{"id":11015,"date":"2011-05-20T12:53:50","date_gmt":"2011-05-20T16:53:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wendybrandes.com\/blog\/?p=11015"},"modified":"2011-05-20T17:30:12","modified_gmt":"2011-05-20T21:30:12","slug":"custom-work-gettin-sketchy-wit-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/custom-work-gettin-sketchy-wit-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Custom Work: Gettin’ Sketchy Wit It"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t do sketches of all the designs that I create for my collection<\/a>. Sometimes I skip the sketch and go directly to the wax model<\/a>. Other times, I do a very rough sketch to convey a concept. When I was working on my Cleves swan ring, I scribbled something that looked like two deformed ducks kissing in order to show the desired position of the swans’ necks. All of the beautification work was done in wax.<\/p>\n

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The early stages of the wax model for the Cleves ring.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The completed Cleves ring in 18K gold and diamonds. Click to purchase.<\/p><\/div>\n

I don’t do sketches for all custom work<\/a>, either. When gorgeous blogger Jill of Stella’s Roar <\/a>asked me to create a pair of mud flap girl cufflinks<\/a> with ruby nipples<\/a>, I didn’t give her a picture. I just made the cufflinks. We both knew what the mud flap girl looked like, so why re-draw her?<\/p>\n

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The typical mud flap girl silhouette.<\/p><\/div>\n

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My Mud Flap Jill cufflinks. Click to purchase.<\/p><\/div>\n

There are other cases where I won’t provide a drawing. If a gorgeous client asks me for a diamond solitaire in a four-prong setting on a 2 millimeter shank, I’m not going to spend billable time drawing it. You can draw that yourself … or look at one of the eleventy billion pictures of similar rings that exist online. If those don’t help you get a handle on what you’re asking for, I doubt a drawing is going to enlighten you either.<\/p>\n

Of course, certain jobs call for some kind of illustration. When gorgeous blogger Susan of Une Femme d\u2019un Certain Age<\/a> asked for a customized version of my Siobhan perma-stacked stacking ring<\/a>, I gave her a drawing. Even though she knew the ring’s style, we were going to have to make changes to accommodate the stones she wanted to use, so I wanted her to understand how it would look.<\/p>\n

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The original Siobhan. Click to purchase.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Sketches of Susan's ring, showing side and front views and detail of stone setting.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Susan's finished ring. Click for more information.<\/p><\/div>\n

The sketch for Susan didn’t amount to a black-and-white technical drawing or a color rendering<\/a>. I save those for original and complex pieces. Such images require serious effort because they’re not just about how the jewelry will look — they’re about how the jewelry will be made.\u00a0 I’ve seen many jewelers and artists create stunning 3D, full-color renderings of jewelry that can’t be made as drawn\/painted\/created on a computer.\u00a0 Just because you can imagine something doesn’t mean the metal and gems will oblige! The laws of physics come into play, as do economics. Not long ago, I asked a jewelry artist with expertise in a certain type of design for a rendering of a pair of earrings, and he came back with a pencil drawing that I wanted to frame and hang on my wall. That would have been the best use of that drawing, because it was so elaborate that it would be ridiculous to try to recreate it in metal. If I did half <\/em>as much detail in metal, people would look at the earings in awe and say, “This is the most detailed thing I’ve ever seen!” Now I have to waste time sitting with the maker of the wax model, pointing at different features on the drawing and saying, “Leave that out. Simplify that. Pretend you never saw that. No, I don’t know what he was thinking either.” Oh, and the model maker is charging me an hourly rate, so all of this comes out of my pocket.<\/p>\n

Customers who request an original, elaborate and expensive piece from me are welcome to request a rendering before we move ahead. (Sometimes I insist on providing one for their approval.) But there are rules:<\/p>\n