Sandi Hester

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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April 9, 2009

Summer Painting Classes

This is something I never thought I would be doing, but this summer I’ll be teaching beginner watercolor painting classes at the Hendersonville Arts Council! I’m really excited about this new opportunity the Lord has opened up. Here’s the scoop on the classes…

The class will meet for six weeks (see registration form for dates and times) and will be for beginners. In this class you will learn the basic skills of watercolor painting: materials, how to mix colors that are fresh and not muddy, how to make beautiful darks and neutrals, different ways of applying the paint, contour drawing, and much more. The focus of the class will be painting in a loose style. In the class you will learn how to let the brush and the paint do most of the work and how to suggest things instead of state every detail. You’ll learn how to paint flowers, trees, skies, landscapes, buildings, people and much more in a loose painterly style.

If you’re interested in the class here’s the registration form and supply list. Just print it and mail in the registration form to the Hendersonville Arts Council with the payment. You can also get the registration form and supply list from the HAC website.

Below is a sketch I did in my small (5″ x 3″) sketch journal of an old house.

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March 29, 2009

Vintage Letterpress

…the two shall become one… Ephesians 5:31

I’ve been working on a wedding gift all this week. It’s for a dear friend’s daughter. I tried some new things out on this art piece. I was inspired by another artist I admire who is a bookbinder – she does amazing things with paper. For this wedding gift I used the brides’ invitations for the focus of the art piece. I made a library card pocket out of her shower invitation and I made the “library card” out of her wedding invitation – both are usally things a bride saves because they are special, so I thought I would use them in a way she could always display and be reminded of that day. I added some texture by doing some hand sewing on both pieces. I also got brave and used my vintage hand-carved letterpress letters (you can see the beautiful wooden letters in the picture) to stamp their name onto the mat and then I wrote one of my favorite marriage scriptures across their name. I am really pleased with how it turned out and will be trying this again. Speaking of weddings, Grady and I celebrated 11 years of marriage this weekend! Praise the Lord!!!

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March 19, 2009

How I Hide His Word In My Heart

I have hidden Your Word in my heart that I might not sin against You. Psalm 119:11

Memorizing scripture has been part of my daily quiet time for years, but I have always struggled with retaining those scriptures long term. For those of you who know my brain is the size of a pea I’m sure that doesn’t surprise you :). I’ve had people tell me that you have to go back and review the scriptures you’ve memorized, but that always seemed so daunting and quite overwhelming. A friend of mine shared a GREAT scripture memory method that I’ve been doing for several months now that I LOVE and it works!!! For the last several months I’ve just had this written down on a sticky note in my bible (so don’t think you have to have a nice organized colorful card like mine – I’ve been using a sticky note for quite some time) and have been going back through old scriptures I’d memorized and adding some new ones. It’s a really easy method so I hope I don’t complicate it or make it sound hard or confusing.

As you can see on the card at the top I have what’s labeled my “daily” scripture. Let me share with you what I do with that daily scripture before I explain the review part of this method. On the first day of my new verse(s) I read it out loud 10 times. If I have more than one verse in that chunk of scripture I just work on one verse at a time in the chunk – sometimes I even break-up the verse if it’s really long. So after I read it out loud 10 times I cover it up and try to say it out loud 10 times with out looking at it – of course you’ll most likely have to cheat a few times and look at it but that’s part of the process. After I’ve read it 10 times and said it 10 times without looking at it I’m done for the day – it’s that easy.

The next day I try to say it 10 times without looking at it. I do this for a couple of days until I have it pretty good and then I move on to the next verse of the chunk of scripture and read it 10 times and say it 10 times. Each day you say out loud without looking the part you have completely memorized before you go on to your new part.

Once you’re completely done with that chunk or single verse and you know you know it well, you move it down to reviewing it three times a week. If you’re using a sticky note just erase it from your “daily” slot and move it under your three times a week slot. So once I have 1 Cor. 1:18-31 memorized I’ll move it down to the section marked “M W F” so I can review it three times a week. Once I have a new chunk of scripture to go there I move the “M W F” verse to two times a week “T H” (that stands for Tuesday and Thursday) or “Sat/Sun”. Then you move those verses to reviewing them one day a week and then to three times a month and so on.

