Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Ballpoint pen drawings, ring design II. Refinement of form, structure and decoration.

Refining your design concept through drawing is essential.
What follows is the final drawing, step by step, in black and white. Colour will now be added and featured in the next post, entered shortly.
The drawing was done using a ballpoint pen - a fine Big pen. Comparing the drawings of this post and the previous entry will indicate the subtle design changes. Brought about through valuable critique by colleagues and students at the Department of Jewellery Design and Manufacture, where I teach.













Refinement of the design and the drawing.  
Changes made to the flaming leaves, refining the symmetry of the forms and shapes of the leaves and the flowers (the composition) I also took into account the negative shapes created by the leaves and the flowers. Possible manufacturing techniques and methods were also considered in the drawing.

Paper choice
The final drawing was made on page from a Ashrad Sketch Pad, a cartridge paper 200gsm.  The previous drawings (previous post entry) were in a Moleskine sketchbook. The paper is very yellow, maybe faded, bought on a sale.  The texture of the paper is best suited for pencil.  Many of my previous sketchbooks are Daler-Rowney, 150g/ms, acid free paper.  This is the best paper as it has a very slight texture and can take serious crosshatching without bulging. The slight texture prevents the black-ink drawing from flattening out, due to excessive crosshatching. I believe that this enables the drawing to breath, the white shining through.  A certain amount of luminosity is achieved this way – a sheen is obtained. I wish to believe,  this look is specific to ballpoint pen drawings. Very satisfying indeed. 

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