square and rectangle gemstones

[Pogue]

Hi,

Anyone have any tips or pictures of simple but well done square gems. The online pictures of real ones seem very intricate compared to the round ones. Is there a similar method ( midtone to highlight going down with black and white dot up top) for rectangle style gems? I found a few articles on gems on here, 2 with strange shapes, but nothing is quite what I was after.

Thanks

 

[PegaZus]

I did do some square crystals for an iPhone app, and you can see a good picture of what I did here. Granted, it's not a mini, but I took the article on painting gems here at CMON and applied it to the icons. Perhaps that'll help get started in some direction.

 

[Einion]

One of the problems with pics of gems, or the real thing if you have any in the house to study, is that you see through the (many) crown facets to the facets on the underside, which makes things look very intricate and complex. When painting gems on minis though what's nearly always done is just a highlight-and-shade job on the upper facets which are sculpted much more simply (like a baguette cut, one bevel). Shouldn't be too too hard to adapt the demos for regular cabochon gems, with a bit of NMM technique thrown in.

Einion

 

[jamemurp]

Treat them just like any translucent surface. Give it the old fade from almost black to bright color away from the specular highlight. If it has facets, treat each one like a "mini gem" and just keep the direction of light consistent. Follow the same idea that facets closer to the light source should be darker to reinforce the illusion of refraction.

 

[Pogue]

Thanks for all of the help guys! I'm not that great by a long shot, but thanks to all of the advice I got a result I am happy with. I tried to post it but it keeps coming out the size of my head on the forums page, so i just threw it in my avatar.

Take care, thanks again