could even show to JSS for a critique. No, of course I’m not aspiring to paint as expertly as JSS, but there is a continuum, let’s say of 100 points. JSS is 100. I had hoped to reach 80. And for a while, it had seemed doable, as I gradually captured more and more of the likenesses of my subjects. But OMG, it dawned on me between this and that stray thought, almost casually, that capturing a likeness is simply putting the correct shape in the correct spot, sort of like the police artist who renders the likeness of a suspect from the selections of a witness. A likeness is only the beginning of a portrait, a toe in the water of portraiture. I did two likenesses this week.

Close up of Becky’s Face

Close up

Neither of them qualify as portraits. Let us compare JSS’s portraits.

First, his portraits are full length. I can’t think of a single JSS painting of a face. (He did do many smaller charcoal or pencil drawings of facial likenesses, which I love to copy.) “Portrait” signifies so much more than facial features. “Portrait” suggests that attributes of the subject’s disposition are revealed. The posture of the subject, the objects held by the subject, all contribute toward conveying what the subject holds dear and what attitude the subject takes toward life.

Second, consider the monumentality of effort that JSS put into his portraits. Despite the fact that he was superbly accomplished and experienced, he would not complete a portrait with fewer than eight sittings (according to Wikipedia) and rumor has it that in at least one instance, the unfortunate subject had to submit to something like 80 hours of sitting. And by the way, again according to Wikipedia’s source, he usually got the likeness right away, in the first sitting. The rest of the sitting time, the bulk of his efforts, had to do with everything other than the likeness.

So in conclusion, I have not yet completed a real portrait, or even come close. And if I were good enough to get so far as to complete one in my lifetime, which is alas limited to another 30 years at best, I should have by now received some inkling of the possibility. I continue to make progress, but I will never arrive.

But hey! I’m having a wonderful time. Here is the lovely nude that escaped my camera last week, and a few more from this Saturday’s session:

Attitude for 20 minutes

10-minute pose

5-minute pose

35-minute pose in charcoal

You might like the 5- and 10-minute short poses better than the longer 35-minute pose. That 5-minute pose is the best pose–wish I could have had an hour with it. (The 50-minute pose was too horrible–I won’t even look at it, much less photograph it.) The photos this week were, by the way, brought to you by my phone, pitch-hitting for the digital single lens reflex made by Nikon. Not too shabby for a camera phone.

After our grueling session in the morning, a few of us SLG-ers got together for a party that night, and someone else’s camera phone caught this totally unposed candid shot of a few luminaries in attendance. Not.

Members of Saturday Life Group at Xmas party

From left to right: Marion Hazelton, Joey Pearson, Bea Bearden, Larry Christian (yes, THE Larry Christian), and me.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Slacker!

Posted by Aline on December 10, 2012

I only painted thrice last week, and it’s thanks to my Tuesday and Friday morning life drawing sessions and the Saturday Life Group that I accomplished that much. It made me realize how little time I have been putting in on studio projects, and on painting in the great outdoors. I used to be a pretty decent, very enthusiastic plein air painter. Without actually counting, I would bet I produced over 50 plein air paintings in 2011, compared to 25 this year. I miss it. But so much of my artistic energy has been absorbed by the figurative and portrait sessions that I haven’t been carving out time for plein air outings. Now the weather is getting nasty outside. My New Year’s resolution, adopted early, is to find more opportunities to get outside to paint–starting with our first ever Bartlett Artists Winter Getaway in January, followed by a visit to Mary on Marco Island, probably in February.

Meanwhile, the story of this week: Since our Tuesday model and our Friday model and our next Friday model is the same person, those of us who do both Tuesday and Friday decided to make it a repeating pose, enabling a total of 9 hours on one pose for those who wanted it. I will probably the only one of us who will use all three sessions on a single painting, although I expect not to use the entire final session on this painting.

“Huis Clos” (“Inside closed doors” or “no exit”?) WIP after 2d of 3-session pose

One of the more interesting aspects of this painting is the background architecture. I had recently watched a video, part 1 of Dan Thompson painting a figure, in which he recommended painting in the background, at least temporarily, in order to use it as a roadmap. It works. Before I drew in the Exit door on the left of the painting, I had drawn the figure’s arm too close to his body. By situating the frame of the door where it intersected the body, I uncovered the drafting error in the arm. The cubicle on the right (it’s the bathroom) helped me with sizing the figure’s left leg (leg on the viewer’s right).

Because I knew about the extended pose, I started this painting on a 16×20 sheet of primed linen. I intended it to be a whole body pose, but allowed my impulsive first blocking in to change my mind. What you see is the product of two sessions, and it is almost finished. Some tinkering with the facial features and decisions on the background are needed next week. When it is finished, I will roll it up and stash it away with so many other paintings on which I have lavished hours of time and effort. And love. Paintings that, unlike landscapes, no one else is likely to savor.

