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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 itYes I know it's February
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 agoAs 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:
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:
Tutorials:
Bookbinding
Make-Up, Hair and Body Art
Tips on decent eyeliner brushes and everlasting lipstick brands totally appreciated!
Papercutting
As for leatherwork... I've been dabbling in it for a few years now, but I started with sewing. A lot of the skills I learned about working in 3D and basic pattern shapes to fit the human body transfer really well between leather and sewing, and materials for sewing are generally cheaper. You will probably want to make a mock up of whatever you're making out of fabric, paper, or cardboard first. In some ways, leather is easier, because you don't have to worry about hemming (and in some cases, no seam allowance either).
Now, for your idea of using a leather couch as your materials - that will work for some things. My archery glove is made of garment leather, which is soft. The leather comes already dyed. You could use recycled leather from a couch or jacket for something like that, or the leather jerkin, but you'd want to get the color you wanted from the start. If you put dye on top, some of it might absorb (moreso if the leather is old and a little dry), but you'll get a mottled color. Sometimes that's cool because it looks distressed or waterlogged, but sometimes it also means the dye stays on the surface more and can come off and stain other clothing/skin.
Light garment leather can be sewed on a machine, if you're careful, but it still might hurt a modern non-metal-geared sewing machine. Heavier stuff has to be hand sewn. If the needle isn't sharp enough or the leather is too thick, you have to use a pronged punch to set the holes before stitching (even on thinner leather, it's kinder to your hands to punch the holes first).
Most of the other items you are using as a reference don't use garment leather. They're made of vegetan, which is thick and more stiff. I like to think I'm pretty thrifty, but I've never found a suitable source to recycle this type of leather from - it gets used in some bags, saddles, armor, heavier things. Corsets can be made of garment leather instead, but you'd need boning, it'd be more like working with fabric, and it won't look the same as the examples above.
Yeah, I figured I needed to dye the couch before I tried to start cutting it into pieces. I don't know which brands of dyes are good.
Thank you for taking the time to write down all of this advice, I really appreciate it!
Hand sewing tutorial: [link] - I saw this yesterday, and already it gives me ideas of things I need to do differently. It may help you with your sewing.