# Still life: inquiry

## The prompt (Russell, kept intact)
"A moody chiaroscuro charcoal drawing of a ceramic teacup and apples on paper, dramatic side-lighting casting shadows, raw charcoal marks, rendered in a loose, melancholic academic style."

## Subject and treatment (what the prompt fixes)
Subject: a ceramic teacup and apples. Treatment: charcoal on paper, chiaroscuro, dramatic side light with cast shadows, raw marks, loose, academic, melancholic.

## What we are trying to discover (what the prompt does not fix)
What could make these ordinary objects worth attending to together?
Working hypotheses, each to be tested in drawings, none assumed:
- a made, hollow thing (the cup holds a dark) beside grown, solid things (the apples are full);
- the objects are related only by what the light does between them (a shadow, a shared dark);
- one object conceals, interrupts or depends on another;
- "melancholy" comes from separation or near-absence (the obvious hypothesis: test it, do not assume it).

## The default (s0_default/DEFAULT_MAP.md)
What the prompt produces when nobody inquires: twelve Midjourney images.

## Method (Russell, 2026-10-08)
Thumbnail workshop, criticism between sets, uninterrupted drawing within a set; each thumbnail carries a question and gets a decision.
Set 1: six native drawings, distinct organizations, not variations of one layout. Critique: repeated habits, promising relationships, ideas that only work because the caption explains them.
Set 2: six: develop two or three possibilities, including a counterexample to the favourite.
Set 3 if useful. Then a passage of work on one consequential question with the fitting tool (native drawing, generator, source research, or looking).
The critic may recommend abandoning a direction or returning to an earlier branch. Hold must be argued (see HOLD.md template when it comes).

## Tools for native thumbnails
hand/scene.py (authored geometry: table, wall, apples, cups, one directional light, cast shadows) -> value study -> Hands (Kollwitz charcoal) at 660 px. The scene is a structure source, not a generator; Hands decides marks and which values to leave as paper.