Jewelry Design Course 1/3

Explore lighting and shading on basic geometric forms by drawing a sphere, cube, cone, and cylinder.

Observe how light creates highlights, midtones, core shadows, cast shadows, and reflected light on a sphere. Practice crosshatching and hold the pencil farther away for control.

Practice shading basic forms to build value contrast for jewelry design, using a light-to-dark value scale and straight-line shading for cones and cylinders. Observe how light defines shadows and highlights.

Identify the light source, highlights, and cast shadow direction and size, with reasons. This exercise trains you to notice shadows and lights by describing objects with four questions.

Discover how light source affects stone shading in jewelries, noting distant light yields parallel rays, while a close lamp creates cone-shaped light.

Explore how light reflects, refracts, and disperses in a diamond, creating brilliance with table highlights, pavilion facets, and crown shading; includes sketching a round diamond from circle to octagon.

Learn to shade different stone cuts, including transparent and opaque cabochons, and render beads and pearls with depth and realism.

Compare transparent and opaque cabochons by light from the top left, noting bright center, highlights, and darker borders. Describe the cast shadow and surface reflection of the transparent cabochon.

Master shading beads and pearls by depicting light entering transparent beads, reflecting color, and casting smooth shadows; practice with three bracelets, one of each type.

Learn how to sketch jewelry pieces and combine what we learned in the previous lessons.

Find inspiration outdoors, photograph beauty, and brainstorm ideas; build a vision board from nature and online sources. Sketch earrings with geometric shapes, place stones, and consider light and settings.

Design a brooch, a decorative jewelry item for garments, from luxurious to simple. Follow organized guidelines and sketch shapes like butterfly, animal, insect, or fruit, not necessarily symmetric.

Practice basic ring sketches from the top view to improve visibility for the gold- or silversmith by showing different views. After watching, draw two rings from the top view.

Draw three sets of earrings, three brooches, three rings from the top view and two pendants using all materials; mix beads, cabochons, and stones of varied shapes and sizes.

Color different shapes of gemstones using a few jewelry examples to explore gemstone coloring in jewelry.

Color round diamonds with watercolor pencils, using pressure to shade darker areas and avoid light spots, and color five stones—ruby, citrine, sapphire, emerald—with red, yellow, blue, and green.

Place round stones along curves and in flush settings for pendants, rings, and earrings. Emphasize top-facing stones and highlights with emeralds, rubies, and sapphires.

Draw one jewelry piece of your choice, holiday themed, consider motifs like mountains, beach, plants, animals, or music, use nature or internet references, and share your work.