Sandi Hester

Here’s part two of our trip to Montana. This post has lots of pictures like the last one because I’m still making up for not blogging for like a month or two. So, this was our amazing view from our room – what’s even more amazing than that is that Grady skied from the peak of this mountain – yes, see the very top point of the mountain? – that’s where Grady would ski from! If you click on the picture you can see even better how ridiculous it is that he skies crazy things like this. I become one serious praying wife when we’re on ski trips. It doesn’t make things any better when the guys Grady’s skiing with tell me things like, “your husband is a maniac on the slopes!” Great! Grady wears a helmet now because a doctor he skis with told him he needed to be wearing a helmet the way he skis. Oh brother!

Moving on… Grady thought this would be a good picture of me – one by a black diamond sign that says “Bone Crusher” – in actuality that describes Grady’s style of skiing. “Football Field” would be a better description of what I ski 🙂 – nice and flat or “Never Fall” because that’s always my number one goal of a ski trip 🙂 – I broke like a 4 year record this year when I fell – oh well, you can’t win them all.

Here’s Grady relaxing on the snow while I adjust my boots – for some reason I have to do that a lot on the slopes and Grady usually sits down to rest because I take FOREVER – sorry babe!

And lastly, this one is so you can see ONE of the great views we had on the slopes – this place was seriously beautiful!

Here are some more quick sketches I did throughout the trip. Again, they’re not show stoppers (well nothing I do is a show stopper – my point is that they are just quick sketches – not finished pieces) but they are little tidbits of things I painted while Grady risked his life on the slopes. One of us has to do something not life threatening :). This first one is a quick one I did of Lone Peak – the mountain we could see from our room.

These next two were painted from photographs taken by one of my watercolor students. He’s a GREAT photographer. You can see his work here. These were painted from Jim’s Maine series.

This last one is a little still life I set up in the room. You can always find something around to paint 🙂 – or at least I can! I hope you enjoyed snippets of our trip. Keep an eye out for a free give-away post of an original painting I have coming up!

I have been a bad blogger lately! We’ve had a crazy few months – I won’t bore you with our lives (I will share one of the unexpected things that happend to us in the next few posts) I’ll just try to make up for the pitiful blogging I’ve been doing. I’ve had several posts rolling around in my brain and hopefully they’ll make it to my computer sooner than later. The first two will cover our trip to Montana we just took. Hopefully all the pictures will make up for my lack of blogging :). I painted quite a bit on this trip – the paintings may seem random since I only have one mountain/snow painting. I usually don’t paint many snow scenes – it’s just not my thing, so I bought a field guide-book from our local used bookstore before we left and that’s why I have random things like rabbits and mushrooms in my sketchbook paintings from this trip.

Ok, first some pictures from this BEAUTIFUL place. You know you’re at a beautiful place when this (see picture below) is the view from the airport!! And it only got better from there.

Here’s a picture of Grady – check out that view!

And here’s one of me during one of the two days it snowed – needless to say visibility was low but the powder was great!

Here are some of the things I painted. I only took sketchbooks and just had fun with my painting. The first three were painted from my field guide book and the last one was from  Bea’s wonderful blog (she’s given me permission to paint from her beautiful pictures and I haven’t painted from one in a while but I loved this very neutral picture of this old fish market). You can click on any of the pictures to see them larger.

This was our final day of the trip and I was intending on getting some serious painting in. I painted from breakfast until lunch. Grady went back to the Biltmore to do some more tours while I painted. He was so kind each day to find something to do while I did what I love to do. This is the “inside” of the building you saw in my last post. The building creates a kind of court-yard and has an ice cream store, shop, and several other neat little spaces. I found a spot in the shade and as out of the way as I could be. I did have several people stop by and look at what I was doing. I get very nervous when people do that – guess it’s my insecurity over my paintings. Below you can see my view of what I was painting. I thought I’d get the “Creamery” (ice cream shop) in the painting in honor of Grady – that man loves him some ice cream!

Here you can see a better view of my set-up and my supplies – that’s not coffee in the cup 🙂 – it’s my dirty paint water. I LOVE my new little travel palette – isn’t she cute!

Here’s the final sketch – you can click on it to see it larger. It was a fun relaxing day and it challenged me a little with people being around. That wraps up our fall trip – finally!

It feels a little weird to go back to sharing about my trip after the last couple of posts, but our trip was a blessing from the Lord too and I want to wrap it up (I have one more post on it after this one). At this point I can’t remember what day of the trip this was, but it was one of my favorite painting days even though it got cut short because the rain pushed me inside. That morning I knew exactly where I wanted to paint – in the “kitchen” garden. It’s the garden they used to use for the meals and they still have an active garden there now. I loved this little place! I can’t remember what they called the building in the background but I painted the inside of it the next day – I’ll be sharing these pictures next.

