Sandi Hester

I don’t know what it is about old houses, but I LOVE to paint them. I’ve painted both of these before here in acrylic and I’ve painted this second one in watercolor but never posted it for some reason.

I went outside recently to paint a picture of our house but it ended bad – Cooper barely touched my tripod (he was wanting some loving from his mamma) and everything went splat! My painting is on the bottom of one of those stacks :(.

Here are a couple of butterflies I did in acrylic. This first one was done with a palette knife – I love the edges, texture, and thick paint you get when using a knife.

First I’d like to give you an update on Templeton – he’s no longer with us. After just one week we had to give him back to his foster family because my allergies were getting the best of me. He shed far more than we thought at the beginning and unfortunately health won over Cooper’s new furry friend. Last I checked Templeton still wasn’t adopted so if you’re looking for a great dog for your family that is great with kids then let me know and I’ll put you in touch with the foster family.

As far as painting, I’ve been doing a ton. We went on two ski trips that I spent most of the time in the room painting, so I have lots to show you. I’ve really been experimenting a lot so some of these may not even look like they came from me. I have so many I’m not even sure where to start so I just scattered them through this post. Some are done much tighter than I like (like the blue coffee cup) but I still like how it turned out overall. A couple of them were done with a palette knife which keeps you loose and make great edges (swimmers in ocean and glue/lemon still life).

And lastly this apple was done very quickly – just playing around with the paint. All of these are done in acrylic and the next several posts will be paintings I did in acrylic but as soon as I got home from our last trip I ordered oils, because I LOVED the acrylic but it dried WAY too quickly for me so I thought I would just jump in completely and try the medium that has intimidated me ever since I even thought about painting. Well, I could just kick myself for not trying oil sooner – I am in serious love – too in love – it’s all I want to do is paint. I can’t wait to show you some of the oil paintings. They look very similar to acrylics but yummier – it’s like painting with soft butter and the color is amazing!

All of these are small 4×4 or 5×7 and will be available for sale at my summer art sale (well, most of them will be for sale – some of them I’m going to keep – I still have some bare walls in our new house).