It may sound like a lot but it really only takes me a few minutes each morning. You will be surprised how quick it is. So let me give you an example of what I worked on this morning. I worked on my daily scripture (I Cor 1:18-31), then I reviewed my scripture under “T H” since it is Thursday (Proverbs 10:19), and then I reviewed my scripture under “Thursday” (Romans 1:18-35), and lastly if I had something under the 19th for the month (which I don’t at the moment) I would have reviewed that. I have been amazed at how well this method works. I encourage you to try it – or at least some scripture memory method. It’s one of the most important things we can do in the day – hide His Word in our hearts. We live in a day that our Bibles are at our finger tips, but I don’t think it will always be like that in our country. However, our Bible can easily be at our finger tips but never make it into our hearts where it needs to be.

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February 22, 2009

Blessed By Their Worship

One of the things we love most about our church is the worship. David Moffitt has been our worship pastor for the last 10 years. He and his wife, Susan, are precious to us. They have blessed us tremendously with their worship and their lives. To honor and bless them at their 10 year anniversary our church contacted me about doing a piece of art for them as a gift. YIKES!!! PRESSURE!!!! That’s what would normally be going through my head… but before the church contacted me the Lord had already laid something on my heart to do for them as a gift of appreciation to them – so I already knew exactly (well sort of – at least had a concept in my head) what I was going to do for them. I knew I wanted to do something with an old hymn from some of the old hymn books I’ve collected at antique stores. This one was from a hymn book from 1908. A friend of theirs gave me some suggestions of some hymns that would be special to them and I decided on “All Hail the Power of Jesus Name”. It was a hymn they had in their wedding and I think it speaks of their heart to call all to look to Jesus because He is Lord of all.

Susan was at my house a while back and fell in love with some old frames I had, so I used one of those to frame their art in. I knew if nothing else they would like the frame :). I wanted to do something that highlighted the hymn and something that was simple and beautiful. I had the idea of doing a layered thing – I wanted the hymn to “float” and be the highlight, but I wanted the background to be simple but pretty at the same time. It took me a while to get it the way I liked it, but I picked some pages from the bible (from the Psalms of course since David is a worship pastor) and I did some layering. I wanted to soften the background and came up with using… are you ready for this… dryer sheets to layer on top of the bible pages. I dyed the drier sheets in tea to color them and they worked perfectly – it gave the piece the soft look I was going for and some texture. As much as I wanted the hymn to be the focus, I wanted the focus of the hymn (Jesus) to be the main focus. So I painted that as the highlight of the piece.

I pray it will be a blessing to them, because they have blessed us and our church tremendously over the last 10+ years. We love you guys!!!!!!! As always, you can click on the picture to see it close-up.

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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 30, 2009

Creating Things

You may be wondering why I never posted paintings or pictures from our trip. Well, I didn’t really have anything great to post. We did have some cute pictures, but as far as paintings I only had a few sketches – but nothing worth posting. I haven’t been painting much at all lately – it’s like the Lord has turned the faucet off. Even though I haven’t been painting, I have been creating different things that I thought I would share with you. Click on any of the pictures to see a larger version.

1. The first is a new prayer card that I made from some vintage letterpress letters that I bought recently. They are hand carved so they have some great markings on them.

2. The second thing I’ve been working on are new business cards. I have a big sale tomorrow that I’ve been getting ready for and I needed new business cards. A local ministry called Healing Hands has invited me to a women’s conference they are having – they’ve asked me to come and set-up all my art to sell! I’m really excited about it! Most of the proceeds of the sale will go to Healing Hands.

3. The third project is an old bread box Grady and I bought at an auction some friends of ours had to raise money for adoption. The box was pretty ugly, but I saw the potential – I could tell Grady could NOT see any potential from his comments and looks at this wooden THING I was bringing home. But I found some great knobs, painted it in a cream color paint and chalk board paint, and distressed it a little. I think it turned out really cute and it’s very functional for my art room. It’s the perfect size for art paper and supplies.

Before

After

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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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