Living and Dying in a Bathtub
Client: School Project
Like Pulling Teeth is the title of a non-existent punk band I am basing my senior show on their first non-existent LP “ Living and Dying in a Bathtub”. The show will feature album art, covers for both singles and the full LP, posters, a music video, and an interview video all altered using Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premier, and Adobe Indesign. Merchandise including bandanas, shirts, patches, and tote bags were designed digitally through Adobe Photoshop and screen printed. The show was featured at my university from November 17th, 2023 to December 1st, 2023. This project took over a semester to create and display and was the last required project for my program.
Digital Works
Gallery Photos
Photos taken from Clara Eagle Gallery in Murray, Kentucky
Album Design Analysis
The idea of Living and Dying in a Bathtub originated from the concept of over-indulging in the things that bring us comfort. Even if the things that bring us joy are not necessarily harmful, it can still become addictive. With creating album art following this concept, I needed to make sure that the idea of being in a bathtub for all eternity was as unpleasant looking as it sounds. My first round of sketching had intended for the album art to be strictly an illustration with some typographical design for the band logo and album title. In the first draft, I had other elements alluring to addiction and hyper fixations surrounding the subject such as beer bottles and a Rubix cube. This was later changed due to the crowding of the image- resulting in an effort to produce a more minimalistic cover. After doing research on modern album research and possible references to older artworks, I had found photography as a stronger medium to execute this project.
After looking into older works of art, predominantly Romanic, Renaissance, and Baroque paintings- I looked into a Pre-Raphaelte painting titled Ophelia by John Everett Millais. The painting depicts the character Ophelia from the Shakespearean play Hamlet during the scene where she succumbs to death by drowning after overwhelming feelings of grief. The idea of letting yourself fall into a morbid acceptance of things you cannot change was fitting for the album but did not beat the viewer over the head with my concept. The next step was to find stylistic elements I could use to refer to this work and through digital media.
Apart from antique paintings and early ’90s to modern nu-pink album covers, I had looked into Xerox prints ( a technique that uses a photocopier to create unique pieces of art. The artist takes a photograph or drawing, then copies it onto another sheet of paper. This process can be repeated many times over to create an intricate pattern of overlapping images) and Riso prints ( vivid colors, a limited palette, and charming imperfections. Typically, it requires a special printer that layers one translucent color at a time). At the time of making this print, I need not have access to a Xerox copier but knew of ways I could alter my images in Photoshop that gives a cleaner yet still grungy aesthetic.
One evening, I had set up a time with a friend to photograph them laying in a bathtub in the same position as Ophelia wearing modern clothes and in a bathtub as needed. These were some of the best photos coming from the shoot where the angles, facial expressions, and lighting were the strongest. After some photo editing in Adobe Bridge to increase the contrast and rotated the image, I began my process of distorting the image in a Xerox print-mimicking way in Adobe Photoshop. This was done by creating a halftone around the subject and the water of the tub, layering that image over the other, using the blur and smudge tool over the face, and wrapping the bottom of the photos to create a dripping effect. After laying an image of a paper back over the photograph and increasing the opacity, as well as adjusting to color balance to a dark red, all that was left was to add the band logo. I wanted to avoid using any other imagery, especially pertaining to teeth- again, do not want to beat you over the head with the concept. I found a san-serif typeface that had sharper corners that I then distorted in Adobe Illustrator to give a similar effect to turning and pulling a printed image onto a copier. The following are the products from this experiment.
Reflection on the Piece: The overall work was successful because of the amount of play I did to create bold imagery and text alteration. Although the image and typography are cleaner than what would be used in traditional Riso and Xerox printing, the effects and execution still aligned with practices used to distort and warp subjects. The goal of this album cover is to display the emotion of losing all hope and allowing the bad to overcome you- through my use of halftones, decreased brightness, darker colors, and grainy textures, an uneasy and dilapidated look. There are more variations to come from this image and companion pieces to be produced from this work, but over all, this is a very strong introduction for Like Pulling Teeth.