Finer things of life

Our basic drawing class homework last week was to draw a scene from home, a corner of your desk, or part of a kitchen counter. I looked around and decided every surface of my home was too cluttered to make any sort of drawing, so I composed this still life with flute. It's hard to compose a still life with cello.

It is an unfinished rough sketch which still needs lots of work, so I am not including it here as evidence of my drawing talent or lack thereof. What was interesting was my teacher's reaction. I figured she might comment on the lovely range of values (darks and lights), which was the point of the exercise, or the nice angle of the flute. What she said, when she showed the drawing to the class, was that it was a nice expression of the finer things in life: wine, flowers, and, she said, looking at me, musical talent. I beamed, not about my own talent, such as it is, but about the concept of musical talent being one of the finer things of life (the playing music, not just the listening to it, certainly another fine thing).

(She left out the apples, which, possibly, she didn't recognize them as apples; or perhaps she, too, had too many apples one year.)

I was interested in trying to make the flute shiny, which I didn't quite achieve here. It would be hard to play a flute this lumpy. Perhaps it would have helped if I hadn't left my homework until the last minute.

I don't actually drink wine when I practice, but what's a still life without a bottle of wine?