Sketch book | Sandi Hester

July 10, 2009

Beginner Watercolor Class – Week 3

I can’t believe I only have 2 more weeks with this class!!! I’m going to miss these guys like crazy. I’m enjoying teaching far more than I thought I would. Well, as I predicted the class did great with skies and landscapes – see their sketches below (you can click on the pictures to see them larger). I’ve also included a couple more action shots from class. In the middle of class I got a text from Grady that said, “SOLD!!!!PRAISE JESUS!!!!!!”. Yep, that’s right – we’re under contract now on our house. I just can’t get over how quick this has all gone. I have a feeling I will be doing more packing than painting in the coming weeks, so things will be slim on the blog I have a feeling.

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July 7, 2009

Skies and Landscapes

My own hand laid the foundations of the earth, and My right hand spread out the heavens; when I summon them, they all stand up together. Isaiah 48:13

Where have I been? Well, I haven’t been home much since we put the house on the market because we’ve been showing it like crazy. The first full day we had it on the market we had an offer on it and we’ve been in negotiations for a week. We’re hoping to finalize things today!!! That’s really crazy in this market. The Lord has had crazy favor, mercy, and kindness on us through all this. I have been painting here and there over the last couple weeks and I’ve been doing lots of little 4×6 sketches of little landscapes and skies. I’ve been getting ready for tomorrows class where I’ll be teaching my students how to paint simple but dramatic skies and I’ll show them how to do these simple loose landscapes. I LOVE doing these little landscapes because you can really play around with color – you don’t have to just paint a blue sky and a green landscape – pink makes a great landscape too. It’s a lot of fun. I can’t wait to see what my students come up with! I know they will do great. Hopefully I’ll have some good news tomorrow about our house. Make sure you check out the scripture I put with this post – man alive, is that good stuff or what?! You can click on the pictures below to see them larger.

June 24, 2009

Fun, Firs, and Frustration

This was my third week of teaching beginner watercolor classes and I’m enjoying it WAY more than I thought I would – part of that is because my students are GREAT!!! They are a lot of fun and I can’t believe how fast they are picking up the techniques – it’s a sharp group. I’m going to be sad when our 6 weeks together is over (class, we hit our halfway point today – can you believe that?!). We aren’t meeting next week because of the 4th of July holiday. And I didn’t post last week because my pictures turned out bad. Last week I taught them different ways to apply the paint and we painted flowers using those techniques. Today I showed them how to make rick darks and taught them how to paint different types of trees. Let me just say for the record – trees are hard!!! Did I hear some “amens” from my students? I thought they did a great job though. I took some ‘action’ shots today of my students working away – they were in deep concentration. You can also see some of their work from today. I have told them each week when they are in class to just practice the techniques I’m teaching – don’t try to paint a master piece – work more like a sketch journal. Great job class! You guys are growing on me – it’s going to be hard to let you guys go!

I have been doing a little painting here and there (maybe I’ll get around to posting some of those things soon) but we’ve mainly been working like crazy to get the house ready to put on the market. Everything should be ready by next week. I do have some thoughts that have been rolling around in my head and heart lately that I want to get down on ‘paper’ for you guys – hopefully soon!

June 11, 2009

Beginner Watercolor Class – Week 1

Yesterday was the first day for my beginner watercolor class and you would never know these guys were beginners! I’m not kidding – I was SO impressed – this is going to be a fun 6 weeks with these guys. For week one I talked to them about supplies, color theory, mixing paints, and color charts. Learning water/paint ratio and how paints get along with each other is super important in watercolor painting, so I taught my students how to do color charts so they could start to learn what the paints do, how much water you need in your brush, and what paints play well with others and which ones like to be left alone. Below is a picture of my class (minus one who had to slip out early) and some of their practice color charts. Next time I’ll take a better picture of their work – the room was too dark where I took this picture – the picture really doesn’t do justice to their work (sorry guys – I’ll do better next time). Once they’ve completed their color charts and made them into journals they’ll look something like the last picture. I’m hoping to do a post once a week of my class and their progress.

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May 4, 2009

God Sends The Rain

He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Matthew 5:45

It was like a monsoon this weekend! Grady was on a fishing trip all weekend so I was home alone during the soggy weekend. I did a little painting here and there in between working on the house. I did another painting for Different Strokes (a blog that posts one picture and artists paint their version of that photo) this weekend. It seemed appropriate to do a wet scene with all the rain this weekend. I did two versions and posted the first one on the site. Grady had a great time on his fishing trip. I was so thankful they didn’t get all the rain we did – they had great fishing weather. I know this is a painting blog but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to brag on my husband – check out one of the whopper fish he caught :).

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April 18, 2009

Hoot Hoot

Whhhhooooos signed up for the summer painting classes?

Well, I only left the house a couple times this week because I’ve been working non-stop on a project/paper for my hermeneutics class in seminary. Man alive I will be really glad when I have it completed – writing papers is NOT my thing. BOTH sides of my brain got a work out this week – one side more than the other – the side that doesn’t get used much :). I would crank away at my paper for 2-3 hours and then go take a break and work on one of these cute little owls (and another project that I’ll tell you about in another post). It was a nice balance all week because painting really gave the other side of my brain a refreshing break.

