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.

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!

• 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
• 50% paintings were done in acrylic
• 40% paintings in casein
• 10% in oils
• Made a ton of friends

If you’d like to join me, follow the link above to my Twitch channel. Typically I stream every Wednesday evening from 6pm PST until 9pm PST.