Hawadäre!: Art

Hi Everyone!

I haven't been overly active on my blog but I have been extremely busy offline.

A recap of 2013 month by month:

January: Aren and I rang in the new Year at home with friends. Aren's brother, a DJ stage name Foxhound, and some other local DJ's Beat Reynolds and Sunny Phono put on an amazing show. I performed with local Rapper Stretch-9 and had an amazing start to what would turn out to be an amazing year.

February: My dad's birthday. Aren and I were busy planning our upcoming vacation to Japan. This has been a dream of his for many years. His brother and my sister will be joining us.

March: My parents set off on their holiday to Cuba. All of us kids chipped in to send them on their first all inclusive tropical vacation to celebrate their 30th Anniversary.

I had the opportunity to sing with all of the lovely Sunday School Children at our Easter Service. There are some very talented young kids in this group!

April: My Artwork was displayed in the Tumbler Ridge Art Space.

May: JAPAN! We traveled to Japan for a three week dream vacation. It was one of the best vacations I have ever been on and I hope we will be able to return again someday. The Japanese people are very warm and inviting and made our stay unbelievable. Aren and I celebrated our 7th Anniversary while in Japan.

Life Size GUNDAM!

GUNDAM!

June: I announced my retirement at work. It was a challenging and rewarding experience to work at the Mine but the time had come for me to say goodbye. I will never forget the people or experiences I had while working at Ekati.

Photo by Nahanni Construction NCL

June 22 - Sang at a show with Stretch-9 at The Coal Bin. If you haven't heard his music yet you should check it out. Stretch-9 on Reverbnation

July: My niece Evangeline was born!

In the newspaper on my birthday! I was asked to sing at GrizzFest and our local paper ran an article about each performer/group. I also received a Nexus for my birthday.

A new track from Stretch-9, featuring yours truly was released on SoundCloud. Ms. Miss.

Have a listen if you haven`t already.

Listen Now!

August: Sang at Grizz-Fest with my friend local rap artist Stretch-9. It was awesome to get up and perform for people, some friends even came down from the Yukon to see us! Other performers included George Canyon, The Real McKenzie's and Dragonette. It was pretty cool to share the stage with these people.

Backstage at Grizz-Fest

Aren and I began renovations to our house. Lots of work!

September: Still renovating....!

Aren's sister moved in with us and started school here in town.

Kailee and Kia

October: I won the Best Costume prize at the Hallowe'en party we attended. Aren should have won with his HAND MADE Daft Punk helmet. I don't think people realized that he wired all of the LED's himself and fabricated the helmet out of Fiberglass. He is pretty amazing!

I began working on some Musical collaborations with DJ's around the world.

November: My favorite sports team the SASKATCHEWAN ROUGHRIDERS win the Grey Cup! Amazing! Our family was then featured in our local newspaper!

December: I entered 5 pieces of Artwork into the South Peace Art Societies Member Show at the Dawson Creek Art Gallery. This was my first show as a SPAS Member.

My first collaboration was released on SoundCloud with musical artist nberk.

Have a listen if you haven`t already.

Listen Now!

Community Choir Concert - I was blessed to be able to join this group of talented people and had the opportunity to sing a special number during the concert as a trio with Bob and Michael (last names kept anonymous in case they don't want internet publicity!) I was also able to create a number of original Art pieces which were used as a part of the visual display during the concert.

Church Christmas Pageant - I was asked to play Mary and had a fun time participating in this event. I bet it was the first time Mary had blonde/blue hair! Disclaimer - not my baby but my wonderful friend Jen's bundle of joy Edward.

Christmas with my family and our new niece Evangeline!

Our Christmas Tree

I updated my Art Website with new work so please check it out:

www.lydiahibbing.com

I have prints available for purchase now as well.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Recently I have had a bit more time for the creative pursuits. This could be due to the fact that the holidays are over or perhaps because we have settled into a more regular routine here at home. Whatever the case may be, I am quite happy about being able to spend extra time doing what I like to do.
Today's post features a painting that I did these past few weeks. Inspired by stain glass windows, a painting I saw at my cousin's house and old religious artwork - I hope you will enjoy it!

Before starting this painting I drew a sketch of what I wanted it to look like. I find it helps to keep me on track and focused on what the finished product should look like. I don't always do a sketch though.

Here we have all of my paints ready to go. I like to use old lids as paint palettes, they clean off really easily.

Lighter colours to darker colours is the way I like to paint. Here we have the white being painted in. I drew a sketch in pencil behind of some of the basic areas. Normally I would never use pencil as it shows through but because I was lining this painting with black (like stained glass) I knew it wouldn't really matter.

Yellow and light brown.

Here we have some of the outline started and more colour added with light blue and magenta.

Now you can really see the painting coming to life. Lots of colour has been added as well as some of the shading in the background and the face.

As I was working on filling in the colour I couldn't help but notice that I really disliked the shape of the face. The chin appeared much too wide for the face and the lips seemed too high and too red. These things would definitely need to be fixed.Lots of highlights have been added as well as some more shading.

I decided to finish all of the outlining before moving on to fix the face.

And finally - the fix.

Her face looks much softer now, much more serene. I am really pleased with how all of this turned out - I already have it hung up in my home.

I have plans in the near future to paint a very large painting. Most of my work to date has been under 20x24 and it would be a nice challenge to take on a bigger canvas I think.
Don't worry - I promise to let you know how things go along the way.
Ciao,