The Rest of the Story

Posted by Aline on September 11, 2013

Seated Nude A

Seated Nude A is from the Tuesday session of two weeks ago. Nancy C. urgently requested that I not make another mark on it, with about a half hour to go. I respect her judgment, so I only clarified the feet after getting her permission. Ii’m always saying I want to paint more loosely. The difficulty is knowing when to stop, so I need a Nancy C. around at all times, I guess. This is the Carolyn Anderson side of me.

Seated Nude B

I don’t know where Nancy C. was, but I got a little further into Nude B. I think the story here is the good contrasting skin values. I painted in broad shapes again. Don’t you see a similarity to the figure I had going with Steven Assael’s help here? I have to give another plug to Michael Harding’s King’s Blue. It seems to be just the right blue to add into the shadowed skin tones. Nowhere is it more evident than on the edges of Nude B’s shadows. I am getting away from the more chromatic shadows that I used to indulge in, e.g., Nude A’s thigh. One could say I improved a great deal in one week’s time, but one may be saying next week that I am just as fast a backslider.

Becky Portrait v.2

This is the portrait that I was reluctant to show you as a work in progress. The wayward eye is gone. You can’t even notice the tiny change I made to the outside face/jaw line. I think I should bring it in even more. There is still something about this picture that bothers me. What is it exactly? I think it is the modeling of the face. Kinda crazy, really. I need the model back!

Here, for sake of comparison, is the version 1 next to version 2:

unfinished portrait of Becky

Becky Portrait v.2

Could it be that it is the tightness that also annoys me? I must work on loosening up in portraiture now that I am getting a feel for it in figures.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

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

Making do

Posted by Aline on September 3, 2013

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

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

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

Fletch under the Assael Influence

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

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

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

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

unfinished portrait of Becky

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

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

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

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

Sidewalk Art Show in Portland, Maine

Posted by Aline on August 28, 2013

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

Our spot in Monument Square

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

Bruce and me waiting for business

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

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

Side A: My Figures

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

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

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Mixing it Up

Posted by Aline on August 20, 2013

I don’t have any major project under construction (like the poster competition), but I am keeping busy with the paint. Having lots of smaller projects of different kinds makes me happy. In fact, it dawned on me quite recently that I don’t even know how to finish a big project–I seem to specialize in plein air paintings and portraits and nudes from 3-hour sessions–all of which are by some artists considered good only as studies for something bigger. I’m taking a portrait drawing class with Deirdre Riley at the Institute, and we are working on one charcoal portrait for the last three weeks of 3-hour sessions. Deirdre asked me last Friday if I wanted to start a new one or try to bring what I already had to a more polished conclusion. I answered, polished conclusion, because that’s exactly what I don’t know how to do. The demo by Stephen Assael drove that point home. Now there’s a man who knows how to bring a painting to a polished finish! Every molecule of paint must be in the right spot before he is satisfied.

Next week, I hope to be proudly displaying a charcoal portrait finished to the nth degree of development. Unfortunately, the usual quickies are all I have to show for this week. I will start with the most polished, which you have seen before, because it deserves a second look without all those annoying light reflections. This is my third attempt at getting a good photo of it, and I think third time was the charm.

Profile in Red Sweater–Grace

Red Sweater is from the Cameron Bennett workshop, the last one, the interior one. I’m really liking how the red sweater came out–such a simple thing compared to facial features or even the head wrap, but at least I got it right.

Next is a pair of 6x6s; yes, it’s already time to start on the 6x6s. Our (Womens Caucus for Art) 6×6 show was held in February, but that show was a postponed version of the November exhibit. So now we have one again in November and time is running short.

Garden in Prescott Park

The Garden is painted from a photo that I took last week at the Prescott Park Arts Festival. There was no vantage point from which to paint this scene, but I can remember, with the help of my photo, the light that made it so enchanting.

Day One

The line of children is from a fairly old photograph taken of a granddaughter entering first grade, on that first day. It caught my fancy one day and I decided it was worth at least a 6×6 format. I might try to do more with the faces. I kind of gave up, maybe too soon. I’m proud of the gestures.

Overlooked in previous weeks–no, not overlooked because I consciously set it aside, let’s say postponed–is another portrait of Fletch. It may not capture his likeness as well as some others of mine, but I wasn’t focussing on likeness. I was fresh from the Steve Assael workshop, and my attack on this painting very much reflects the Assael influence.

Fletch under the Assael Influence

Last, and least (as far as size is concerned) is this portrayal of four little piglets taking a nap at Phoenix Farm when I visited it with Sharon Allen a few months ago. I was charmed by how they lined up, alternating heads and tails. These adorable little piggies are probably big porkers by now, being readied for someone’s dinner table. No Charlotte to save them.

Four little piggies napping

Piggies was painted on a tiny 2-inch by 2-inch canvas. The painting is destined to be a favor for one guest at a charity event called the Storybook Ball. East Colony has volunteered to decorate a table for the event, and we chose as our theme the storybook “Charlotte’s Web” by E.B. White. (It was my idea.) Each guest at our table will take away an original 2×2 painting, but that’s only a small piece of the project. Our table is going to be spectacular rendition of barn and web and spider and all the other characters from the book. The charity benefiting from all this activity is “CHAD”, or Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery and the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (both are in Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Kimball-Jenkins Gallery in Concord, NH; at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at Stella Blu , an American Tapas restaurant in Nashua; at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment. Two paintings hang in the Manchester office of Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter and a poster reproduction hangs in the Currier Museum of Art, also in Manchester. Reception September 5, 5 to 6 (blessedly short) with the Congresswoman and the artists.

Inadvertently omitted from the above line-up in weeks past was the painting I shipped down to the East End Art Gallery in Riverhead, Long Island. And coming up in September is the Boston Arboretum exhibit, which chose one of my paintings for its annual Jamaica Plain Open Studio exhibit, which you would know all about if you were one of my Facebook friends.

