Still Life, No. 5.
Let's group them,—push them together. Place the bottle near the coffee-pot. Because they are about the same height, one cannot dominate the other in height; then make them pull together as a mass.
Still Life, No. 6.
Place the cup about as before, and the mass pretty well towards the centre of the plaque. Put the pitcher where it will balance, and the glass where it will count unobtrusively, and help break the line of the bottoms of the objects. The drapery now helps in line also, and gives more unity, as well as mass and weight and color, to the whole. This group is about as well placed as these objects will come. There is balance, mass, proportion, dignity, unity.
Of course you may make a paintable and interesting composition with only two things. But you must give them some relation both as to fact and as to position. The same elements of unity and balance and line come in, no matter how many or how few are the objects which enter as elements in your group.
In this way study composition with still life. Move things about and see how they look; use your eye and judgment. Get to see things together, and apply the principles spoken of in the chapter on "Composition" to all sorts of things in nature.