Bubble Wrap "tele-painting"

I do not mean to burst your bubble... Oh wait, yes I do.

Have you ever seen Bradley Hart paintings? In a nutshell (or rather in a bubble wrap bubble), Bradley pours paint in every bubble of a bubble wrap sheet which, taking a step back reveals a picture made up of hundreds (or thousands) of those colored bubbles. This following Instructable takes inspiration of the process Bradley uses but with a slight twist.

When the bubble is filled to the brim, only the paint still exposed to air will cure, the rest of the paint, encapsulated in the bubble will never cure. This means that, should we fill an entire array of bubbles with acrylic paint, (I choose red but you can pick any and all colors), we can pop the bubble and let that bubble's paint finally cure.

Now, That is not terribly exciting, we can still see the color of the paint through the transparent bubble, poping the bubble does not "reveal" anything. What I propose we do is to fill the bubbles, embed the bubble wrap sheet in a soft yet opaque medium (plaster of Paris for example) that will display only if the bubble is popped.

What do I mean by "Tele-painting" ? Simply that the bubble can be popped from afar using anything strong enough force that it will indeed pop the bubble, I have used an airgun, but many options are available:

BB gun

Bow (&crossbow) & arrow

Tennis ball

Darts

Anything heavy really ...

Material:

• bubble warp with no bubble popped (or as little as possible)
• Acrylic paint (any color you want)
• A syringe with a pointy tip (mine did not come with a pointy tip, I sharpened the tip with a file)
• A piece of wood : at the very least as thick as you bubble wrap + 10mm
• Something to pop your bubbles (I have used lead pellet and an airgun)
• Spatula (to flatten the plaster)

Tools:

• router (to route the plaster mold in the board)

First cut a manageable size of bubble wrap (the process of filling each bubble individually is very long, choose the size of your art piece accordingly), the bubble wrap should fit inside a pocket we will route out of the wood board, keep also that in mind while choosing the size of you bubble wrap.

In order to not have any air inside your syringe, draw the plunger of your syringe slowly (you can remove the sharp tip of your syringe to make it faster). If you draw the paint too fast, you will suck air in which makes it more difficult to fill the bubble later on. The air being compressible, when you stop pushing on the plunger, there will still be paint coming out of your syringe which makes everything messier.

For the next steps, we will work only on the flat side of the bubble wrap, this makes the entire so much easier (see figure).

First, for each bubble puncture a vent (i.e. pierce the bubble with your syringe without injecting any paint), this vent will make possible the injection of the paint through a second hole.

Finally, inject the paint in the second hole for each and every bubble and over-fill the bubbles to create a sort of cap of paint that will dry and seal off the rest of the bubble

Let the bubble dry overnight.

You do not have to route out a pocket for the bubble wrap but it makes the final piece more slick.

Route a pocket to the size of your bubble wrap at a depth of the thickness of your bubble wrap (with the bubble filled)+3-4mm

I have painted the frame at this point but it turned out to be a bad idea as the paint was dirtied in the next steps. It is not necessary to paint the inside of the pocket as it will be covered by the bubble wrap

Place the dried bubble wrap (again, the interior of the bubble are not cured) inside the pocket in the wood, filll with plaster of Paris, use the spatula to smooth the surface (I did not managed to get a perfectly smooth plaster, do better).

I did not route my pocket deep enough and I had to rise the mold (with cardboard), you can see that my plaster is not flushed with the frame but I ended up liking this look even more. (my plaster protrudes 3-4mm, most of the bubble are inside the pocket, only a top layer of plaster extends out of the pocket)

You get to fun the part, poping the bubbles, you can choose whatever mean necessary to pop the bubbles you want, you can even try to paint something not as abstract as what I did (I have really bad aim...)

There one thing I really like about this project, the paint, the color does not come from the projectile but rather from the painting itself ! This is the opposite of painting with paint BBs and allows us to use anything to paint (even rock etc). Furthermore, The paint still encapsulated in the bubbles will "never" dry which means you can pop new bubbles whenever you want

1. Place a metal plate between the bubbles and the wood, this forces the paint out (I had a few lead pellet stay in the wood preventing the release of the paint)
2. Use multiple paint colors in the bubbles
3. Make a proper mold for the plaster to make it easier to get a smooth surface finish
4. Use a bigger projectile (maybe small rocks) to get multiple bubble bursting at once