NEW YouTube Video! 2019 Studio Update
Make sure to subscribe and like the video and leave me your questions for the question and answer time in the upcoming videos!
Make sure to subscribe and like the video and leave me your questions for the question and answer time in the upcoming videos!
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!
Oil painting from previous sketch.
Sandi Hester, 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!
REALLY enjoying these oil pastels to sketch with!
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
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!
Oil by Sandi Hester
A theme I return to over and over and I have painted this in every medium I’ve ever tried. This one went to a new home this week. I’m honored to have this painting hanging in my dear friend’s home.
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!
I’ve been playing with my new oil pastels and I’m loving them! The colors look so different on black and white paper so it’s been fun seeing how the different colors look. I’m learning that I don’t love layering them – I think they look best with each color standing alone on its own. I think these are going to make a perfect medium for my travels this summer and I’m looking forward to making some colorful sketches in Maine this summer!!! Let me know what you think about this medium for sketching.
Here I first did a black and white sketch and I liked the shapes and value so I played around with doing it in color I think I like the black and white better.
I’ve been doing some really large paintings in oil kind of like this sketch – once I get some pics I’ll share them here with you. I’ve been doing them in oil bars and really really chunky paint. There little guys were SO much fun to do with my oil pastels though – I will definitely be sketching more animals (probably some birds soon) with this new medium.
No, it hasn’t changed in each of these photos – I just couldn’t decide which one to post so why not post all my favorites?! This is a table in my studio that I work at a lot but it also gets stuffed with all kinds of things – mainly my succulents and still-life stuff. But somehow it usually looks nice – where as my still-life shelf stays a mess. I’m not one to move things around in my house at lot like some of my friends (you know who you are!) who are always moving furniture around and rearranging rooms – that almost put me in the mad house when I tried it once 🙂 – but this little space I can handle rearranging and it changing. So, here’s a little peep into how it looks today.
It was originally my brothers – it was in his garage and he stacked his paint cans on it – eek! How could you do that to such a cute table???!!! Then I inherited it and it’s been our kitchen table, dining room table, and now one of 4 studio tables. It’s on wheels too which I love because I can move it around fairly easily. Well, that was way more than you ever wanted to know about my studio table but there is all is anyways :).