Inspired by Cornwall

Posted by Aline on August 5, 2013

All last week I was preoccupied with my participation in the workshop with Cameron Bennett, which he titled “Inspired by Cornwall” because it was. . . inspired by his time living in Cornwall and becoming familiar with such artists as Alfred Munnings and Laura Knight–the Newlyn School. We were to paint the figure in landscape, en plein air, because that is what the Newlyn painters did. Their history has been made into a movie, “Summer in February”, which is being described with such terms as “complex”, “wild”, “incendiary”; our assignment, to re-create the that atmosphere, was a departure from the usual workshop fare. Every day was threatened with rain, but we must have had the luck of the Irish with us because the sun shone for us each day. Until Friday.

Monday, Cameron handed out an essay written by him on the Cornish painters, treated us to a slide show of representative paintings, and demonstrated his own approach to the subject at the location–Pretty Park– and with the model that we would use the next day–Margaret.

Tuesday and Wednesday, we painted at a local cemetery with Dennis (he of the portrait that I did a few weeks ago) in the morning, and with Margaret at Pretty Park in the afternoon.

Dennis, bridge in Pine Grove Cemetery

Margaret in Pretty Park

Thursday we went to the Seacoast and spent most of the day on this pose.

Grace at Odiorne, with Big Hat

When the sun seemed about to leave us, and the wind picked up, Cameron set us up on the edge of the beach with only 40 minutes to paint, and like a drill sergeant, prodded us on to finish a gestural study.

Grace, standing at edge

Friday, we were all but comatose and welcomed the excuse of potential rain to retreat into the Institute to paint a figure in an interior setting. I never quite got around to the setting.

Grace, another profile–red shirt

It’s not good as a portrait, but I like it as a figure study.

Cameron showed more slides to remind us of what we were supposed to be learning. I hope I absorbed the learning by osmosis because my brain was pretty drowsy by that time. At the end of Friday, we staggered out of the building into a gorgeous late afternoon, too tired to notice.

About the Currier Museum poster competition that I may have mentioned once or twice in the past: I made it into the semifinals, and as a result, I have a piece of my artwork hanging in the Museum. Yea! ( I didn’t win.)

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

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

A Cloudy Day on Top of Cannon Mountain

Posted by Aline on July 22, 2013

Cannon Mountain is a ski mountain, owned and operated by the State of New Hampshire as a State Park. During the summer, one of the ski lifts, a tramway, takes tourists up to the top–and down again–to enjoy the view from the top and the sights along the way. Today I was lucky to be on the tram that passed over mama bear, grazing in the path of the tram. Ordinarily the views both from the tram and the top are of distant mountains in Maine, Vermont, Northern New Hampshire, and Canada. Today, those views were momentarily available on my ride down. Down, after enduring the wind and chill of the summit, trying to make a painting. Good thing I don’t really like to paint long-view vistas, because the only objects visible were those located within 100 yards.

For photos of what it could look like from the top of Cannon Mountain, check out the website here.

For how it looked today before the clouds completely enveloped the summit:

Housing for a Cannon ski lift (or, what I could see before clouds completely socked in)

I tried another painting when I got back down to parking lot level, but really dark and threatening clouds came rolling in our direction and we hied it out of there. We drove over to Crawford Notch prospecting for sunlight, stopped by the Bartlett Inn to make sure our October Artists Weekend reservations were in, and, failing to discover any better weather, ate our way home. (Stopped for supper at the Yankee Smokehouse in Ossipee and for ice cream at Morrisey’s in Wolfsboro.)

Most of last week I spent laboring, still laboring, in the effort to whip my files at the law office into submission. On Friday, however, I took a break to attend my portrait class with Dee Riley, and produced this drawing of new model, Dennis.

Portrait of Dennis in charcoal

I did not think (and neither did Deirdre) until today that his ear looks awfully small. Maybe he has small ears. The class will be spending two more sessions on this pose. I will miss the next two classes because this Friday I will be in Maine for the Castine Plein Air Festival, and next Friday I will be at a plein air with figure workshop with Cameron Bennett.

Cameron taught portrait drawing and painting at the NH Institute of Art before moving to England last year. He is offering this workshop at short notice to coincide with his visit back home to New Hampshire. Most of his old (previous, some also like me, old) students are excitedly looking forward to seeing him again, getting the scoop on practicing art in England, and sopping up all the learning he acquired in the byways of Cornwall, because the title of the workshop is “Inspired by Cornwall”.

As we are already nearing the end of July, let me alert you to Trolley Night coming up on August 1. Trolley Night, a/k/a Open Doors, consists of trolleys providing free transport between the art venues of Manchester, starting with Langer Place, where East Colony Fine Art Gallery is located. Trolley Night in Manchester used to happen four times a year, then it was three times a year. Now, only twice. So don’t pass this one up. The East Colony Gallery puts on a special show just for Trolley Night, in addition to the regular exhibit: Picnic! is the theme of the special show. So come Thursday, August 1, between 5 and 8. The food is great, the people welcoming, and the art fantastic.

If you have voted in the Currier poster contest at my behest, thank you (whether you voted “correctly” or not). If you have not done that yet, here is the link to the Museum’s home page: Currier. Look there for the link to the poster contest. This may work better for those of you who had trouble with my link to the contest site.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

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

Steven Assael workshop, cont.

Posted by Aline on July 14, 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

10:30

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

11:00

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

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

1:23

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

2:23

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

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

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

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

Review of June’s Poses

Posted by Aline on July 2, 2013

On the theory that you can never have too much of beautiful nudes, here is my entire collection of the Tuesday June poses, two of which you have already seen but through the glare of wet paint. Margaret times 4:

Margaret-June 2013-#1

Margaret–June 2013–#2

Margaret–June 2013–#3

I still need to finish the background for No. 3, and perhaps bring up her left knee, which for most of the time I could not see at all. That stool swivels, and it was very difficult to get her back into the exact same position after each break. In fact, every time she took a deep breath, the stool swiveled a little.

