I don’t actually know the boundaries of “still life.” I typically see still life drawings as a basket of fruit or a glass sitting on a table. A bowl of grapes. Inanimate objects that you would find in the typical home that are easy to stare at for hours because they don’t move or talk or fidget.

All of these drawings of shoes that I’ve done are sort of like that. I set up the shoes, I stared at them for a while or snapped a reference photo that I stared at. Then I went through a very long process of trying to capture the little details, the textures, the shadows and highlights. All of the little things that make it seem real, like you’re looking at an actual thing in real life.

With this one, I included an a flower. These flowers popped up in my yard during the early days of summer and when I drew up these boots, I thought it’d be interesting to have paint pour into a boot, feed up through the flower, and … well, you can see it for yourself.

I had to move out of the realm of “still life” because I definitely had to imagine the flower in the boot. The lighting needed to be made consistent. And obviously I don’t have paint falling from the ceiling in my house.

Anyway, I just thought I should tell you that I’m going to label this as a still life but I’m not sure that it really counts.