Draw a keyring in Aquarell: show the ring passing through the key holes

A keyring is small and complex, but its essential feature is how ring and holes thread together. A line passing beside a hole is not necessarily passing through it. Draw two invented simple keys and a ring using traceable overlaps before restrained metal reflections. Teeth are arbitrary illustrative forms, not information copied from a real usable key; focus on attachment and material.

Arrange two keys and one ring

Use an approximately 1600×1400 px canvas with one key extending lower left, another lower right and the ring above, leaving a clear branching gap. Establish heads, shafts and end silhouettes before the ring’s elliptical envelope. Separate background, far key, ring, near key and reflections. Different lengths are fine; check weight in flat colour first. If all parts become a star-like tangle, separate key directions and clarify ring-to-head proportions rather than starting with teeth or scratches.

Place holes on each key-head plane

Reserve a hole within each key head, aligning inner and outer contours with its plane and retaining enough metal around it. Do not make one side so thin it appears broken. Cut the opening with background colour before deciding whether ring or other key is visible inside. A hole is not a uniform black dot. Inspect background and rim thickness in a black-sticker result; adjust hole size and position in a broken-head result rather than using a dark outline to force connection. Check plane and material thickness separately first.

Establish the ring path before hiding parts

Draw a complete provisional elliptical ring, initially allowing faint guides through the heads, and mark which portions are in front or behind. Then interrupt segments hidden by metal and expose the connecting section through each hole. Do not begin with disconnected arcs that may not form one ring. Hide keys to check the entire loop if confusing, restoring them individually. Turn off the transparent construction line in the finish: passing through a hole and passing through solid metal are different relationships.

Keep ring width and rounded turns continuous

Give the ring thickness through a roughly consistent narrow band with broad rounded shading, compressed appropriately farther away. Inner and outer contours share centre and orientation; the ring must not suddenly become a single line at a hole. Start in mid-grey, then make one side lighter and another darker. Narrow a tyre-like ring, or add local round-section lighting to a flat washer without outlining the whole loop in white. Exposed sections inside holes retain the same material scale; detail must not make the connection change thickness arbitrarily.

Give the keys their own overlap order

Let the near head cover a small part of the far head while shafts separate below. Interrupt hidden head and hole contours instead of showing both keys completely. Verify overlap in plain grey before temperature differences. Add a clear head contact and local shadow to disconnected flat icons, or widen the gap between merged shafts. Do not put the whole ring in front merely to simplify drawing. Its threading also changes front/back order, and both levels must remain consistent.

Show thin metal edges selectively

Give a key a broad face and a narrow, angle-dependent side, with a darker near edge or paler lit bevel where appropriate. Preserve the flat shaft section rather than a round pipe, and simplify end teeth. Add one or two visible thickness planes to paper-like keys; reduce black sidewalls and rounded lights on bulky plastic-like ones. The keys face differently, so their light placement need not mirror, though both share upper-left illumination. Resolve broad planes before scratches: material identity does not require sparkle everywhere.

Keep contact darks from sealing the holes

Use a tiny dark at ring-to-hole contact on the lower metal surface, not a black ring around the whole opening. Background and the passing ring segment should remain distinguishable within the hole. Reserve deepest values for a few contacts, keeping other surfaces in visible middle greys. Shrink a black-hole shadow before inspecting threading. If attachment is unclear, repair the path before darkening. The structure must work with shadows hidden; restored shade adds overlap and thickness rather than a dark lump requiring the viewer to guess.

Use long and short metal reflections

A shaft may carry a restrained elongated light, while several short ring accents follow its curve. Keep total brightest area small. Do not put white lines on every edge or make an internal-hole reflection larger than a face reflection. Compare the grey structure without lights and quiet far accents if it becomes a glowing wireframe. Restrict scratches to one small near-key patch aligned with its plane. Reflections explain hard material rather than fill blank space; clean broad surfaces help retain thin-metal thickness.

Trace one full ring to catch impossible crossings

Temporarily colour the ring in a copy and trace a full circuit, naming what hides it and where it emerges at each hole. Check whether a key shaft has accidentally been drawn through another head. Repair only the erroneous section rather than redrawing ring and both holes simultaneously. Inspect attachment normally, branching silhouettes small and thickness errors close up. Restore diagnostic colour afterward and retain comparison previews. This discourages using endless reflections to patch structure; finish only after the path is clear.

Change a key angle while preserving threading

Keep full-ring guides, unaccented structure and a PNG, with independently editable keys. Next, turn only the far key more edge-on, rebuilding its elliptical hole, exposed ring and head side plane while near key and light remain fixed. Narrowing the old key without changing occlusion misses altered visibility through the hole. Reopen the export to check attachment at use size, simplifying scratches first when too small. Record the two arcs that best explain connection and establish them before deciding highlight quantity next time.

Related tutorials and sources

Continuous paths, Hard-surface values.

Checked on November 4, 2026 against the official Aquarell listing and Apple’s version lookup: version 1.0.7, requiring iOS / iPadOS 15.0 or later. This manual drawing workflow uses public brush, colour, layer and saving capabilities. Dimensions, shapes and palettes are study suggestions; check controls in the installed version. Keep native projects for editing and PNGs for previews. No step-by-step physical-device testing is claimed.