zbrush pendant

This is a pendant I was making in ZBrush recently.  I enjoy working on ZBrush, but one problem I think I will have is that I am working on something enlarged much larger than the size it will be manufactured.  I think I am often putting in details that will never show up in the final piece, after 3d printing, casting, and cleaning/polishing.  This pendant for example, the finished piece would probably be about 30mm high, but on my computer I am working on details with it enlarged to about 12"+ high.  I don't know how fine of details will make it through to the final piece.  I still haven't tried printing anything, so I don't know how it will be. 

Zbrush

Around January or February I decided to stop trying to learn Rhino and Zbrush at the same time and just concentrate on one for a while.  Zbrush was the obvious choice.  It was more interesting to me than Rhino and I was already spending much more time on it than Rhino.  I also think it's more difficult to learn than Rhino. Mostly I have been doing tutorials on DigitalTutors.com.  The focus of that site is mostly for graphics, not manufacturing, but I can apply most of it to sculptural jewelry forms. 

Here are some of the things I have completed.  These are tutorial projects, not my designs:

watercolor rendering

Recently I became interested in doing watercolor renderings of jewelry designs again.  I took the jewelry design course at GIA in 2001 and learned how to do watercolor renderings, but within a year of finishing the class I had completely stopped doing them.  I like the look of them, but they were usually just too much work.  Living in a small apartment in Korea I am really limited with the kind of jewelry work I can do here, so I decided to relearn to draw and paint.  In December I ordered some books and jewelry illustration and rendering.  I also asked my parents to send me all my drawing and painting supplies and all the instructions, handouts, notes and samples from my design class. After I finished that class I had kept all my papers organized and in a folder because I felt I would need them again someday.  I have never been so organized with any class materials before or since then. 

Since there is no school all January and February, but I am still required to be at school, I have had a lot of time to practice drawing and painting here.  So far I have been doing the technical drawing exercises in Jewelry Illustration by Dominique Audette and the painting exercises from my GIA design class.  I recently got the book Techniques of Jewelry Illustration and Color Rendering by Adolfo Mattiello, which seems like a good book.  I did a few of the exercises in the beginning but I think I will wait to start on that after I have done most of the GIA design class assignments since they use a different painting technique. 

There are some designs I did in the design class in 2001: