Let's talk about...Jewellery

I'm happy to say that I made a substantial amount of development work and finally moved on to rendering the final collection. I was so focused on work that I nearly forgot about my birthday (9th August)! To celebrate good progress I scanned and photographed some of the things I've been working on, so today's post will be featuring models, more of my design development drawings, and a small sneak peak of final renderings.
Enjoy!












 Looking back at my process of rendering (in pictures) I'm quite surprised to notice that I don't have a single way of working. I sort of go back and forth between designs; I might do a bit of shading here or add some colour there. I generally add gouache highlights when all designs are drawn out and coloured in; but it's always pretty much  about whatever works for you.
 My main tips for anyone interested in rendering will be -  get templates to draw gems nicely, keep a scalpel close by when rendering in coloured pencil to ensure the tip is sharp, cover paper you're not currently working on so you don't smudge design. Listen to the music. Stay focused.

I've been working hard on designing pieces for Perfect 10 competition, and it was only today that I finally had a chance to scan some of my drawings from the Phoenix Collection (current working title). So sit back and enjoy!

As you hopefully remember, I want to enter my past and current project to Goldsmiths' competition, so just before Christmas I was working a lot on getting my renderings done (we unfortunately can't get access to Matrix at home due to licensing issues), and getting my head around how to convey movement of my spinning pendant and how to show everything that needs to be shown - inspiration, exploded views and close ups as well as finished renderings on one sheet of A3 paper.
To start off I had a look at jewellery adverts. You might ask why would I look at adverts? Especially considering that it's competition, but if you really think about it, competition is just as much about selling your piece, or design as companies do in adverts, therefore, I felt it was a good starting point.



 Conclusion I came to after looking at these adverts - models. In jewellery adverts there is usually someone to wear the piece. There were some very creative ones from Harry Winston - the one with bird holding rings on its beak, and of course my favourite ones were from Van Cleef & Arpels -they are very clever with their visuals.

I've also looked at how to show movement of my pendant, through use of blur or stills showing moveable section in different positions.
 Then I started thinking about my visuals, and trying to find image  of the model with good resolution.
 Which is harder than it seems, actually - getting right image, so that you can manipulate it in Photoshop so that it looks like someone is wearing necklace and earrings is tricky.

 Originally, bracelet entry was supposed to be similar to pendant - face of the model transforming into object of my inspiration for the piece, but it just didn't look right, so I had to try different combinations out.


That's what I have so far - I'll probably leave it off, so I can look at them with clear eye.

A very short post today with renderings of spinning pendant that I was working on - hopefully I won't need to make big changes now...

Continuation of my development work for spinning pendant for Goldsmiths'. Hope you enjoy!








Hopefully I'll finish spinning pendant soon - I still have time until this Friday (that's my project deadline), but I need to work on costings, learning logs for commissions, and answer two CAD related questions. So, a busy week ahead of me, but slowly getting there!

As promised - design development of my spinning pendant with re-moveable studs for Goldsmiths' competition - all of my CAD work!
























That's still work in the progress, but I'll update soon continuation of design development. As you can notice, I've been quite busy, and I still have a lot of stuff to consider in my design - the way it will spin, fitting everything together, sizes...But I'm getting there and that's the most important thing :)
Hope you enjoyed!