“Fighting a Fever” - Oil Painting of a Sleeping Child

“Fighting a Fever” (oil on paper, 30 × 40 cm)

This painting is my fourth in a series about conflicting emotions, darkness and light. The subject is familiar to all parents: the sight of a sleeping child sick with a fever. To me, caring for a sick child has always caused a mix of emotions: love and worry, feeling helpful and helpless at once. It's a sweet and stressful experience, heightened if you're also sick yourself.

As a reference, I used a photo of my daughter when she was six years old and suddenly came down with a fever during a weekend trip. Since the weather was beautiful, we had fun outdoor activities in mind for the weekend but ended up holed up in the cabin instead.

Yet somehow, the trip was still fun. We all remember it fondly despite the fever, or maybe because of it.

I started the painting as a loose sketch in acrylic. Initially, I planned to paint my daughter in oil with a lot of detail while leaving the bedding untouched as a sketch. When I finished the sketch, my classmates and teacher told me that I could leave it all untouched. It looked finished, already capturing the scene.

To me, however, it didn't capture enough emotion, so I continued the painting. In the process, I abandoned the idea of keeping part of the sketch since the bedding needed more color, and I liked the vibrancy of the oil paint. I forgot to take a picture of the painting half-finished for comparison, but you can see the difference in the finished painting as well.

Interestingly, the painting can look like a daytime or nighttime scene depending on the lighting and ambient color of the room it's in. Noticing this difference has made me curious about creating paintings specifically for rooms with high or low lighting, as well as different ambient colors. Something to mull on for future work, but for now, here's the painting with lower lighting to compare with the ones above.