Today’s design is opal and diamond earrings.  From today I have set myself the challenge of adding a jewellery design a day to my blog.  All the designs will be my own and will be  hand rendered using gouache watercolours.  Il’be adding the specifications of the stones I have ‘used’ in the designs and all drawings will be 1:1 scale.  I hope you enjoy the designs and please feel free to like , comment and share my work.

 

For years jewellery designers have used ‘paint ups’ as an integral part of the design process, in the days before computer aid design, a life-sized, realistic looking painting was the best way to present ideas to a client.  Many jewellers today still use paint ups and I personally prefer to present clients with a hand painted design often alongside a CAD render.  There is no doubt that the introduction of CAD/CAM has changed and improved the jewellery design process but a hand painted design will always have more personality than a CAD render and people really like to see them, so much so that I now include a paint up with every piece I make.  It’s part of the package and the whole experience of having a bespoke piece of jewellery made.

 

Doing paint ups are probably my favourate part of the jewellery design process and I really enjoy the challenge of making these tiny little drawings as life-like as possible.  There are loads of different techniques for making diamonds, coloured stones and beads look 3 dimensional and responsive to light.  I thought Opals were a good place to start as we did our Opal painting tutorial last week.  We’ll be adding more tutorials soon, any requests please let us know!