Three-Dimensional Designs - Real Lifelike Spatial Compositions
This involves skill to achieve volume ant to experience concavity and convexity that will attract all attention. The most common form of three-dimensional work is an object that can be viewed from every angle, and in full round. A three-dimensional form can have multiple two-dimensional figures when seen from different angles. Therefore, figures make up one of the elements of form. For a piece of jewelry to hold a viewer's attention, it must change continually
as it is moved around and at the same time maintain an overall sense of continuity and wholeness.
1. Physical Function: Jewelry must withstand the forces that usage places on the piece. Design strategies must anticipate whether the piece would be worn daily or occasionally; was expected to last a year, more than a year, a lifetime; was to be worn in situations where there was little movement/activity by the wearer or a lot of movement/activity.
The designer does not want the piece to pose any kind of problem of manipulation. The Design and Construction should be conditioned by anatomy and situation.
Physical Function is understood in terms of movement, Flow, Drapery, Flexibility, Rigidity, Volume, Weight, and Torque. It is understood in terms of proportions and sizes and coherency among the parts. It is understood in terms of the relationship of the piece to the purpose it is worn, or what it is worn with. It is understood in terms of how the piece is secured from loss.
You don't want to end up with a top-heavy brooch, or a bracelet that is too stiff around the wrist. You don't want a bracelet or necklace to shift position on the body.
Wide necklaces must be tapered conically toward the neck to lie flat.
2. Psycho-Social Function: Jewelry has many uses, including meeting the individual's needs for self-esteem, self-actualization, sex and sexuality, a sense of oneness and uniqueness, a sense of being a part of a larger group or community, a sense of survival and protection, a re-affirmation of values and perspectives, a connection to a higher power or spirituality, fantasy, personal use-goals.
3. Forms: It is important for the jewelry designer to think in terms of "parts", "forms", and the "piece as a whole". Forms are inter-related objects. For example, they might be sections of beads that seem to be thematically inter-related.
Design-control over forms enables the designer to create a "whole" that is more than the sum of its "parts".
4. Techniques and Materials: The choice of materials, particularly clasps and stringing materials, set the tone and chances of success for the piece.
These choices involve such things as:
- Type of material(s)
- Thickness and other physical parameters of the parts, such as whether they have been stamped, fabricated or cast; interaction with sunlight, ultraviolet light, heat and cold; how the pieces have been finished off
- Cost of materials
- Durability of materials
- Compatibility of different types of materials
- Structural integrity and integration of materials,
particularly in multi-media art jewelry or related pieces
Each form should contribute to the whole.
You may use the dominant, subdominant and subordinate concept to structurally organize your jewelry designs. Design your own jewelry using the concept to give the design structure an order, but you don’t have to take it literally.
You can also use the diagonal axis to give your jewelry designs extra interest. A dynamic proportion between forms will appear as soon as you start using curvilinear forms with the same dominant, subdominant and subordinate concept but in a diagonal visual tension.
Use the diagonal axis to create movement and three-dimensional qualities. The three curvilinear forms should be arranged in a dynamic relationship with a good proportion between the diagonal axes to give the design appropriate visual tension. Remember that the diagonal axes also become directional forces, so make your design to suit your intentions.
What do you want the viewer to see? You can control how the design will be perceived.
Just like with the rectilinear forms, the composition of curvilinear forms should look structural. That is, it has to appear self-supporting, it must look like a structure and a unified design.
Design your own jewelry having in mind the dominant, subdominant and subordinate concept explained here. You can also design your own jewelry, following this concept, with metal sheet achieving wonderful designs by means of planes.
Take this further by changing your own position as a viewer.
Stand up and see the composition from above. Take two steps back from your work and look at it with a bit of distance, look at it from all sides and from the bottom.
If you get used to looking at your work in different angles besides the way you view it from the bench, the design can speak to you tons!
In another section you can also see how concavity and convexity lead your designs into the world of organic forms.
We usually analyze and express volume starting from the outside and then getting inside the mass.
If you think of it the other way round, you’ll perceive form in a much better way.
Convexity is perceived as a positive volume that pushes into a negative space. Concavity is the expression of negative space pushing into positive volume. They both complement each other and structure one another.
Exploring the negative space between positive forms will help you see the whole character, position and tension of your design.
You can also group two or three masses and add them to make a new abstract volume, like grouping little masses of clay together into a coherent whole.
The dominant, subdominant and subordinate concept we saw before comes into play here again. Work with the axis of your design, in terms of structuring three-dimensionally the mass, volume and space.
Look at your sculptural design from all possible angles.
Study how the viewers’ eyes are drawn around, over and under your design.
The negative space should flow around the volume, at first, keep concavities subtle.
Practice to mentally “see” the structuring elements of your design, those inside the outer surface, like an X-ray of your volumetric creation.
That means to look for the directional axis, or lines that structure the whole mass. Examine the surfaces that protrude and move to see if they are consistent with the axis and the planes that build up the volume.
Explore these relationships while you turn the design around.