Tag Archives: painters

Lessons Less Enjoyed

Posted by Aline on

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

Seated Nude, WIP

Seated Nude, WIP

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

Seated Nude

Seated Nude

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

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

Portrait of Grace

Portrait of Grace

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

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

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

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

Finding a Face

Posted by Aline on

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

underexposed

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

From Head to Foot

Larger copy of earlier pose

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

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

Nose

Ears

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

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

mouth

eyes

eyes

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

WIP– Halfway there?

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

umpteenth portrait of Rebecca

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

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

Catching the Odd Perspective

Posted by Aline on

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

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

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

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

Bent

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

Seated

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

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

Pillowed

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

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

Totem displayed in Soo Rye Art Gallery

High and Dry on exhibit at Soo Rye

Lotus Studies, on exhibit at Soo Rye

Bea’s drawing, displayed in Soo Rye Gallery

Bea’s portrait of Becky

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

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

Waiting for the Roof to Blow Off

Posted by Aline on

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

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

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

Sitting Tall

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

Occupier

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

Sitting Solid

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

Finding Flight

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

Cheeky

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

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

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

The Wall of Nudes

Posted by Aline on

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

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

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

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

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Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway;  at the Pantano Gallery in the Shapiro Library at Southern NH University; at the Derry Public Library; at the law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

Margaret

Posted by Aline on

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

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

Figure on the Green Tuffet

Margaret, portrait from the right side

Second portrait of M, left side

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

AlineLotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway;  at the Pantano Gallery in the Shapiro Library at Southern NH University; at the Derry Public Library; at the law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment.

Becky

Posted by Aline on

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

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

The Mill in New Boston

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

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

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

Becky with mink stole

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

Becky No. 1, June 2011

 

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

AlineLotter is currently exhibiting:

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

Breaking Through the Sticky Curtain–Not

Posted by Aline on

In an Artist’s Studio

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday Model June 2012

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

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

Link to website: www.paintingsbyaline.com

Improvements

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DSC_3049

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

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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 v.1

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

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.

IPAP weekend

Posted by Aline on

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

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

My chosen scene, featuring Sharon Allen behind the tree.

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

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

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

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

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

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