I can’t believe it’s been 3 years! This started as an experiment of “what can I do, with what I have?”. I am thrilled to see how the community has grown since this all started. Typically I do a larger painting on the anniversary livestreams, and this will be no different. Plus, one lucky viewer will win the painting of the evening!
The livestream has given me a chance to share my art with the world. These are quick paintings, and sometimes they’re not the best. But sometimes they’re pretty darn cool! I’ve turned some of the livestream paintings into more finished pieces, and others have inspired work in different directions. My primary goal was to force myself to do a painting a week, regardless of the outcome. This is a great exercise for any artist, and I have managed to use these paintings to try out new things – new materials, layouts, techniques, etc. In the end, the real underlying mission is to just have fun – and have fun with everyone who arrives to watch me fling paint on the canvas.
I am grateful to everyone who has supported me and the livestream since I started, and I look forward to continuing well past this 3 year mark. Thank you, and I hope to see you all there!
It snuck up on me – the one year anniversary of my Space Art Livestream on Twitch. Started as merely a test last March 10, 2020, right at the start of the COVID pandemic, I looked around and noticed that I had everything I needed to paint space art live on Twitch.
I grabbed my webcam for the stream and hooked up my iPhone so I could have a 2-camera setup. Even though my aging workstation PC is probably nearing the end of its useful life, it has more than enough horsepower to run everything through OBS. And my studio space had plenty of lights. There was no good reason to NOT try a livestream.
Typical post-stream scene at my table
While working on projects I watched a number of livestreamers on Twitch, usually playing World of Warships or PUBG. To me it’s a great background, I don’t have to pay attention too hard to it and the streamers often have music. It’s a good diversion too when I need a moment to clear my mind. Some streamers handled their content better than others, and I had a lot of good examples to draw on as I put together my own stream.
Painting while running a livestream was a difficult experience at first. There’s a lot to keep in mind at the same time – managing the stream technical details, the chat (when I started to actually have people interacting), and of course conducting a painting from start to finish. The first streams were exhausting. Some gamers can go eight hours at a time, but for me I max out at about 3 to 4 hours. With practice it’s gotten better, but I still find I need a long cool-down afterwards.
My other inspiration was the brilliant and legendary Bob Ross. Instead of “happy little trees”, I’m painting “happy little spaceships and galaxies”. Bob Ross would rehearse his paintings ahead of time, and managed to complete them in about 20 minutes to fit in the PBS episodes. He had developed a wet-on-wet technique in oils that suits his landscapes and I wanted to follow his example.
In my case I wasn’t constrained by PBS or the time frame, so to me I felt I needed to be more concerned with the average attention span of people watching a livestream. With few exceptions I’ve managed to finish a whole painting in each session. To do this I’ve relied mainly on acrylic and casein paints, which help for a faster painting time. Both are water-based, and both allow me to go beyond a wet-on-wet landscape style and explore more of an illustration process, similar to some of my favorite artists like John Berkey.
To be 100% honest I do not consider these paintings to be GREAT, or even high art, but I do try to make them beautiful to look at and when I can, inspiring. These are scenes from my own mind, and extension of the kinds of drawings that would fill all corners of my notebooks over the years. Except they’re not drawn with a pen or pencil, I’ve gone full color and have a completed image at the end of the day.
So far I am thrilled at the response I have received from these live streams. The community is growing and each week I see new people joining in. To everyone who has followed along and helped support the stream I thank you. I couldn’t have done this without you and I look forward to expanding the stream in the next year.
I will leave you now with a fun mosaic of all the paintings from last year’s livestream, and some stats. Cheers!
Mosaic – Livestream Paintings from March 2020-2021
47 paintings in total
3 sessions didn’t have a final painting, or they weren’t anything I’d like to share
I missed ONE week, but had several weeks where I streamed multiple days
I bought a nice Logitech webcam last summer with the intention of live-streaming space art, Bob Ross style. We were on a post-bakery closing trajectory and I wanted to add some fun elements to my full-time art schedule. Our farmer’s markets continued to keep us busy so I didn’t get around to setting up my live-stream until last month – just in time for everybody to be stuck at home avoiding the spread of COVID19.
My first stream was on a Tuesday evening, two weeks prior to this writing, and I’ve since had two more. Was I nervous? Yes, I was very nervous, which surprised me because I don’t typically have an issue talking in front of strangers. I’ve had plenty of experience in the software world, and later in the three years that we had our bakery nearby. For some reason, once you know there’s a camera pointed at your face and the entire world has access to you, it becames a bit nerve-wracking. Added to the stress, a second camera pointed straight at a blank canvas awaiting either a masterpiece or a dreadful failure.
