Christmas Candy

What better way to pace yourself with your piles of Christmas candy than to take most of it and set it up to draw for a few days? As hard as it was to not reach out and eat some, this was such a fun project to create.

I started out by setting it all up on my desk, staging it to make it appear as if the candy and the orange, a family tradition, were spilling out of my stocking - I stuffed the rest of the stocking with clothes to make it look filled since I didn't have that much candy. I played around with a few different compositions and viewpoints by taking pictures or creating thumbnail sketches. Here's what I basically decided on.

I did end up adding another tootsie roll for the composition's sake to lead the eye back into the drawing and to break up the negative space a bit.

I started with a sketch of the basic forms and then added the details, shadows, highlights, and the last tootsie roll.

Then I started shading, working left to right on the stocking and then continuing on with the candy, section by section.

Once I finished everything, I darkened some of the shadows and lightened some of the highlights to make it pop more. I also cleaned up some of the edges.

Christmas Candy