Materials sketchbook, graphite, vine charcoal, compressed charcoal, 1824.ewsprint, and 1824$rawing paper

 Project

Draw a still life composition of 3-5 boxes, focusing on accurately portraying the positive and negative shapes

Guidelines

Select  several (3-5) boxes of varying size to work with. Use what you have  around the house. For example, a shoe box, a tissue box, and a cereal  box would give a variety of widths and heights and help establish an  interesting composition (as opposed to three boxes of similar size and  shape). 

Tone the the negative space, but you should use a surface line.

Think about the hierarchy: the positive shapes should be the focal point over the negative space environment. 

In  order to focus solely on the shapes of the boxes (positive shapes) and  the shapes created by the spaces in between the boxes (negative shapes),  itàimportant to get rid of visual distractions! The colors and the  lettering on the boxes can make drawing them accurately confusing. To  avoid these distractions: 

• Wrap the boxes in white paper or spray paint the boxes white.
• Itàalways best to stand at an easel when drawing.
• Use a viewfinder to frame your composition.
• Don look at things, look at shapes.

Use sighting to correctly establish the angles of planes.

• Practice first! Do a few practice drawings on 1824.ewsprint before working on the drawing paper.
• Final drawing is to be done on 1824$rawing paper.