That morning I found a quiet little place to set-up my gear and I was looking forward to painting for a couple of hours. It drizzled on me the whole time I was painting. I’m not sure if you can tell it or not but the rain was creating some neat texture on my painting! It quickly started a pretty good down pour and I had to scurry like crazy to get everything in the car before I was finished with my painting. I was able to finish the painting in the room because before it started raining I was able to get some photos.

This is the “interactive” page I was telling you about. Before we left for the trip I pasted different types of papers and some small envelopes on random pages. This was one of the pages with an envelope which worked out perfectly because it allowed me to do a small painting of something in the garden. I call it interactive because you get to pull the small painting out – kind of like something you’d find in a kids book – I found it to be quite fun 🙂 and will be adding this type of thing in my journals more often. I took some beautiful pictures of what I think was rhubarb but I’m not 100% sure – I forgot to look at the tag thingy. Here’s the picture I was inspired to paint from – the light was shining through the stalks making the colors really sing!

And this is the mini painting found in the envelope. The envelope allowed me some fun space to journal too. Even with the rain and short time I had to paint I have some great memories from that morning! I do love this gift of painting the Lord has given me – I especially love it when it allows me to be out in His beautiful creation!

Monday morning we got up early (as usual) and after our quiet time with the Lord and breakfast we headed out as the sun was coming up. Grady took me to a place he found the day before that he thought would be a great place for me to paint – he was right! He took me to the Lagoon which is a man-made lake/pond that was purposely positioned so the Biltmore house would reflect in it. It was a beautiful morning but quite chilly so we bundled up. Grady walked around while I painted and took some photos of me and the house and he tried to do a little fishing (even though fishing is prohibited on the property – you didn’t know Grady had a rebellious streak did you?!). I thought it was very kind of him to come with me and just hang out while I painted. He’s so supportive of my painting – he always has his eye out for places to paint or taking pictures of things I may like to paint. You can see in the picture below the GREAT spot Grady picked out for me to paint.

I did a quick sketch of the Biltmore – I was planning on getting the reflection in the water but started too big and the reflection didn’t make it into the painting. It was also a very moist morning so I had a little bit of a hard time with my paints because they didn’t want to dry so I was painting wet in wet which is not how I usually paint. You can see my pitiful rendering above.

On the opposite page I did a map of the property (click on the picture below to see a close-up). I actually did the map on the car ride home – that’s one of the huge perks of watercolor – you can paint pretty much anywhere! However, I was a little sick by the time we got home because I was looking down at the page for way too long! On the map page you can see more of the old paper wrapped around the page (see previous post for explanation).

The last picture is one Grady took – you can see the reflection of the house really good in this picture…

It’s taken me a little while to post about our trip because as soon as we got home we got a call that Grady’s uncle died and we headed back out the door to go to Birmingham for the funeral. I’m just not getting back into the swing of things here.

I’m going to do a few posts on our trip because it was a really good one and I want to make sure to cover it properly. We’re very thankful to the Lord for giving us such a sweet and fun time away together! We had BEAUTIFUL weather AND leaves – we were definitely there at peak time. Once we arrived on Saturday we checked into our hotel and got to know the lay of the land and had a great dinner together. We got up early Sunday morning and had our quiet time with the Lord and then headed to the Biltmore house for our first tour.

Me in front of Biltmore

WOW is all I have to say! We enjoyed the tour and history of the house more than we thought we would. It’s quite fascinating and if you get a chance to go (or haven’t been back for years) I highly suggest you make a trip out there. They have more of the house open than they ever have – and the audio “tour” (headphone you listen to) is a MUST – you would miss way to much without it. After lunch I was itching to paint. Grady hopped on a bike and toured the 8,000 acres (obviously he didn’t ride the scope of the entire property!) while I found a secluded spot to paint. I found this great little house peeping behind some flaming red burning bushes. It was a fun little house to paint and I really enjoyed my afternoon.

House I painted

I did some different things in the journals I took on the trip. Before we left I pre-pasted and taped different things in my journals. You’ll see some of these “different things” through my journal pages as I post about this trip – some of them are “interactive” – you’ll see what I mean in later posts.

On this journal spread you can see I used some vintage paper out of an old accounting book I found at an antique shop. I pasted part of the accounting paper on each journal page and wrapped it around the back of the page (can you see it on the house painting – it’s barely noticeable but I think it still adds some neat depth and texture to the painting – you can see a close-up below – just click on it to see it larger). Well, that’s all for the first post about our trip – more to come soon!