Sandi Hester

Paintings by Sandi Hester

Tag: flowers

Travel Sketchbook Flip

New video up on my Youtube channel – make sure to go and subscribe so you don’t miss any videos!

VIDEO! Gouache Sketching

Gouache Supplies

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Here are my gouache sketching supplies:

  1. Dirty Palette. Just a vintage metal pan thing I found at an antique shop – I love it! And yes I leave it dirty for the most part – the old mixes are invaluable to me!
  2. Sketchbook. This is a Derwent black page sketchbook – I love black pages to paint on – the colors really pop!
  3. Gouache paints. Holbein. Colors: White, Lemon Yellow, Primary Yellow, Yellow Ochre, Permanent Magenta, Flame Red, Primary Cyan, Ultramarine Light, Burnt Umber, Primary Black. (brown and blacks mixed with yellow make amazing greens!)
  4. Water bottle – this is one of those light mist ones – I LOVE it!
  5. Viva paper towels – no other will do
  6. Water and water container
  7. Any paint brushes you like to use. These are Winsor & Newton Series 150, Silver Ruby Satin 2500S Round, Daniel Smith Pure Squirrel 1.

Some Sketching (video)

Check out my YouTube video (lots more videos on my channel – go subscribe so you don’t miss anything!)

Window Christmas Decorating

Quick little video of me decorating for Christmas. Hope you all had a great one! More videos to come in the new year so make sure to follow and subscribe. Instagram (@sandigrady1) and my youtube channel are where you will likely see videos first so make sure to subscribe in those places to get update first. See you in the new year!

New from the Old

I feel like I haven’t had much time in the studio in months and I’m locking myself in the studio this week! I wanted to give myself some exercises instead of just jumping into a painting – I need some warming up. So I’m doing value studies and decided to take some of my old paintings and rework them. I played around with some old paintings on my editing program and put filters on some of them – changing not only the colors but changing the values also and I’m painting from those filtered pictures of old paintings (does that make sense???!!). Here’s the first one I did below: 1st pic is my new painting, 2nd pic is the filtered picture I painted from, and the last pic is of my old original painting. I’m going to do this with some more paintings too and if they turn out I will share them with you.

Sandi Hester, 9×12 oil

Altered pic of old painting, Sandi Hester oil

Sandi Hester oil

2013 oil painting by Sandi Hester, 7×11

Self Portraits

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Sandi Hester, self portrait

Sandi Hester, oil

Sandi Hester, oil, self portrait

Sandi Hester, oil, self portrait

Sandi Hester, oil, self portrait

Here are a couple of self portraits. All through history artists have used themselves as subjects to paint or draw – sometimes to portray or “say” something about themselves, but I think often it’s just because it’s a free and available model – I know that’s the case for me. In the past I’ve dressed-up in something I’d like to paint and had Grady take pictures of me around the yard or sitting at a table reading or drinking tea – just so I would have a figure to paint under the lighting I liked. So, it has nothing to do with being interested in self – but having an available subject :)! Hope you enjoy these! The first one is a sketch I did in less than 5 minutes today!

Oil Pastel Sketches

Sandi Hester, oil pastel

Sandi Hester, oil pastel

Sandi Hester, oil pastel

REALLY enjoying these oil pastels to sketch with!

Little Artists in My Studio

Hannah and Macy are two of my nieces and we have done many art lessons over the years and they continue to amaze me. Today Hannah (oldest) had her first oil painting lesson and Macy worked in watercolor and gouache. We started the day off by going to a local nursery to pick out flowers for our still life (they found out that that’s a hard decision to make!). We covered a ton today – value, color, composition, color mixing, texture, and lots more. They killed it! We were ALL exhausted! Hannah kept taking breaks and saying she needed to stretch 🙂 – that’s me all day long (stretching and working out sore muscles from standing and painting – you didn’t know it was so taxing did you?!).

Hannah's oil

Hannah’s oil

Macy's watercolor

Macy’s watercolor

Here’s a quick video of them in action – there was serious concentration going on in this studio today – no playing around – they were serious artists today. We did take Cooper (my dog) breaks though – always nice to have a studio dog to love on when you need to take a break from painting!

Summer Morning Light

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oil by Sandi Hester

A still life I did one summer in my normal set-up style – still life set up on a table right outside my studio window on a day with strong direct sun light – doesn’t get better than that for me!