Margaret–June 2013–#4

No. 4 is obviously unfinished. We all wanted another session on this pose, but since it was the last one with Margaret for a while, we will all have to wait until the fall to finish it up. The pose was one inspired by another painting, one that Tony spotted on a magazine. There’s usually one element of a pose or scene that attracts the eye, and in this case, it’s the curve of the hip. I spent most of my time working on the hip and legs. You can tell. You may also recognize the brown leather sofa. I should start including “brown leather” as a tag to facilitate a search for all of them. Will start with this one, but can’t promise to edit all previous ones.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

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

Do overs and lupines

Posted by Aline on June 25, 2013

A couple of months ago I posted a rave on Anders Zorn, and I think I may have found him a few new fans. Today, I have another, similar artist for you to sample, through a click back to Robert Genn’s site here. The artist is Joachim Sorolla (WA keem SarOYah), a Spanish contemporary of both Sargent and Zorn. He was a master of all the same skills that I admire in Sargent and Zorn, plus he was a magician with white. Not actual white, but that hue as changed by light and shadows.

And now for a commercial: please visit this address for a view of all the artworks accepted into an online exhibit called “Women’s Rights, An Artist’s Perspective”. My painting “Grandma’s Jewels” was juried into this exhibit. All of the artwork in this and similar exhibits is something called “conceptual”, that is, a message is conveyed, to the most intense degree of drama possible. Picasso’s “Guernica”, for example. I think it would be hard to be a conceptual artist all the time, but some artists thrive on it. Personally, I just like to find something beautiful and paint that. Beauty does not convey message, at least not any message that packs a punch.

OK, with all that out of the way, on to this week’s topic: Do-overs. Lupines. In the past few weeks, I have been outside doing a lot of plein air painting. My best paintings have a way of being alla prima, without any going back to correct or improve. In fact, I cannot think of one that I was able to turn from mediocre into superlative. Yet I keep trying! Of my two from the Forbes House (discussed last week here), I did produce one winner, the little one of the “coverlet”. The other one was a bit messy, and I took a knife (palette knife) to it, thinking to reclaim the panel for another project. But that damned Urge to Fix overcame me, and I repainted the bloody thing, using the ghost images as my guide to the placement and shape of the boats.

Milton Landing, before scraping

Marina, repainted

I’m afraid the result may not have been worth the effort, but no effort is really wasted in this learning process. Or is it?

Then last Thursday, I took the day off to go lupine painting with the lupine experts of the NH Plein Air group. Lupines are a flower that blooms in June rather extravagantly in some places. The town of Sugar Hill has so many lupine fields that it holds a “lupine festival” every year to encourage visitors to the area. Lupines come in shades of blue, pink and white, sometimes within one plant, but mostly blues and purples. They look a lot like the Texas bluebonnet. I have had trouble painting lupines in the past, but I wasn’t giving up on them. Yet.

I produced three lupine paintings. Not happy with any of them. The first was the obligatory field of lupines against the backdrop of receding mountains featuring Mount Washington on the misty horizon. The second was lupines by the lake. In both of these, I was really more interested in the receding mountains and the lake, respectively, than I was in the lupines. The lupines seemed kind of stuck on. An accidental presence. So I painted a quick lupine closeup as my third and last opportunity to conquer the lupine hazard.

When I got home, with the advantage of distance from the actual scene, I decided the problem was my schizo approach to the lupines. To make the first two paintings better, I had to downplay the lupines, stop treating them as pimples on an otherwise idyllic landscape. And for the third study, I just needed a few more strokes to define the nature of the lupine and its leaves. Not so much of a do-over, more of a touch up.

I hope you have not been holding your breath! Here they are, the befores and the afters:

Field of Lupines, BEFORE

Field of Lupines, AFTER

Pearl Lake BEFORE

Pearl Lake, AFTER

Lupines close, BEFORE

Lupines, AFTER

Not only am I cursed by this compulsion to fix mediocre paintings, I am cursed by the compulsion to write about it, doubling the time and effort expended. Should I make this my last lupine festival, or is there hope for me?

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

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

She’s Back (More Margaret)

Posted by Aline on June 17, 2013

Margaret in a Twist

June is the month of Margaret, but since we are not meeting on Fridays, we’ll have only the four Tuesday sessions to try to capture her elusive likeness. (Prior agonies were explored in this blog.) This profile isn’t too bad, but what I was concentrating on was the body–the subtle swellings and shadows that reveal bones and muscle and fat. Not much fat on Margaret, but that just makes what is there all the more fascinating. As usual, I enjoyed playing with the colors, exaggerating the warmth that I was seeing in the shadow side. I see a few things (e.g., the way the chair back comes forward) that I would fix if I thought I’d be showing this anyone, but that’s unlikely to happen. (I mean in person, not online.)

Saturday, a welcome change of pace: I took the opportunity to join the NH Plein Air artists in the second annual paint out at the Forbes House Museum in Milton, Massachusetts. Last year we had lots of sales (commission to benefit the Forbes House), so we had some hopes for a repeat. But this year, no bustling crowds. My theory–everyone had graduations to attend. Never mind–the weather was outstanding and we were doing what we love to do. For painting subjects, with the Museum’s encouragement, we left the grounds of the Museum to seek out local water scenes. My driving companion, Flo Parlangeli, has a connection to water that sets her heart to pounding. I’m sorry I didn’t think to take a photo of her painting and her two paintings. She was painting them both at the same time–one on her easel and one in her lap. Pretty peculiar, but it was all because she was working in acrylic paint, which dries fast. The fast drying quality was something Flo was using to her advantage. She’d let one dry and work on the other, then pick up the first and paint over the previous layer, then repeat with the second one.

Milton Landing

This was my first one, which I spent about three hours on. I placed it in an Art Cocoon and to make sure it didn’t flop out, I taped the corners. But I was careless, and turned it upside down, and the panel did flop out of its bed. As a result, I lost some of my crisp dark edges at the bottoms of the boats. I had thick, white paint in those areas that just flattened and spread out over the edges. I like to paint thick, wet into wet, although there is a limit to how much paint you can pile without losing control of the situation. I was too close to losing control here even before the accident with the Cocoon. This also illustrates why Flo was using the fast-drying acrylics.

