"Got the Blues" (8x10 acrylic on paper) painting process

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!