Still life paintings are one of my favorite things to do, but they can easily become stiff or boring. For my first still life of the year, I wanted to do something a little different; I wanted to see if I could put together a composition that told a story.
I begin every painting with a detailed pencil drawing:
Usually my next step is to get the base color down on everything in the composition, but this time I decided to focus on one thing at a time, the first being the teapot:
Then I started in on the background, shadows, and broken glass bits:
Next, the bird:
And here is the final result:
I'm looking forward to making more work like this!