Bonjour Kelley,
I don’t know where you stay and if there is any design evening class
near you. Neither did I ever heard about design class through
mail…(though it must exist somewhere!)
However there are lots of things that you can do by yourself. These
are the advices I often give to my students :
If you want to improve your design skills, you’ll need to build up
your own “vocabulary”.
DRAW
Take evening lifedrawing classes if you can.
Carry a sketchbook everywhere you go.
Drawing is not only a good skill to have, it is also eye-mind-hand
discipline. It teachs to watch, to understand what you see and to
accuratly move your hand according to your will.
It is a skill that you will bring back to your bench pratctice.
Make collage with everything you fancy in magazines, or fabric
offcuts, or plants, take pictures or molds of textures you like…
try to reproduce it on metal.
When you see an object that you like, draw it again and agian until
you undertstand why you like it… is it for its outline, its colour
or its texture… is it because it reminds you of something else?
Explore jewellery through the five senses.
You can look at artist’s sketchbooks and observe their design
process… not only in jewellery, You’ll find lots of them on
illustrations, movie making-of…
You can also look at history of art and design, feed your mind with
it. Are you an Art Deco, Art Nouveau or rather a Post Modern person?
Give some thought to what jewellery means to you, what it means to
others or in other cultures…
You could also challenge yourself : instead of thinking : “I am
going to make a ring with a cabochon stone” you could give yourself a
diffrent brief like…
A pendent featuring two different textures and one coloured
element… What piece of jewellery can I make if I want to carry a
secret meaning or message with me… or… start with a title… how
would a piece called “evening rose” or “oedipian distress” look like?
or start just with a word : “Flight” for example, research and sketch
everything related to this word : creatures, devices, symbols,
homonymes,…you’ll come across so many inspiring stuff!
Have fun, maybe you could tell a story or a riddle with your work…
or maybe you are drawn to pure aesthetic experiments.
Discover who you are as a jeweller.
EXPLORE AND EXPERIMENT.
As all this will gradually sink in, you will devellop your very own
style.
I hope this will help a little…
Have fun!
Juliette Arda
Artiste-Bijoutiere
Aix en Provence, France