Jewelry Illustration

It’s All in Your Hands

My youngest grandson “sees.”  He can think of or look at an object, put his own spin on it, and render it in his own unique visual language.  I marvel at this inborn ability.

When I attended art school, my lament was, “I am very creative, but I can’t draw well.”  My instructor turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to my protestations.  He soon demonstrated to me that I could.  My renderings replicated my design concepts.  It didn’t happen overnight, but my eyes finally become adjusted to the “light.”  What fun! 

Even though one may not have an innate ability to render a concept on paper, this book does an excellent job of presenting rendering and scaling jewelry designs in the proper perspective.  One begins with two dimensional drawings and then proceeds to the more advanced processes.  Use of both light and shadow are explored along with shading flat and smooth surfaces.  Various texturing techniques are explained also.  If one looks at a gemstone with its many brilliant surfaces and tries to duplicate that on paper, the answers are uncovered.

From these two dimensional drawings to the more complex ones, these tools are all here.  This book puts them all in your hands.  Just a matter of removing one’s blinders and “seeing.”