At SLG (Saturday Life Group) I continued the experimentation with compressed charcoal that I had started in Larry Christian’s class at the Institute. Here is the final pose of the session:

40-minute pose, view of the back

Yes, I do like backs.

There is another drawing, from a 20-minute pose, that I wanted to include today, but for some reason, the photo I thought I took of it did not turn out. Too bad. It was a good one, and different from the one above. I will include it next week if I can work it into next week’s topic, whatever that might be. I hope next week’s topic will include work in my studio, inspired by the successful completion of my reorganization exertions. Yes, that’s my excuse for no studio painting: I have been laboring on moving stuff, and removing stuff, to create more space in my bedroom/studio for the studio portion. Books, heavy books, had to be carried downstairs to make room for just art books on the studio shelves. Underbed storage units had to be emptied to make room for clear bags, saved drawings and such art-related, seldom-accessed items. Dust bunnies had to be captured and disposed of (sneeze!). Furniture had to be rearranged and some of it relegated to the guest room. Today, I ache all over. Well, that’s nothing new. Arthritis. Really slowing me. Down.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Lessons Less Enjoyed

Posted by Aline on December 3, 2012

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

Seated Nude, WIP

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

Seated Nude

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

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

Portrait of Grace

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

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

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester (Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the Soo Rye Art Gallery in Rye NH; at the law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

The Struggle (with compressed charcoal)

Posted by Aline on November 26, 2012

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

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

I started with a test sheet of mark-making.

A test of handling

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

Gestures, no. 2

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

Gestures, no. 1

gestures, no. 3

Gestures, No. 4

Gestures, No. 5

Gestures, No. 6

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

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

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

struggle no. 2 still trying to complicate things

Struggle no. 3 Falling back on lines

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

Stuggle no. 4

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

Struggle no. 5–close, or there?

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

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

P.S. Larry was quite pleased with me.

Finding a Face

Posted by Aline on November 19, 2012

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

underexposed

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

From Head to Foot

Larger copy of earlier pose

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

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

Nose

Ears

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

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

mouth

eyes

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

WIP– Halfway there?

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

umpteenth portrait of Rebecca

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester (Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the Soo Rye Art Gallery in Rye NH; at the law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

Catching the Odd Perspective

Posted by Aline on November 12, 2012

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

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

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

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

Bent

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

Seated

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

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

Pillowed

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

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

Totem displayed in Soo Rye Art Gallery

High and Dry on exhibit at Soo Rye

Lotus Studies, on exhibit at Soo Rye

Bea’s drawing, displayed in Soo Rye Gallery

Bea’s portrait of Becky

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester (Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at the Soo Rye Art Gallery in Rye NH; at the law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

Waiting for the Roof to Blow Off

Posted by Aline on October 29, 2012

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

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

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

Sitting Tall

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

Occupier

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

Sitting Solid

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

Finding Flight

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

Cheeky

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

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

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

Becky

Posted by Aline on September 24, 2012

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

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

The Mill in New Boston

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

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

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

Becky with mink stole

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

Becky No. 1, June 2011

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

AlineLotter is currently exhibiting:

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

Bonus Blog: Cruisin’ and Paintin’ the Essex River

Posted by Aline on September 17, 2012

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

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

Parking for Cogswell’s Grant

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

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

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

View of Essex River marshes from the Cox Reservation

AlineLotter is currently exhibiting:

The Wolfeboro Paintout

Posted by Aline on September 17, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

Three Boats and a Wetsuit (photo)

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

Three Boats and a Wetsuit (painting)

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

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

Wolfeboro painting no. 2 (Cate Park)

Cate Park Painting–better photo!

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

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Letting down

Posted by Aline on September 10, 2012

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

Left corner

—

Right Corner

—

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

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

Apples Ready to Pick

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

Standing Nude

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

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

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

Seated Nude (M)

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

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

NH Plein Air exhibit at Pantano Gallery

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

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Studies, Ending, Beginning

Posted by Aline on December 5, 2011

This is the last study for my large Mt. Washington Bike Race painting. I numbered it “4” but in fact it is 5 if you count the two portraits in the series. I have started on the big canvas, but the drawing is so rudimentary that I am saving it for a future post, when I hope I will have something of interest to display.

Meanwhile I would like to share with you a minor triumph–well, sort of a triumph and certainly a very minor one. Last Summer (can’t believe it has been that long ago) in the Portraits course I was taking with Cameron Bennett, he crushed me with the observation that an eye was too low on a copy of a Serov portrait that he had assigned us as homework. Here is a link to my report on that last effort. Last week I finally got around to correcting that flaw. I used a ruler. I laid the ruler under the eyes of the original, then under the eyes of my copy. I couldn’t find any discrepancy, yet I had to agree the there was something fishy about my eye. Of course, the color was wrong, but could that obvious flaw have create the misimpression that the eye was too high or low?