So Flo was not going anywhere and I was finished with the boats. I could have taken her car and driven to another location. Instead, I set up in a new spot nearby, in the lee of the boat ramp, where I was visited by a family of ducks. Such as the joys of plein air painting, offsetting the distress caused by wind gusts that try to make off with umbrella and anything attached to it (like your easel).

Covelet at Milton Landing

I thank you all for your feedback on last week’s project, the lettering for my Live Free poster. I am still mulling over all the suggestions. In the meantime, I have covered up “. . . and”. Some objected to the ellipsis, but it was part of the original challenge–just in reverse order. I decided to conform to the challenge more literally–when the paint dries, I will paint in letters for “and . . .” When I complete the project, I will post the final version. And if I have nothing more interesting to talk about, I will describe all the suggestions I received and reasons why I did or did not take them.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery and the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at Stella Blu , an American Tapas restaurant in Nashua; at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester; at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center in Manchester (part of the Healing with Art program) and at her studio by appointment. Two paintings are also hung somewhere in an office of Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter, probably the Manchester one. Currently, the only location for viewing the nudes is at her studio.

A Month of Beckys

Posted by Aline on May 27, 2013

My life is just a little bit crazy right now, what with retirement deadline looming and two major art events coming up next week. Yet here I am, whiling away the national holiday making good on my promise to post weekly. It’s a Good Thing though, this weekly blog, perhaps as important as all those other important things. For however long the internet lasts, it will remind me of where I was on Memorial Day of 2013, just before those three major milestones.

(I’m glad at my age to still be counting milestones other than birthdays!)

So, to get to the point: Major Art Event No. 1 is taking place this coming Sunday, June 2, in Boston. From noon until 6 p.m., I with 71 other artists will be participating in the Beacon Hill Art Walk. It’s not your typical urban art show in that many of the artists will be set up in gardens and on firescapes. Bruce and I, however, are setting up a conventional tent right at the S(tart) point on Cambridge Street shown on the map here. I introduced you to Bruce Jones last week as my partner in this Beacon Hill venture. It’s the first of its kind for both of us, possibly the first of many partnerships if this experience is a happy one. I’ve decided to go eclectic with my display, meaning a couple of landscapes, a couple of figurative works, and my steam locomotive.

: Side-lined

Engine 501, depicting the real life orphan at the North Conway train station, has been looking for a forever home via the Bartlett Inn for at least a year now. Maybe Boston will be the place where it comes together with the right guardian. (For those of you in the dark, “forever home” and “guardian” is animal rescue speak, dear to my heart.)

Major Art Event No. 2: I am opening at the East Colony Fine Art Gallery. Some weeks ago I was juried into this artists’ cooperative gallery, located in the Langer Place Building, the very same building where I conduct my figure drawing sessions, and where the Hatfield Gallery is located, where I also exhibit. Friday I hung six pieces, all of them plein air landscapes. All are, of course, my favorites. (But I have more favorites left, to take to Boston.) My first reception as a member of this gallery takes place on Friday, June 7, from 5 to 7 p.m. I would love to see all my friends there, cheering me on, especially those (you know who you are) who have complained I don’t do enough to market myself.

Back to the business of Becky: I have three new paintings to show you, none of them exactly “finished”, but I may not ever touch them again since I got what I needed from my efforts.

In the red sweater

I love the texture of the bare, clear-primed canvas and so my leaving the background unfinished was a choice. Nevertheless, it will probably be classified as a work in progress if it survives a few hundred years. Painting a clothed model was a change of pace, one that I enjoyed very much, but I guess I was in the minority because the following week when Becky asked if we wanted her clothed, the response “No!” rang out. So I painted this:

The Faraway Gaze

I couldn’t finish this one simply because of the size of the canvas: I chose to bring in a 20×16 canvas on stretchers, which I would never use for plein air so why not? I knew I had better concentrate on the face, then the chest since I could leave the background and the hair to memory or invention or both. Everyone, including myself, thought my lips (the ones I painted) were great. What makes them work, though, is how well I painted the chin and philtrum–lips don’t exist in isolation. OK, check off lips; next up is noses. Her nose here is pretty good, which gives me hope. Becky’s ear is amazingly simple–most people have complex ears, lots of folds and dips and valleys. I think I will make Becky’s ear my template for ears so I don’t use up so much time on them. Nobody really cares what happens inside the ear as long as its placement is correct, the shape is correct, and the tilt is correct.

From the large to the small: this painting is only 10×8 and it felt even smaller to me because I was trying to get the whole figure in. It’s hard to paint small, I discovered–that little stroke that does the job on a bigger canvas makes a blob on the small canvas, and sometimes wipes out a nuance I had been counting on. I thought if I went small I would end up with a small, completed jewel of a painting. Ha! But this one could be a jewel with just a few corrections here and there, and maybe tomorrow I will get a chance to make those corrections. That depends on the other members of the gang. Most will probably prefer to move on to a different pose. I must say, it was nice to paint the other side of Becky’s face for a change!

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery and the East Colony Fine Art Gallery in Manchester (Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at Stella Blu , an American Tapas restaurant in Nashua; at the law offices of Mesmer and Deleault at 41 Brook St in Manchester; at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center in Manchester (part of the Healing with Art program) and at her studio by appointment. Through May 31, nine of her Boston Arboretum paintings are on display at the Leach Library in Londonderry, NH. On Sunday, June 2, she will be participating in the Beacon Hill Art Walk, in Boston.

Art in Action

Posted by Aline on May 6, 2013

Today, I am still wiped out by the effort of participating in a two-day event called “Art in Action.” The Londonderry Arts Council puts it on twice a year. They were also responsible for the Art in t he Common show last fall which bravely welcomed my nude paintings. They also set up the arrangement with the Leach Library whereby nine of my paintings are displayed there. The Londonderry Arts Council is quite an admirable organization of many artists. Since we have nothing comparable in Manchester, I am grateful that they allow all regional artists to benefit.

Participation entails setting up an area to display your artwork — a mobile gallery of sorts– and space where you demonstrate your art-making–a mobile studio. I kept it simple by displaying only 10 framed paintings, a few giclee prints and two cards. Cards (note cards) seem to be the one thing everyone else had lots of. I sold one of my two, which made for a pretty good percentage of cards sold! For my Day One demonstrating, I continued on my single-minded quest to capture a likeness of Margaret, and once again failed. Everyone else thought it was a wonderful painting, but they don’t realize how woeful the likeness is.

