Sketches, drawings and CAD drawings are ok for working out a turned outline - but a) can take a fair bit of time and b) don't look 3-D - with shading (unless you have a CAD app that will do that and your computer renders the results quick enough. But if you have a digital camera or a scanner and a graphics program like Adobe PhotoShop (tm) which will let you stretch an image, you can do photo quality variations of a piece and converge on what you think looks right pretty quickly.
formatting link
Just a suggestion.
charlie b