And the story unravels…

Making a composition with still life can be tricky. One cannot just place some random objects and hope to create an eye-catching composition. If we have a look at all the still life made by all the masters of art history, they always had something unique about it.

This uniqueness could be any of these:
 Variety in size of the objects. For example, objects ranging from a marble stone to a huge bottle.
 Some kind of movement. For example, things about to fall or misbalanced.
 Continuity. Audience could imagine the still life beyond the edges of the paper.
 A unique angle. For example, still life viewed from the top rather than the front view.
 Setting the still life in a way that it tells a story.

Let’s start story-telling:

There can be thousands of other ways in which a still life can be made interesting. I personally tried telling a story through one of my sketches. I happened to find one very old kettle and cup set in my house one day.

My challenge was to arrange the objects in a way that I can tell a story. I decided that rather than letting each cup stand erect, I will arrange them in random fashion. So I made all the cups approach the kettle in different manner. Kettle was the object of desire or goal for the cups. This can be related to the way different people approach the same goal. Some fall on their way, some keep walking, and some stop in the middle of the journey. Who finally gets to accomplish the goal still remains a mystery.

So, relating a story with a still life makes it so much more interesting. One can symbolize thousands of incidents, stories and perceptions just by playing with mundane objects. Give it a try. It adds to the fun!

P.S.: I wanted to show the still life sketch I am talking about but sadly I misplaced it. If I find it in future, I will surely update the blog with the image of that sketch.