This is actually Margaret. After painting her from life last Tuesday, I tried two more times, using the photo in black and white, to draw her features in black and white.

And here is the painting from the photo:

Margaret herself has advised me that if I put in the moles, that would make her recognizable, but whether I am drawing her with paint or charcoal, I truthfully do not see the moles at all.

My frustration leads me to understand why many artists resort to the projecting an image onto the canvas, instead of drawing it freehand. Hmmm. Should I try that? To do so would certainly not help me improve my drawing skills, but I suppose if I had a photograph in front of me and a commission to paint from it, the projector would be a valuable shortcut, almost irresistible. I’ll wait for the day when I have a commissioned portrait to paint and the subject cannot for some reason sit for it, and then decide whether to succumb to the projector.

For Day Two, my daughter graciously agreed to sit for her live portrait, which included an accessory–her miniature Pomeranian sitting on her lap. I’m happy with the Pomeranian, less so with my daughter–their portraits, that is.

The weekend ended on a high note: I had to part ownership with my Girl in the Red Headdress, as a young woman fell in love with it on Day One, and even though she felt she could not afford to buy it, came back on Day Two after having dreamt about it. It reminded me so much of my first big art purchase. I fell in love on Day One and came back on Day Two to take the plunge. The artist, Roger Graham, became a client and a friend, and by the time he died, I owned probably ten (whose counting?) of his paintings, some hanging at my law office and some at my home/studio. I never regretted a single purchase. If you buy what you love (not what you think will be a good investment), you will never regret it. I was happy for her and for The Girl, who has found, in animal rescue parlance, her new forever home.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

The Joy of Completion

Posted by Aline on April 29, 2013

Detail from Portrait of Grace

The “Joy of Finishing” was my first thought for the title to this posting, but “Completion” is better. And not just because “completion” brings with it fewer double entendres. You could “finish” or come to an end of a project without being satisfied with it. “Completion” connotes a goal achieved. I could go further in this amusing wordplay by comparing “accomplished” as in “mission accomplished”, but that could get raw.

This week, therefore, I celebrate three completions. Last week you saw the intermediate stages of two of them, so you have some idea of what to expect. Above is the detail from the bigger one. I said I wanted to make the background from the colors of the headscarf and whaddya know–I did!

Portrait of Grace

Grace did not realize we wanted to repeat the pose from last week, so she arrived with a different scarf, wearing different earrings, and carrying a different drape. Just as well–three elements were thus eliminated that I might have spent valuable time on.

This is a pretty good likeness of Grace, but of course, profiles are so much easier than 3/4 or full facial views. Have I mentioned that before? I hate to repeat myself, especially when the point is obvious when you think about it: matching up eyes, eyebrows, lids, etc., etc., especially in the 3/4 view where the shadows make them look different, is really, really tricky. Also, faces are not symmetrical, so too much matchy-matchy would be wrong. Given all that, trying to figure out where the eye on the left should be higher or the one on the right should be lower can give me headache sometimes. No, all the time.

The other just-short-of-finished figure from last week came out OK. I think I messed around a little with the face, to no good purpose, but the main focus was the hand. Now shorter, narrower, and with a hint of finger structure, this hand no longer detracts from the painting as a whole.

Figure Study (M on BLS)

However, the face is not that of Margaret, so I moved in closer, metaphorically, on a second sheet of canvas:

Portrait of Margaret

Still not Margaret. If I had had more time, I would have lengthened the nose perhaps. Or shortened it. But it’s hard to say what exactly is wrong. Peter Clive said, “Margaret is elusive.” I called her “sneaky”. (Which I think she appreciated.) Likeness or not, this painting came out well. What do you think of the background? I was thinking of light through thick green glass, but chose not to take that concept all the way–it was just my inspiration.

You might notice that the head is tilted differently in the second attempt. It’s just impossible to keep a head from moving. If I were alone, and were painting a portrait, I could keep telling the model how to adjust her attitude, but when painting the entire figure, there is so much to keep aligned that you tend not to trust your opinion about where the head should be–especially if changing it might decimate a colleague who thought he had it right. (I apologize for the long sentence but couldn’t find a spot to break it up.) Still and all, frustrating as it is, I would not trade it for drawing from a plaster cast of a head, illuminated by a steady, never varying spotlight. The harder it is, the more ways we learn. I hope. I sure hope so.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

at the Hatfield Gallery in Manchester (Langer Place, 55 S. Commercial St., Manchester, NH); at the Bartlett Inn in Bartlett; at the Red Jacket Inn in North Conway; at Stella Blu , an American Tapas restaurant in Nashua; at her law offices at 41 Brook St in Manchester; and at her studio by appointment. Beginning May 1 through May 30, nine of her Boston Arboretum paintings will be displayed at the Leach Library in Londonderry, NH. On Saturday and Sunday May 4-5, she will be exhibiting and demonstrating at the Londonderry annual event “Art in Action”; the location of Art in Action will be the large farmstand operated by Mack’s Apples, 230 Mammoth Road in Londonderry.

Race up Mount Washington

Posted by Aline on April 22, 2013

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

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

Mt. Washington Phase 4

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

Fans

Awaiting the Stragglers (3-legged dog)

View of race with vista

Whew! (a top female finisher)

Andy with bike

A Very Special Guy

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

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

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

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

Figure in Turban and red drape WIP

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

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

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

A Milestone Reached

Posted by Aline on April 15, 2013

Last week, without really thinking about it yet fully conscious of it, I produced something, finally, that I have been aspiring to for many years now. Here it is:

Jon, supine pose

This aspiration started with a class that I took with Patrick McCay at the Institute–a course called Explore, Express, Exploit. At that time, what I had in mind was achieving a style that was loose as opposed to tight. Following Patrick’s course, I took Painting the Contemporary Portrait with Cameron Bennett. Cameron gave us a list of portrait artists, “portrait” being loosely defined and the artists being avant garde, and suggested we look them all up to find one who could inspire our own modern and unique take on portraiture (again, loosely defined). I glomed onto Carolyn Anderson, American artist living in Montana, somewhat obscurely. She seems to be an artists’ artist–known to and collected by fellow artists but not yet collected by museums.

