I've always been secretly envious of jewelry designers who make beautiful sketches. Look at the sketches included in Candie Cooper's Necklaceology (at right) or Cynthia Thornton's Enchanted Adornments. Of course, those are published books; you might expect the drawings to be polished and wonderful. But even the rough bead sketches shared in a blog post by Humblebeads show an amazing amount of detail. You can easily look at her sketch and know, for example, that you're looking at a bird. That is not always the case with my sketches.
I've been doing some early spring cleaning and found an old notebook with this drawing (at left).
At first, I had no idea what it was! I bet you don't either. Let's take a quiz.
This drawing is:
a) an organizational chart gone horribly wrong
b) an architectural drawing for a house with windows gone horribly wrong
c) a bird's eye view of a neighborhood gone horribly wrong
d) completely random scribbles with no particular meaning
Okay, that was a trick question. It's none of those things.
After studying the sketch a bit, I noticed that in the top corner above the first drawing, I had written: 48" red cord 3" tail?
The last project I remember using red cord was the Gold Rush Bracelet that I made for Beadwork Quick + Easy last year. (The red cord is hidden inside the beads. Look closely at the far right side of the bracelet in the photo to see it in the top row of beads.)
Knowing that, I can kinda see how these squares could be the brass cornerless cubes I used and the squiggles might be the thread path.
Despite this atrocious sketch, the bracelet turned out well. The sketch was never intended for publication; it was simply notes to myself so that I could remember to try this idea later.
Just as when writing, it's the final piece that matters, not those scattered rough drafts. Most people never see the false steps, the ripped out stitches, or the crossed-out words; they only see the finished end point. It doesn't always matter how you got there, just that you did.
Do you sketch designs? If so, would you proudly display them alongside your work or hide them under the bed?