Do you draw conclusions about your friends, family members, doctors, or first grade teachers from their handwriting: neat, repressed, artistic, bold and so on? In the same way, the line gesture in your work tells its own story. This is because when we see a work, we instinctively “feel” in our own bodies the type of movement that made the line. Do the lines in your work swoop? Curl tightly? Are they jagged and jumpy? Are they you?

By being aware of gesture, you can use the lines in a piece of jewelry to give the work a personality. Gestural lines can be playful, solemn, aggressive, constricted—you name it. The gesture of the line can create the appearance of weight in a lightweight piece—can you make a piece look tired, weighed down with worries? Gesture can create a feeling of tension or give a work the feeling that it is just off balance.

Watch how you use line gesture in your work. Is it your “signature”?