A-MAY-ing Sketches & Box Templates

It's been rather eventful this month for me:

• Strained my left knee while hauling two buckets full of beach pebbles for Civic's old pen, turning it into a garden planter. Probably after buying those strawberry plants and the extra soil.
• Went to the TCAF - Toronto Comic Arts Festival and bought 4 volumes of Octopus Pie.
• My brother Jason and my niece Caitlin visited for about 2 weeks; his rowdy, bouncing daughter wanting to always play with me over my parents. Helped her somewhat overcome her fear of pets.
• Went to another TOUSK Meetup at Berczy Park, sketched the new dog fountain on display.
• Got a bad stomachache last weekend, making me have to stay in bed about 2 days except for going out to buy antacids.
• Been catching up on emails, online surveys, book reading, course studies, exercises and miscellaneous after I've gotten better.

So yeah, busy.  I'll be getting even more busy now that I need to get back into my working rhythm. 

Now to show some of the work I've lucky got done over the month:

Vector Template of The Beer Store's Card Stock Carrier

Vector Template of Random Trapezoid Food Box

Works from the past 2 weeks

Bloomy Sea, 2017
Inked on a gouache illustration board, from my large mural project 

Feathery Skies, 2017
(Added to the post on June 19; forgot to post it up)

Royal Oak @ Queen St East & Willow, 2017

Photo reference of sketch site

Burger Box Replicate (from a McDonald's McChicken Box)

Package Templates

Of recent, whenever I go out around Toronto to do some shopping or other usual activities, I look out for any unique product packaging.  In some cases, it's usually soiled food containers; paper, card stock or cardboard materials that have grease, crumbs or condiment stains or dirt smudges or dog-eared wear.  I know it sounds like I'm picking up garbage from the streets, not that it isn't a good thing to do for the environment, people really do need to be more responsible with tossing out their wastes.

It's actually going back since I've been doing origami, the Japanese art of paper folding where I make little paper boxes and other containers.  Found cardboard were too big for the small things I had.  I've been collecting and saving any packages that looks interesting and looks simple enough to replicate at home.  I don't normally keep the soiled packages but instead remake its template design onto my sheets of card stock.  

Here's a recent package I found and a bit of my process of replicating it:

An interesting food package unfolded.  Measurement were marked down in Imperial Inches with a black Sharpie marker.

The package is from a restaurant called Dirty Bird.  I didn't buy the packaging with the fried chicken, just found it in a trash bin (should've been thrown into the recycling being cardboard)

The whole layout was larger than a letter-size card stock sheet so I rebuild the box template in Adobe Illustrator.  I did the original measurements in one layer, then copied and downsized the template to fit within the letter-sized format (11"W x 8.5"H). 

After printing out the template onto card stock, I cut away the excess with a metal ruler and utility knife. I folded the lined guides and glued its flap to fully assembled the mini-box here.

This version is about half the original size of the greased cardboard packaging.

Here's a small fries paper dish template.  One all assembled and an unused cut template. 

Here's a template of a McDonald's fries cup (or was it Wendy's?).  One assembled, one unused but slightly creased.  To help make neater folds, I made some paper scores for straight lines and dotted cut lines for the curves.

Here's my version of a 500mL milk carton drink, figured that it could be use for promotional work. I made it to be reusable once opened up.

I suppose when I get in the right mood, I could design my own package templates.  Well, that's it for now.