Original, by Valentin Serov

My copy of Serov portrait (A)

My copy, after retouching eye

Original Portrait by Valentin Serov

Finally, one more workshop piece, from our (NH Plein Air artists) most recent meeting of the Peter Granucci workshop series, which ironically, requires indoor practice from photographs. The subject this month was snow.

Snow Shadows

Improvements

Posted by Aline on December 5, 2011

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

Sky: horizon color–greener

Red fish house: adjusted values of lighted and shaded sides

Blue fish house: changed color of roof

Boats: added clean whites to sun-struck surfaces

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

Stone abutments: eliminated highlights, contrast

Rockport Harbor WIP

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

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

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

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

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

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

View of race with vista

At the Finish (WIP)

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

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

Link to website: www.paintingsbyaline.com

A Best Week

Posted by Aline on November 13, 2011

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

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

Alpaca Farm in North Conway

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

Alpaca Farm v.2

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

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

Alpaca Farm, v.3 (Final)

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

Andy as Supercyclist

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

Whew!

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

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

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

Arrangement of elbow and knee

Leg on Blue Draped Pillow

Right Side with bent elbow

The back from a left angle

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

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

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

Tale of Woe

Posted by Aline on October 31, 2011

. . . Snow woe? Weather woe? Maybe lack-of-power woe. “Power.” Have you ever thought about the usages of the word “power”. We use it to describe an attribute of people who attain positions where they can control the lives of others. Power is also an attribute of an individual who can control his/her own life. So why does “Power” also refer to electrical current to run lights, furnace, phone, internet, microwave, TV, DVD, and radio, to charge cell phones and Palm Pilots? Because without all those abilities, one is powerless.

Without power (in the technological sense) One is also cold, hungry, and sleepless. So I write this tale of powerlessness–obviously not from home–in a state of grogginess. For the first time in my life, I slept with a Great Dane. I invited her into bed with me when her “mom”, my granddaughter, bailed on us to go spend the night with a friend with “power”. Honey, the Great Dane, usually sleeps with Tabitha, my granddaughter. Tabitha thoughtfully lent us her comforter and Honey was dressed in a woolly sweater. I wore my thermally correct underwear and a snuggly fleece robe-type thing over that. We were warm enough. Well, I was warm enough. Honey was shivering and twitching all night, while I concentrated on hanging on to my share of the bed and waiting for the sun to rise.

Actually, I wasn’t all that hungry because I got to spend a wonderful 4 to 5 hours at a party with artists earlier in the day. Mill Brook Gallery in Concord held an opening for an exhibit that was enchanting in its originality and breadth. http://www.themillbrookgallery.com/ I had been invited by Patrick McCay, one of the featured artists, who is my EEE teacher. (EEE stands for Explore, Exploit, Express–in whatever medium, whatever style.) Two of his paintings already had red dots on them when we got there. “We” because I did not have the use of my car yesterday but got a ride with two other artists, Bea Bearden and David Wells. Through Bea and David I also found myself welcomed to a pot luck supper after the reception. What a pot luck supper it was! It deserves commemoration by publication of the entire amazing menu, but I cannot do it justice on the wing with descriptions like “quiche-type thing” and “rice and beans”. I didn’t go near the pies–no room for dessert.

So in truth I was warm enough and not hungry at all, and only sleepless now. Yesterday, before going off and partying, I used a few daylight hours to tinker with three paintings that I had started in EEE. The third one is my newest one, which you have not yet seen. In order to get enough light in which to photograph it, I brought it to the office with my camera. No tripod though, so it looks a little fuzzy.

Taking a Bow

As the cyclists arrive at the top, someone throws a gray blanket over their shoulders, which keeps them from getting too chilled after their sweaty exertion. The top of Mt. Washington is, even in August, likely to be a chilly place. Andy, who happens to be my son, appears to be wearing a ribbon of some sort, which I only noticed in the course of working on this painting. Will have to find out the significance of that.

The train car in the background is part of the Cog Railway.

In this painting, I believe I have become more of an impressionist, which is kind of what I have set out to do in the EEE class. My highest goal is to emulate Sargent and Sorolla, which to me means using the brush strokes expressively. I really enjoyed working on this painting. It is another of the studies for the larger work I am hoping to get to, the one of the whole top of the mountain with the crowds, the cyclists, and the mountain vistas.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

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

Link to website: www.paintingsbyaline.com

Paintings by Aline

A Painter's Progress

Tag Archives: new hampshire

Frozen Moments

Breaking Bad

This week’s nudes

More from the Circle of Six

Circle of Six, Sometimes Seven

Painting Faces

Slacker!

Lessons Less Enjoyed

The Struggle (with compressed charcoal)

Finding a Face

Catching the Odd Perspective

Waiting for the Roof to Blow Off

Becky

Bonus Blog: Cruisin’ and Paintin’ the Essex River

The Wolfeboro Paintout

Letting down

Studies, Ending, Beginning

Improvements

A Best Week

Tale of Woe

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