Hi Nadia,
Still life photography can be great fun. You don’t need anything other than a camera, a couple of small props and some imagination. Some good light is also a help. For these simple reasons, I think most photographers should do more still life photography.
To understand why I promote table-top photography it is worth remembering that unlike some other forms of photography (say landscape or portraiture) you have considerably more control over the subject, and also more control over the light.
In this instance I like what you have set out to do… the little paper boat on a sea of coloured pencils is rather clever. With any good idea though, the devil is in the detail.
Overall there are three things I would like to change with this image.
To begin with, I feel that the black background is too heavy for this image. Given the choice, I would have liked to have seen the background a dark blue. For the moment that black almost makes the lighting on the boat and pencils too obvious.
The second thing I would be doing is to not have the boat sitting on top of the pencils, but actually floating above the pencils. The easiest way to do this is to get a straight piece of wire (about half a metre length is good), attach it to the boat and then attach the wire to the background. You want the wire to be in such a position that is both behind the boat and pointing in the opposite direction from the camera so that we do not see it. (Years ago I photographed a still life of an ice-cream cone, and the cone was held off a blue background with a rod to create the effect of the ice-cream floating against the sky).
Now, if you have got this far, you will have the boat floating a few millimetres above the pencils as if it were invisibly suspended there. Now, the last detail I would apply would be to try and have ALL the pencils sharpened to a point. If you do this then suddenly the image will look a lot better.
The next stage of the process is to work on your lighting. I'd say you used two light sources in this picture – one lighting the pencils from a close position, the other lighting from above and behind the boat. I would start experimenting to get the light a little softer and more even.
Overall this is a good effort, but I challenge you to keep exploring and take the idea and your technique a step further.
Cheers for now, Anthony.