2017 Improvement Challenge

This is my first entry for DamaiMikaz "2017 Improvement Challenge".
It's still a few days until the deadline, you can still take part if you want, here's the journal regarding the Challenge:

2017 improvement challengeIt's 2017 and time for another challenge!!!

As a follow-up of last year's challenge, I want to organize another one.
The general idea of a challenge is that it's done for you. It's not a full contest. Yes, there are prizes, but the main goal of a challenge is your own improvement. To some degree all of those that enter are winners. You've all won at improving your own art!
Note: This journal will be updated when things change 
Last update: December 20 2017

The challenge


The challenge is simple. 
Take an artwork from your gallery from either late 2016 or 2017 and re-do it. 
Make it better! Show us what you've learned in the past year.
How to enter 
  Pick one of your older artworks made between October 1 2016 and 

So, as you can see, I chose the tattoo sketch "From Life to Death and Back Again" I made in late April 2017, focusing on the transition and circulatory of life and death. 
I revised it on 31. december '17 and finished it on 19. january '18, the new drawing is way more detailed, the trees are pronounced and elaborated, the left hand tree has no leaves, looks crooked and spikey and thus resembles the Death-side of the drawing even more.
The Stag on the "Life"-side as well as the crow on the "Death"-side are more recognizable and visible, both are outlined in blue ink, the whole drawing has a stronger outline and more detail thanks to inking, and the stag skull is embedded into a little chunk of landscape, again resembling life (grass and flowers) and death (bare rocks). 
The only thing that still bothers me is the fact that the old stag skull looks more realistic since I used a photo reference. The new one I made completely without a reference, the first sketch I made on a train trip so I didn't even have the original piece at hand, so I had to sketch everything from memory - that's why the new skull doesn't look quite as detailed and naturalistic as the old one.

Still, I'm very satisfied with the outcome - it is not much different, but way more pronounced, elaborate and detailed, showing a progress especially in landscape, fauna and flora naturalism/detailing.


This is the original version:                And this is the new one:
                                


Also, here's the meme template (had to crop and edit it because my drawings are horizontal instead of vertical)