Bathin’ in Bubbles — Oil paint on panel in hand-built shower curtain frame
Accelerated Drawing and Painting 2 – LHS – Mac

This is piece one of my sustained investigation where I am investigating what helps me recover from burnout. For piece one, I really wanted to get my bearings and start simple, so I settled on depicting a bath since that is a popular method of self care. However, I wanted to make the piece more personal and look into what baths look like in my life. That’s when I decided on a bubble bath since I personally really love taking bubble baths. For the palette, I wanted to stay limited to avoid becoming overwhelmed, so I stuck with just red, blue, yellow, and white. Any additional colors I needed were made using the primary colors. I also wanted to stick with a very obvious distinction between warm and cool tones so I could have a strong control over the mood of the overall scene.

Once the piece was finished, I felt like it was still missing something to make it really stand out, so I decided, “why not build a frame?” It was quite the learning process since this was my first time building my own frame, but in the end it turned out wonderfully and it helped give the piece extra punch.

I still wasn’t quite satisfied, so I chose to further showcase the shower and bathroom theme on the actual frame by adding a real shower curtain that people can open and close just like curtains on a real shower or bathtub. Once everything was said and done, I felt extremely proud of this piece because it not only helped me feel confident in my work and idea, but it also gave me a chance to learn something new.