Sandi Hester

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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June 10, 2009

Charles Reid Workshop – Day 5

Our final day went by WAY too fast! I hated to leave all the new friends I had made and I was really enjoying painting all day – the inspiration was flowing like crazy and I just didn’t want to leave! I didn’t know what we were going to do on the last day – I just thought we would continue painting from photographs, so I was in for a big surprise when Charles set up a beautiful still life to paint from. Watching him paint shadows was great and I learned a lot from this demonstration. After he painted we broke for lunch and then they did 3 different tables of still life set ups for us to paint from. I SOOOO wanted to paint one of them since I was so inspired by what Charles painted, but I had to work on my black and white photograph painting because I really needed Charles to help me.

The picture I brought to paint from is one of my all time favorite pictures of my grandmother – she’s the one on the end (right side). I love the ladies hair do’s and their dresses are so much fun in this photograph- they were a lot of fun to paint too – since I didn’t know what color their dresses were it was a lot of fun to make that up! I finally finished the painting after working on it several more days after I got home. I’m fairly pleased with it – there’s lots that could be improved on it – but I like how the colors turned out – it feels like a bright fun cheerful painting. I still have a long way to go with figure painting but I definitely saw some improvement from day one. I’m going to try my best to keep practicing and seeing if I can keep improving.

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June 7, 2009

Charles Reid Workshop – Day 3 & 4

Day three and four of our workshop we were suppose to bring old black and white photographs to paint from. Most of us, including Charles, worked from the same photo two days because the paintings took us more time. Charles took two different old photos and combined them into one painting. The first photo he worked from was of a couple in a great old car and the second photo was from a local log cabin store. I worked 4 plus days on my painting from an old photo – I had to finish it once I got home because it took so long. I’ll show you the photo I used and tell you who it’s of and show you the finished painting in the next post, but you can see the beginning of it below of the three ladies. I was exhausted by the end of the third day so I did a quick landscape painting – I needed a break from figure painting and wanted to go to something I was a little more comfortable with. I’ve also included a picture of our second critique – you can see some of my other fellow painter’s work – it was a very talented group. You can click on any of the pictures to see them larger.

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June 4, 2009

Charles Reid Workshop – Day 2

I could barely eat breakfast on day two because day one was so good I was just way too excited and couldn’t wait to get to the workshop. We had two African American models come in on our second day. The morning model was the niece of our afternoon model (the lady I painted). In the first picture you can see Charles in action and our lovely model in the back. I’ve included a close-up of what Charles was working on – the way he brings out the form in the face is just amazing. The third picture is his finished painting. The last two pictures are of my painting in progress (you can see our model in the back) and my finished painting. Charles makes figure painting look SO easy, but it is incredibly hard! I think it’s the most difficult thing to paint. At the end of day two we had our first critique. We put all our paintings up on the wall and Charles went one by one and told us what we did good and where we could improve. He was very gracious and critiques are one of my favorite things because you learn so much. For the last picture I’ve added some of the class pictures from the first critique – I couldn’t get them all in one picture so this is just part of them.

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May 30, 2009

Charles Reid Workshop – Day 1

Grady and I just got back from the most wonderful week! I took my first watercolor workshop. I started at the top by taking a workshop with the world renowned Charles Reid – he is one of my all time favorite watercolor artists and he’s one of the masters. It just doesn’t get any better! It truly was a once in a lifetime opportunity because Charles is in his 70’s and I’m not sure how much longer he’ll be doing workshops. There were 20 of us in the workshop, it was for 5 days, from 9 am to 4 pm, and it exceeded all my expectations! So, I’m going to do a post on each of the 5 days I was there. You’ll definitely see some improvement in my painting as the week progresses – it’s quite obvious – or at least I hope it is! We stayed at a great bed & breakfast that was on top of a mountain – we had GREAT views. They fix a homemade breakfast each morning that was delicious and homemade dessert every night for the guests. I’m serious when I said this was a GREAT trip!

The first two days we had a live model come in for us to paint. Charles painted Jenny in the morning of the first day, then we had lunch, and then a new model came in for us to paint in the afternoon. The first picture is the contour drawing Charles did of Jenny. The second picture is Charles showing us how he mixes his paint on the palette. You can see the model in the background – I loved her cute glasses.

This is the beautiful finished piece that Charles did. (Don’t forget you can click on any picture to see it larger.)

I can’t believe I forgot to take a picture of my model the first day – I was quite overwhelmed by the whole day and didn’t take many pictures – but here’s my finished painting – trust me – they get better as the week goes on :)!

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May 11, 2009

Calling all Walkers And Runners

For those of you who like to get out and walk or run I wanted to let you know about something exciting coming up this month – the 3rd Annual Hendersonville Classic. This event supports the Cumberland Crisis Pregnancy Center which we are HUGE fans of. It’s a great ministry that is making a big difference in our community and for the Kingdom! Grady and I are very involved in this ministry – it’s near and dear to our hearts. You can find out all the information about the race here. They commission a local artist each year to do the art work that will go on the t-shirts and on the posters for the sponsors. They asked me to do it this year!!! Below is the picture that will be on the shirts :). If you’ve participated in this run/race in the past leave a comment about your experience in the race.

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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 30, 2009

What Is Your House Built On?

A better question is Who is your house built on? Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. Matthew 7:24-25

I actually painted this one a while back. I had this image in my mind right before we went on a trip and I had to get it on paper. I felt like I spewed it out of my brush one night as I was packing. I wish I had taken a little more time with it, but it was one of those that I had to get down on paper. I’ve just now decided to bring it out of the archives because I have houses on my mind a lot lately. We’ve been looking at houses for 3 1/2 years now – we take forever to find what we’re looking for – and it’s kind of a hobby for us. We’ve been wanting to get Grady closer to work (Green Hills). It’s been taking us a while to get the house ready to put on the market, but we’re hoping to have it on the market in the next month or so. We really want to downsize, minimize, and declutter everything we have. Life is too short and Christ too important to be caught up in things. I could easily sell everything in a yard sale tomorrow and go on the mission field… hopefully one day. It will have to be on the Lord’s timing – His calling – His plans. For now our calling, as far as missions, is short term trips and supporting other missionaries on the field. I’ll keep you updated on the house stuff – let me know if you’re interested in buying a house :)!

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