I am happy to report that everyone has been wonderful and it’s great to see so many familiar faces. Thank you to all who have joined so far, and I look forward to many more streams.
Typical View Live on Twitch – This is from my second stream
The Setup
I spent a good weekend setting up the cameras, the lights, my drawing table and OBS software to handle the stream. There’s no way to get everything 100% right on your first attempt, but I didn’t want to spend my entire first stream wrestling with lights, cameras, and switching scenes.
Art Table Under Lights – Purple Tape Marks my Video Boundaries
With my one webcam I was able to do a simple setup showing me, and my computer desktop for the times that I show digital art (drawing in Photoshop, Clip Studio etc.). But I wanted a second camera focused on my drawing surface for traditional painting. For now I’m using my iPhone6 connected to OBS and it’s worked out very well. I now have a two camera setup. It’s not so much that I wanted a camera on me to feed my ego. I’ve watched a lot of streams before I started this and art streams that show both the art and the artist to be a bit more interesting to watch. Even if it is just my goofy face wearing headphones.
Finished with my First Stream – Final painting with sketches and camera mount
My studio’s overhead lights are fantastic for painting. They’re powerful floodlights with daylight LED bulbs. But they cast terrible shadows on my art table when all the cameras were set up, so I ended up using tasklamps. I’ve made a few adjustments for each stream but for the most part this setup has worked well.
Making it a Fun Stream
I could have just fired off the camera as I bumble my way through a long painting, and add my own commentary along the way. And to be honest that’s when I’m doing anyway, but sometimes the business of making a painting can be filled with U-turns and experiments which aren’t always the most exciting.
For each session I’ve taken the time to do some practice sketches, and even practice paintings. This helps me isolate the colors and techniques I want to use live. My sketches and sketch paintings are always smaller than the finals that I paint live, and there’s more fun details that I add live during the stream that never showed up in my initial sketches.
Paint Sketches
It surprised me how distracting it can be to run a live-stream and paint at the same time. There’s a lot of multi-tasking going on, and after three streams (as of this writing) I have a newfound respect for everyone who runs a livestream, whether it’s art, or games, or anything else. There’s just a lot to manage. This isn’t a complaint really, and I’m sure it’s going to get easier with practice. But to those who’ve been doing this successfully for a while – kudos to you!
The Streams So Far
Each stream is inspired by an artist or technique that I’ve been fond of over the years and I feel this is a good place to start. For my first, I wanted to capture the look and feel of one of my favorite artists John Berkey, who painted beautiful, colorful science fiction scenes in casein and acrylic.
First Stream Painting – Berkey Style
Casein is a wonderful paint medium – it’s water soluble and it dries fast meaning you can work fast on camera. So I continued using casein for my second painting, which also had a bit of the John Berkey feel but I wanted this one to be more of a moody space scene inspired by artist John Harris.
Stream Two – John Harris Style
My latest stream (again, as of this writing) was a throwback to the 1950’s era of science fiction – chrome moon rockets lit by a solar eclipse from the Earth. To this day no spacecraft has yet capture a view of a solar eclipse from the moon (eclipsed by the Earth) so to a certain degree this remains a science fiction subject. For this painting I went with acrylic paint and I started with a black canvas.
Retro Science Fiction Moon Rocket – Stream 3
Things I’ve learned So Far
For starters, I would really like to upgrade my microphone setup. I have an excellent pair of Razer Headphones with a microphone and it does pretty well overall. But I’m starting to shop for a dedicated microphone and that Shure SM7B is looking very attractive (and expensive). I’m putting that one on the “buy later when I’m a wealthy artist” list.
The lights are just okay so far. They look decent on the stream, but I’m looking at a couple of solutions which will give me better control and avoid shadows and hotspots.
I’ve originally scheduled four hour livestream sessions, but the paintings are somewhat small and it’s going a lot faster than I’d anticipated. In my latest stream I added a section of just drawing, which seems to have helped with the time. Down the road I may make the paintings a bit more complicated so that they take longer, we’ll see. But the last thing I want to have people see is a lot of fiddling about and navel gazing without much art taking place.
Drop In For Live Space Art!
I’ll keep my schedule posted on my Twitch.TV page, which you can find by clicking on the image below or by visiting BlackBirdCD’s Twitch.TV channel.
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If you would like to own one of these paintings, I have added the originals to the shop! Of course this goes a long way to help support me and my family, so thank you for visiting and I’ll see you on the next stream!