Since then, her work has always been in the back of my mind, even when I am producing the hard-edged, detailed works that seem to come out of me unbidden.

You’ve seen a few nudes from me. Here is the only one I found on Anderson’s website:

Anderson nude

And here is one of her portraits, lovely beyond words to describe:

Anderson portrait

By comparison, I know, my big breakthrough seems heavy-handed. But it occurred–bloomed– quite naturally that Tuesday morning, without a trace of the manipulation that I felt I was guilty of when painting loosely for effect. “Loosely” implies something casual, effortless, airy–not something forced or faked. Here is one of my earliest efforts, and it’s not horrible, but still you can feel the strain it put on me:

Translation of life drawing into Oil

I know from past experience that this reaching a new level, slightly closer to the high level occupied by my hero, does not mean I am permanently raised on that new level. On Friday I tried not to slip back too far. I worry about being too self conscious about it. A Catch-22. You can only succeed by not trying so damn hard.

So here is Margaret, the model with whose limbs I have recently struggled in vain to organize*. I got a break when we posed her with her hair covering up one of her shoulders.

M on brown recliner, WIP

*”organize” is the word used by Robert Liberace to describe the first stages of a drawing or painting, which the parts are sized and fitted together–the jigsaw puzzle stage. It’s so the right word that I am adopting it.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Hello, Again

Posted by Aline on April 1, 2013

To those of you who noticed and cared that I did not post anything last week, I apologize. To those who never noticed or cared, I don’t know what to say. Really? Your lives did not seem emptier? Mine seemed peculiar. I am so used to the follow up discussion among my friends that it was as if we had lost a piece of our conversation template. Perhaps I have gotten spoiled, so it was a good thing to experience a little deprivation for a short time. I have no excuse for missing a week, if that’s what you are waiting to hear. I suddenly realized on Tuesday that I had never posted the Monday blog, or indeed even taken the photographs with which to illustrate it. Instead of bending myself into a pretzel getting a late entry out, I decided to lie back and wait for complaints, if any. Too few complaints were received. Oh, well.

The upside is all the extra material I have for this week. The headline news is progress on the painting that I started a year ago of bikers racing to the top of Mount Washington. Here is a link to what it looked like last year. I brought it out to work on March 23 because of Peter Granucci. He invited us to his studio in Gilsum (where?–middle of nowhere but close to Vermont) for a workshop on stalled projects. I had the perfect candidate in the Mt. Washington painting. He forced me to do exercises of value studies for the painting, six of them, and claimed that each was better than the one before, and only then was I allowed to apply those principles to my big canvas. So annoying to have to apply real rules when all you want to do is follow your instinct. But my instinct had dried up, I guess, and that’s why the canvas had seen stashed away for a whole year. So now Phase 2, which will I hope lead to 3 sooner than a year from now:

Phase 2 of Mt Painting

Another feature from Figure Fridays with Peter Clive is this 2-session study of Fletch reclining on the ubiquitous brown leather sofa. I had two hours remaining when I finished the figure study, so I started a portrait too.

Reclining Male on Brown Sofa

Portrait Fletch Mar 2013

Compare the new portrait to this one from last month. Am I getting better?

Fletch portrait on darker bkgrd

The Saturday group is back in business after two weeks off. Here is the pick of that session.

Reading (Nook) from back

Finally perhaps my favorite of the group is this portrait of Grace. I think I am finally getting the hang of something–the color of the skin, the modeling of the shoulder, and the light touch for the mouth. I’m really fond of this one!

Portrait Grace Mar 2013

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Portraits, by Zorn

Posted by Aline on March 18, 2013

Just one painting to talk about this week. It’s a portrait. One of my colleagues opined that it was the best thing she had seen me do. She has a fine critical eye, so I was happy to hear that. But later in the week, I was able to take in the special exhibit (titled, A European Artist Seduces America) at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The European artist was the Swede, Anders Zorn. The exhibit includes many of his portraits. Seeing them reminded me of how far I am from achieving the quality that I admire in Zorn’s work. Reminded? No, that word is way too mild. It whacked me over the head!

First, for context, the result of my effort this week:

Face and Hand

One of Zorn’s:

Martha Dana

Many artists avoid dealing with the open mouth because depicting the teeth can look ridiculous. Not a problem for Zorn, of course. Look at that bow! I would have labored over the thing; he just swipes a loaded brush, right, left, right and done.

Many of my nonartist friends, when I told them about the Zorn exhibit, said they had never heard of Zorn, which is completely understandable since I hadn’t either until I started painting back in 2005. At that time, I was working on landscapes only, and Zorn’s name came up in the context of the limited palette that he had espoused. “Limited palette” means just a few colors (hues), and the limited palette for which he was known consisted of cadmium red, ivory black, white and yellow ocher. Using those hues, he could even make gray look blue. But while he did some spectacular impressionist landscapes, mostly as backdrops for nudes, his principal claim to fame is his portraits. He rivaled Sargent, literally. One of the portraits in the Gardner exhibit, according to the story accompanying it, was created in response to a challenge by the sitter’s husband to make a portrait of her that was better than the one Sargent had done. I think it was this one. Mrs--Bacon-small White gown, overhead view–both to mimic Sargent’s version. I also think he probably met the challenge, but in the world of art, such comparisons are invidious.

So what is so great about Zorn? In a word, his deftness. He could describe a hand, a nose, a cheekbone with a few strokes, and when they was done, he let them be. Or not–in one painting (the next one shown) large, rough strokes surround the figure, but the figure itself is soft and blended. images

His nudes all tend to be smooth and soft, and are usually surrounded by an impressionistic landscape including water. His water was much admired too. Here’s a taste:

Opal

Here, in The Omnibus, is another example of his deft strokes–look at the hands:

1799

I think I may try to copy this painting.

