Accomplishments of 2012 and New Years Resolutions

Accomplishments of 2012 and New Years Resolutions for 2013

So, early in 2012 I made a few New Years Resolutions, all which were outlined here:
Late New Years Resolution! Self Improvement Part 1Happy Belated New Year! And Chinese New Year! And Australia Day while I'm at it Yes I know it's February I hope all your holidays were good and you have a great New Year planned.
2011 was a pretty good year for me artwise. I feel that I've actually improved in many areas that I wanted to improve in such as:
- Detail (at least in some of my vector pieces)
- Lineart (once again, in my vector pieces)
- Photomanipulating
- Creativity (I think that's best in my traditional work)
However, as a Jack of all trades (or a wannabe Jack of all trades) there are many disciplines of art I want to learn and not enough time to learn them all in 2011.
So, I was inspired by the wonderful :iconKxhara: and in particular this deviation: to write a list of things I wanted to improve on as a belated New Years resolution featuring examples of things I want to be capable of doing as well as artists and stock that will help me! So things I would like to personally improve on in 2012:
1. D Self-Improvement Blog continued!Hey hey!
First of all, I would like to thank the charming :iconKneeling-Glory: for giving me this one month subscription. I feel like I've been wasting it so I'm continuing the feature which I was supposed to do a while ago As a continuation of Late New Years Resolution http://charmed-ravenclaw.deviantart.com/journal/Late-New-Years-Resolution-Self-Improvement-Part-1-283400501 here are some other things I'd like to get better at in 2012!
I attempted to focus on perspective the other day. Didn't go so well but I found some great tutes!
http://drawsketch.about.com/od/perspective/ss/1ptperspective.htm
An extra crease/folds tute!

An excellent Light and shadow tute! And closely related, a lineart one:

A really useful one for referencing poses!
The BASICS : Using References by Shattered-Earth
2. Specific objects I'd like to get better at drawing:
a) Comic p

So, did I manage to fulfil all my resolutions? Heck, no. I had a lot of things I wanted to improve on and somewhat lazy to improve on all of it. But here are some things I did improve on:

Graphite drawing
Drawings before 2012:


Drawings of 2012:

I think what helped was buying a 9B pencil Still, I need to improve on detail, drawing the human in proportion and smoother shading. Next time I'm going to try it out on Bristol paper – I heard it was quite smooth and I'm quite curious about it.

Tutorials

This is a tutorial on graphite blending I found useful:

Here are some other tutorials on drawing heads from different angles:

Watercolour painting

I still need to figure out how to use salt and other watercolour techniques but we'll see how it goes

Knife painting



So what's next for 2013?  Well, I shall be continuing trying to improve on all the things I wanted to improve on in 2012. I will also try out some other things:

Leatherwork
I want to make some clothes – in particular steam punk and leather things.

Inspiration:
 

Tutorials:
I think there needs to be a few more tutorials on DA on how to work with leather. Dying leather would be a good idea too – I'm going to try recycling some couch leather into a corset and other things. The main point for me is to recycle the leather, not to buy new leather. If anyone feels like giving me their thoughts on that, please let me know.

However, here are some general sewing and clothing tutorials I've found:
:thumb308468000:

I would find a tutorial on how to make a fingerless gloves very useful, particularly a leather fingerless gloves.

Jewellery
In particular I want to make polymer clay stuff and wire-wrapping steam punk stuff.

Inspiration:
:thumb327731439:

Tutorials:
:thumb333038103: :thumb333038815: :thumb288946167:

Bookbinding


Make-Up, Hair and Body Art
:thumb294646682: :thumb216581089:

Tips on decent eyeliner brushes and everlasting lipstick brands totally appreciated!

Papercutting
:thumb326255248: :thumb293694111: :thumb196683087: :thumb300027560: