How to Paint/draw Gemstones

Hello fellow artistic minds and other folk!

I will be showing you a technique for painting a "gemstone". Most of the gemstones I paint are on miniature wargaming models.

With this technique you will be able to draw or paint (on a model, canvas, paper, computer painting program, etc.....) a "gemstone" with a metal base(see picture 1). I used a computer program called "The GIMP" for painting this gemstone.

Picture 2 shows the real thing in five different colors.

The first thing you need to do is decide what color you want the gemstone to be. For this demonstration, I chose red .


Start by drawing a gray oval shape. Then draw a dark red oval shape inside the grey oval leaving an even border of gray around the red.

To give the gemstone a more transparent look, we will need to paint a sequence of lighter red colors on the lower half of the red oval (see pictures). If you are using paint, add a little white to the red for every layer of color. Also, in the last picture you can see the white dot on the top of the gemstone. This simulates where the light penetrates the surface of the gem.




Note: You don't have to use as many different shades of red as I did.

To give the base a metal look we will start by painting the lower left and upper right sides with a darker gray than the base color(If you are using a computer painting program, use the airbrush tool.).

Then paint the upper left and lower right sides with a lighter gray than the base color.


Do this step again but with a lighter light color and a darker dark color.(see picture 2) This will make it seem a little bit more shiny.

This technique can be done with any color of gem as well as any color of metal base!

The second picture is another gem I drew. I used the same technique as the other one, but I used different colors.

If you have any questions, I will do my best to answer them.

I hope you enjoyed this instructable.


Have fun!