So, you may be wondering what a class on hermeneutics is – I was wondering the same thing before I took the class. It’s a big word, but a simple concept. Hermeneutics is simply the practice or discipline of interpreting the bible. It’s basically studying the bible with the bible. One of the best books you could ever read to understand how to read the bible is “A Basic Guide to Interpreting the Bible” by Robert Stein. It’s a book on hermeneutics and it’s on “pea brain” (that just means even if you have a brain the size of a pea like I do you can understand it) level – seriously – trust me on this one and it will transform the way you read and understand the bible.

You can read about the best hermeneutics that has ever been done right here (you can read the whole story in Mark 24:13-27)… “Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus…they were talking with each other about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus Himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing Him. And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures conserning Himself.” How amazing would that have been??? Jesus started at the beginning of the Bible and went through the whole thing explaining how it ALL was telling about Him! It’s the best example of hermeneutics that’s ever been done!

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February 20, 2009

My Male Model

I am my lover’s and my lover is mine…there is no flaw in you. Song of Songs 6:3; 4:7

I’m being very vulnerable here and showing you paintings that I normally would NEVER show you. I thought I would show you what I do some Sunday afternoons when we’re at home relaxing. I don’t do much figure painting because I’m really bad at it, so Sunday afternoons if Grady is posted up on the couch flipping the tube or napping – he becomes my model. As you can see I have a ways to go on my figure painting 🙂 – but how in the world am I ever going to get better if I don’t practice??? At least that’s what I keep telling myself when I butcher Grady’s face in a painting – sorry baby. If I ever do get decent at it I’ll only be able to paint people with hair on their face 🙂 because Grady is my only model at this point – he’s the only one brave enough to undergo my slaughtering. Ok, so I thought I would include a real picture of Grady for those that don’t know him – you can see he’s very normal looking – he doesn’t have a weird shaped head, over-sized hands, and he’s not cross-eyed – he’s VERY handsome and I wish I could capture that on paper – maybe one day! At least they’re not boring – if nothing else you’ll get a good laugh out of them…

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January 11, 2009

Sketches – Coffee Cups

Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup. Psalm 16:5

My cup overflows. Psalm 23:5

This is my third, last, and favorite painting of Aaron Lifferth’s that I painted. I thought since there were two cups in the painting I would give you two scriptures about cups. Here is Aaron’s original I painted from (just thought I would say again that Aaron gave me permission to post these).

If you’ve been checking the blog for pictures or paintings from our ski trip I’m sorry there haven’t been any – and there won’t be any until we get home. Our lap top crashed on us the first day here. I’m posting this from a computer here in our hotel. We are having a blast though!!! We’ve had a TON of snow here and have just really been enjoying each other, the snow, and the Lord. I don’t ski as much as Grady because I just don’t have the strength to ski all day like Grady does, so I spend a lot of time in the room reading and painting. This time I’ve done a lot more reading and just quiet time with the Lord than painting. I’m not sure what the deal is, but it seems like my painting is just gone for right now – the Lord seems to give it at times and He takes it at times. I’m kind of glad though – instead of painting I’ve spent some much needed time with the Lord on this trip – it’s been very refreshing – I do feel like my cup is overflowing -I needed this fill-up. Isn’t it strange how sometimes you can be bone dry and not even know it – well, you may know it but when you’re dry you don’t tend to do much about it. I’m thankful the Lord made me do something about it – He made me be still and drink from His river – I love how tenderly He tends His sheep – His dumb needy sheep – that’s what I am and I’m not afraid to say it! This dumb, needy, thirsty sheep is enjoying her time with her Shepherd. Grady’s out on the slopes right now – going down some slopes I wouldn’t even be able to scoot down on my behind they’re so steep – and he’s probably singing his head off with his ipod on – he has some great worship time out there on those mountains. If you see a lot of typos it’s because my proofer is out worshiping his Creator :).

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January 6, 2009

Sketches – Salt Shaker

You are the salt of the earth.” Matthew 5:13

This is the second sketch I did from Aaron Lifferth’s paintings. I loved the colors and reflections of his original painting – which you can see here. I’ll post the third and last painting of his I did sometime this week – especially if I don’t have any paintings to post from our trip. The third one is my favorite.

We leave tomorrow for skiing in Utah! We’re really excited! I’ll be posting pictures and paintings (hopefully) so keep checking back over the next week to see snippets of our trip.

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December 31, 2008

Sketches – Tea Pot

I haven’t posted much lately because I haven’t painted much for a couple reasons – we’ve been very busy and I haven’t had much inspiration. Sometimes I feel like I’ve forgotten how to paint. It seems like I go in spurts – very inspired and paint like crazy – to not having anything to paint and nothing inspiring me. You may look at the painting below and think something must have inspired me to paint those colorful orange tomatoes and tea pot. I was inspired but not in the regular way. There’s an oil painter whose work I really love named Aaron Lifferth. He has a great style – very loose and his color choices are beautiful. Since I didn’t have anything to paint one day I thought I would try to replicate one of his paintings. It was a lot of fun and I actually did that with three of his paintings. They were done very quickly in my sketch book. This was the first one of three that I did. Aaron gave me permission to post these. You can see his original oil painting which is much better here. I’ll post the other two sketches I did of his paintings later this week.

I’m hoping I’ll get lots of inspiration next week. We leave Wednesday for a ski trip in Utah – we are very pumped!!! If I don’t have any paintings turn out to post hopefully I’ll at least have some good pictures of our trip to post… so stay tuned, because I hope to get back to posting much more!

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Category: Sketch book