The ability to convey much with very little definition is something I have admired in a contemporary artist, Carolyn Anderson (see descriptions of my struggles here and again here), and I wonder how much she has been influenced by Zorn. His portrait of Gardner herself, in Venice, is considered a major tour de force, because of its liveliness, resulting in no small measure from the looseness and blurriness that also characterizes Anderson’s works:

DSC_0002 - Version 2

Her mouth is open, but you can hardly tell. This painting should be an inspiration for all figure artists who desire to capture movement and spirit in a gesture. I wonder if there is anything written anywhere about how Zorn put this painting together. Clearly Isabella did not pose for more than a minute or two.

If you want to see more, here are two links that I found useful. The Gardner Museum website. The Complete Works of Anders Zorn. I also found a review of the Gardner exhibit here, and an exposition of the Zorn limited palette here.

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.

Through March 29, you can also view (and purchase–of course!) my 6×6’s at the Artstream Gallery in Rochester, NH.

Viewer Discretion Advised

Posted by Aline on March 11, 2013

The weather has been crazy up here in New Hampshire. One day last week everything had to stop for a snow storm, and the next day Spring seemed to arrive. Because of the snow day, what was supposed to be three successive sessions with Becky as our model were interrupted, and as a result, many fine artworks have gone unfinished. Quelle tragique! (Obviously I am referring to the fine artworks in progress by my cohorts, as well as my own.) Here are my almost-finished works from Friday and Tuesday.

Becky on the Green Chair

This one may be finished. I need a critique from Peter to be sure. Since I was working on a 9×12 support, the face was quite small, which frustrated me because it was really beautiful. I decided to quit the one above and start up a portrait, which was going to be finished the next Friday, weather permitting. Which it didn’t.

Half-finished portrait of Becky

And no Sunday sessions, possibly due to a mix up involving Daylight Savings Time. But I still have extra material to show you this week, thanks to the Saturday Life Group. Two Saturdays’ worth, in fact. Not only two Saturdays, but two models on one day–a rare event! But so hard for us as artists to pull off.

I’ll start with the earlier Saturday. Pretty normal stuff, not shooting for the moon, just charcoal on the Mi Tientes pastel paper. I don’t care for that exaggerated texture but I have a lot of it to use up, and it might be growing on me.

Becky, left side view

Becky, right side view–another imitation of Ingres’ Grande Odalisque (see my prior discussion here)

Becky, front view

For the second Saturday, we had two models, both new to us, a couple. We found that posing them in a tableau where they seemed to be interacting with each other made for better results. Here is our first longish (20 minutes) pose.

Duo Jamie and Catherine, No. 1, 20 minutes

The second pose was our longest, about 45 minutes I believe, and as you will see, the models were side by side but not really interacting.

Duo Jamie and Catherine–No. 2, 45 minutes

We had intended that second pose to last the rest of our session, but as a group, we were so disappointed by it, that we abandoned it for another intertwined pose. However, I did enjoy my drawing, which was basically just of the guy, with the girl in the background. The light was interesting. (That studio at the Institute has an overhead skylight, which distinguishes our Saturday drawings from all others in the Langer Place studio.)

Duo Jamie and Catherine–No. 3, 25 minutes

It was hard to account for all the limbs and still keep their positions believable. When a body disappears behind something, it has to come out the other side looking as if it belonged there. If you examine my drawings closely, you can find much fault, but overall, the effect is pleasing, I hope.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Through March 29, you can also view (and purchase–of course!) my 6×6’s at the Artstream Gallery in Rochester, NH.

P.S. Heather’s from Tuesday

Posted by Aline on February 17, 2013

This is a kind of postscript to my blog entry from yesterday. After publishing yesterday, feeling pretty satisfied that I had used my time in Cleveland well, I continued on to Fort Myers. Then I got to wondering why Heather’s painting was not uploaded. Today, hooked back uo to the Internet, I discovered that the photo of her painting had never left my phone. Oh, boy! I had to learn a new thing–how to get photo from phone to WordPress with help from my computer. My iPad would have to rise to the occasion.

Well, some hours later, I give up on amending original blog and settle for this special edition. Heather deserves a page of her own anyway, because she got me thinking in terms of long-pose painting in the first place, and because she and I have been progressing together, taking the same classes for several years now.

Your Last Nudes for a While–A collection from the Circle

Posted by Aline on February 16, 2013

Still a work in progress

That photo is a product of my cell phone. While in the throes of packing my gear for Florida last night (I’m writing this from Cleveland airport during a long layover), just for the sake of comparison, I snapped this image of the same painting with my Nikon.

Yes, my hand shook a little ( couldn’t afford the time to set up properly with tripod), but the colors are truer. Bearing that in mind, here are the cell-phone-pix of my fellow artists:

The Front by Nancy H.

The Back by Nancy C

Nita’s Portrait

In the course of packing for Florida, I came across a forgotten painting, forgotten only a matter of weeks, perhaps. It’s interesting for the uncharacteristic brownish flesh tone. It reminds me of Rembrandt’s palette.

brownie

I recognize that beach chair, but can’t remember the last time I’ve seen it. So this painting may be months older than I originally thought. I found it in the framing studio so it seems likely that it predates that great framing effort for the Londonderry show in September.

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

In February, you can also view (and purchase–of course!) my 6×6’s at the Artstream Gallery in Rochester, NH.

If you happen to be near Tampa, Florida on March 7, 8, and 9, you could (and should) catch Nude Nite, happening with music and other entertainment at 3606 E. 4th Ave., in Tampa. Hours are 6 pm to midnight. (Nude NITE, after all)

Welcome, Groundhogs*

Posted by Aline on February 4, 2013

Skin Colors

Yesterday’s quasi portrait is my pick of this week. It could be improved, for sure. But overall I am pleased–with the gesture, the drawing, the colors, the modeling. I wanted to leave the background unpainted, to show off the fact that I made no changes in the outside contour of the figure. But now I do need to make some changes, so I will try to match the color of the paper I was painting on to eliminate that dark edge atop her left arm, and to carve away at the neck and jaw on her left side. I would also like to point that I snuck in a tiny glimmer of teeth showing between her open lips. Even more so than hands and feet, teeth are the painter’s nemesis.

