Takeout Box Drawing

My goals and intentions of this drawing was to draw the takeout box and capture the shadows of it.  I accomplished this by using a wide scale of shades of the charcoal.  I used dark, light, and all the shades in between to create the drawing.  The thing that surprised me the most was how 3-D the box looks.  I think it really looks like the flaps of the box are behind the other flaps.  My drawing is about shadows.  Shadows are an important part of my drawing because they are what causes the depth of the drawing.

The most difficult challenges I had to face were getting the angles right for the sides and flaps of the box and getting the chopsticks to have straight sides.  I met the first challenge by using the method where you hold up the charcoal to the side you have to draw and bring it to your paper to get the right angle.  This was a challenge because I kept moving the charcoal by accident.  I met the second challenge by doing the best I could do to get the sides of the sticks straight.  I experienced the shift to the right side of the brain when I couldn’t hear the music I was playing.  I got so focused on drawing, that I couldn’t hear anything else.

I think my drawing really works on the side of the box where the metal wire is.  I think that this side actually looks like the box has different layers folded.  I think it really works where the wire is going into the side of the box because it looks very realistic.  Something that I learned that I can take into my next drawing is how to sight the picture and put it onto the paper.  At first, I tried to draw a vertical picture on a horizontal piece of paper.  I finally realized this was not going to work, so I cropped the picture to get my view right and drew the box by looking at it and getting a good idea of where I was going to put things.  I learned how to make the chopsticks have better shading from Laura.  I really like how she shaded her chopsticks.  If I had a do-over, I would draw how I had the picture originally taken.  I think that I would have liked it a lot better if the whole picture was in my drawing, rather than just most of it.  I think that the best thing about my work is how the one chopstick disappears behind the flap of the box.  I think that this creates a cool 3-D effect.