Still Life

What happens when you really look at one ordinary thing?

A growing collection of illustrations made not with a brush but in code — every line an SVG path placed by hand, the hatching and grain drawn with math instead of ink. It started as one question: faced with an image, would a model reach for a photograph, or could it learn to draw — with the restraint of an illustrator who leaves things out on purpose? These are the answers so far. The wobble in the lines and the grain in the paper are real, not filters — it all renders live in your browser. Tap any plate to look closer.

An illustrated still life: a ceramic vase holding a leafy sprig, a bowl of fruit, a cup, and a small stack of books on a table by a sunlit window — Plate I The Afternoon Table Tap to look closer A vase, a sprig still finding the light, fruit beginning to go soft, books left mid-thought. Nobody arranged it. The light did.

An illustrated still life of handmade ceramics on a sunlit shelf: a tall terracotta bottle holding a leafy sprig, a round sage-glazed pot, a small golden cup, and a shallow cream bowl, each casting a soft shadow — Plate II Vessels Tap to look closer The most-used things in a house are the ones we stop seeing — the cup, the bowl, the pot on the shelf. Set them in a row and really look: each one a little off-round, leaning its own way, every curve the record of a hand that pressed harder on one side.

An illustrated botanical study: a single curving sprig with ovate leaves and a small cluster of berries, drawn as a specimen plate, with one leaf magnified in a detail circle and a mounting scale at the base — Plate III Specimen Tap to look closer A single sprig, snipped and pinned flat the way naturalists do — so you have no choice but to look at it leaf by leaf, down to the veins. The oldest form of attention: draw a thing until you understand it.

An illustrated citrus study: a halved orange shown face-on with its segments fanned out like stained glass, a whole orange with two leaves resting behind it, and a thin slice lying in front, all on a pale sunlit surface — Plate IV Citrus Tap to look closer Cut one open and the whole architecture is already there — segments packed tight as stained glass, a small sun you can hold in one hand. You could eat a dozen without once stopping to look at what's inside.

An illustrated tea scene: a terracotta teapot tipped mid-pour, a ribbon of tea arcing from its spout into a cream cup on a saucer, steam curling up, with a small sprig of mint and a spoon on the table — Plate V Tea Tap to look closer Tip the pot and the day pauses for as long as it takes to pour. Steam, a sprig of mint, the small ceremony of waiting for it to be cool enough to drink — tea is mostly an excuse to stop for a minute, and a good one.

An illustrated jar of just-picked summer wildflowers: poppies, white daisies, dusty-blue cornflowers, yellow buttercups, buds and grasses gathered in a glass jar, their stems showing through the water, with a fallen petal and leaf on the table — Plate VI Wildflowers Tap to look closer Someone walked a field and came back with a fistful of colour — poppies that will drop their petals by tomorrow, daisies, a few cornflowers gone the blue of early evening. Cut flowers are a small bet against time: here, for a few days, is everything the summer was trying to say.

An illustrated candle scene at night: a single lit ivory candle in a brass chamberstick holder with a ring handle, its flame glowing warm against a deep umber dark, a little melted wax on the side and a pool of light on the table — Plate VII Candlelight Tap to look closer One small flame and the whole dark room rearranges itself around it. Enough light to read a page or a face, and not much more — which turns out to be most of what a room is for. We had this long before we had anything else, and on the right night it is still plenty.

Also from the Lab

Scenes

Not still lifes but places and moments — a landscape, a room, a creature, the light at a certain hour — looked at with the same attention.

An illustrated landscape at golden hour: a low sun over layered rolling hills, a lone tree, a winding path, and a few birds — Plate I Golden Hour Tap to look closer A field at the end of a day. One tree holding its ground, a path that goes somewhere out of frame, birds deciding it's time to head home.

An illustrated low-tide study: a large scalloped fan shell, a starfish, a coiled spiral shell, a small cockle, and a few pebbles resting on rippled wet sand, with a sweep of pale seawater and foam receding in the upper-left corner — Plate II Low Tide Tap to look closer Whatever the water drops and forgets on its way out — a fan, a star, a spiral wound tight as a fingerprint. Pocket-sized architecture, built by something with no eyes and no plan, and lovelier than most of what we draw up on purpose.

An illustrated woodland study after rain: a cluster of mushrooms on a mossy bank — two red toadstools with white spots, several small brown caps, a fern frond arching over, moss and grass, dewdrops, and a tiny snail — Plate III After the Rain Tap to look closer They weren't there yesterday. A night of rain and the forest floor sends up its little umbrellas — red ones with white freckles, brown ones in twos and threes, a snail already out doing its rounds. Look down more often. The small world keeps no schedule but its own.

An illustrated scene: a ginger tabby cat curled nose-to-tail, asleep in a slanted patch of warm afternoon sunlight on a wooden floor, with the cross of a window laid across the light and a few dust motes drifting — Plate IV Sunbeam Tap to look closer It found the one warm rectangle the afternoon left on the floor and folded itself into it — nose to tail, the whole of it gone soft. A cat knows something about sunlight we keep forgetting: that it is enough, all by itself, to make a spot worth staying in.

An illustrated reading corner at dusk: an armchair with a cushion and pillow, a glowing floor lamp, a tall potted plant, a side table with a cup and books, a framed picture, and a window with evening light — Plate V The Reading Corner Tap to look closer One lamp, one chair, one plant leaning toward the window. A small room built for staying still — with a tiny landscape on the wall, in case you forget there's an outside.

An illustrated rainy window seen from inside: a four-pane window with rain streaking down the glass, a muted foggy view of hills and a tree beyond, and a small potted plant and a steaming mug on the warm sill — Plate VI Rain Tap to look closer From the dry side of the glass, the whole grey day goes soft and far away. A plant, something hot to hold, the one sound a drawing can't make — and no reason at all to go out in it.

An illustrated night scene: a full moon rising over still water, its light shimmering across the surface, with layered hills, a scattering of stars, and a small rowboat with a lone figure — Plate VII Moonrise Tap to look closer Someone rowed out past the last of the noise and let the oars rest. The moon unrolled a path across the water — the kind you could almost follow home.

None of these are photographs, and none of them try to be. They're drawings — built the slow way, one path at a time, choosing what to leave out. That choosing is the whole experiment: not whether a machine can make an image, but whether it can make a mark.

Two collections from the Lab · more plates to come