This brown card stock, which I have been using a lot lately, is called “carton board” and is made by Judson’s (Guerrilla Painter). It looks like stiffened brown Kraft paper but is sized to accept oil paints without absorbing them. It does kind of absorb the Gamsol, but dries out quickly. It leaves a spot. You can see a spot near her left jaw, where I was trying to carve away at it without deploying paint.

Other things I want to change about this piece: the eyes–too heavy with the dark line, I think; the transitions between colors in skin tones–too abrupt in certain places; the hair: too restrained–she has quite a mop, and showing that would add interest to the painting.

In my stories about the Circle of Six (or Seven), I showed you several examples of what my colleagues were doing with the same poses, but somehow I missed capturing this one by Steve:

Steve’s Best

Steven thinks this is his best drawing of Becky. For the blog that showed more takes on this pose, go here.

I have heart-warming news in abundance today. One of my little 6×6 paintings was selected by one of the sponsors for the Notecard project of the Women’s Caucus for Art. OK, that requires an awful lot of explanation. The WCA pulls together an annual exhibit to showcase members’ 6×6 pieces, which are sold for $66. Artists purchase the 6×6 blank panels from WCA and the money we raise from these sales of blank panels to artists goes into the scholarship fund. (We award a $1,000 each year to a NH woman attending art school in NH.) The sale of the finished panels generates revenue for the artists and the gallery, not the WCA. So this year, for the first time, our beloved leader (Suzanne Whittaker) developed the Notecard Project: ten sponsors donate a largish sum of money in exchange for the credit that goes with the publication of sets of ten note cards, each set containing reproductions of all ten 6x6s chosen by sponsors for such honor, to be sold throughout the year in various retail locations. The money raised from the sales of the notecards goes to the scholarship fund. The money raised from the sponsorships pays for the printing of the notecards, and a little bit goes back to the artists chosen to be in the notecard pack.

That takes so long to explain because there are so many interlocking elements. I was intending to show you my oown 6×6’s eventually, but had so much content on other subjects that I never got around to it. Here they are:

A Walk in the Woods, 1

A Walk in the Woods, 2

A View of the Bay

A View of the Forest

Barrington Editions, a business that creates giclee reproductions of artists’ paintings, is the sponsor who chose one of mine for the notecards. They chose the one I call A Walk in the Woods 1. To create these pieces, I cut up old watercolors to the correct size and mounted them onto the 6×6 panels. I enhanced them with black and brown ink, then I covered them with an acrylic gel, which protects the watercolor paper and adds a nice shine. Inspired by the shine, I decided to construct wires simulating windows. This turned out to be much more difficult than I had imagined, and I became worried that the wires were too fussy, especially for the first two, which seemed to stand well on their own. So in the end, I added the window wires only to the last two above, then forgot to photograph them in their little cages.

Other big news, which cannot wait: Nude Nite Tampa invited BOTH of my pieces. These two.

Artists and Model

I’m not quite ready to part with Artists and Models, but now I have to. Am wondering if it will be any cheaper to ship two smaller pieces than the one large one that went down to Orlando last week, at a cost of $122. (I do hope it sells, but in case it doesn’t, the trip back home is already paid for.)

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

In February, you can also view (and purchase–of course!) some of my paintings and drawings at the McGowan Gallery in Concord, NH, (“Love, Lust and Desire” is the theme) and my 6×6’s at the Artstream Gallery in Rochester, NH.

If you happen to be near Orlando, Florida on February 14, 15 or 16, or Tampa, Florida on March 7, 8, and 9, you could (and should) catch Nude Nite, happening with music and other entertainment at these locations, respectively: 639 W. Church St. (blue freestanding warehouse just East of I-4) in Orlando; and 3606 E. 4th Ave., in Tampa. Hours are 6 pm to midnight. (Nude NITE, after all)

*I really have nothing to say to groundhogs, but am so grateful that Phil has ordained an early spring for us that I just had to call out.

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:

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Wall of Nudes

Posted by Aline on October 22, 2012

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.

Weary of nudes?

Posted by Aline on October 17, 2012

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

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

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

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

Sink and Mirror, by Antonio Lopez Garcia

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

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

Figure in Charcoal

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

Full figure in charcoal

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

Becky portrait in charcoal

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

Relaxed

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

Long-stemmed rose

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

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Roaa

Posted by Aline on October 8, 2012

Pretty in Pink

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

Roaa No. 1, finished

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

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

Roaa No. 2, in Peach

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

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

Getting the Angles Right

Out of the Fog and Mist

Blackest Black

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

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

Margaret

Posted by Aline on October 1, 2012

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:

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.

Confessions of a TV Addict

Posted by Aline on June 18, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

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

Imagination

Posted by Aline on June 11, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In an Artist’s Studio (Nude Woman Reclining)

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

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

Head of Nude Woman

Hands of Nude Woman

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

Head of Nude Man

It looks better in person.

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

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

Aline Lotter is currently exhibiting:

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

Link to website: www.paintingsbyaline.com

Paintings by Aline

A Painter's Progress

Tag Archives: portraits

The Rest of the Story

Making do

Sidewalk Art Show in Portland, Maine

Mixing it Up

Inspired by Cornwall

A Cloudy Day on Top of Cannon Mountain

Steven Assael workshop, cont.

Review of June’s Poses

Do overs and lupines

She’s Back (More Margaret)

A Month of Beckys

Art in Action

The Joy of Completion

Race up Mount Washington

A Milestone Reached

Hello, Again

Portraits, by Zorn

Viewer Discretion Advised

P.S. Heather’s from Tuesday

Your Last Nudes for a While–A collection from the Circle

Welcome, Groundhogs*

Breaking Bad

Circle of Six, Sometimes Seven

Painting Faces

Slacker!

Lessons Less Enjoyed

Finding a Face

Waiting for the Roof to Blow Off

The Wall of Nudes

Weary of nudes?

Roaa

Margaret

Becky

Confessions of a TV Addict

Imagination

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