If this isn’t your first time reading my blog then you’ve probably seen my Saturday posts about what comics I bought in any given week. Those and the videos that go along with it. For years I just wrote what comics I bought but then in 2014 I discovered YouTube comic book haul videos and decided to make my own. Those are videos where people show off each comic that they get that week. So now I have a written list that I can easily reference and a video where I get to talk and interact with other YouTubers. It’s fun stuff. I also show off some of my artwork after I show the comics.

That lead me to start a new channel this week. An “Art by Osborn” channel. On that one I plan to post some art “How To” videos, show off some my art, and maybe figure out some creative ways to present art in general. It’s all just beginning so I’m not sure how it’ll go.

In making the initial videos I’ve already been discovering how difficult it is to make “How To” videos. First off the technical aspects are tough. I had to buy a horizontal tripod extender to get things started. That’s basically a monopod that attaches horizontally onto a tripod so you can aim the camera straight down. I already had a monopod and tried to figure out a way to modify it for horizontal use but that prover to be futile. I ended up spending nearly a hundred dollars on a horizontal extender. I’m kinda broke but I needed the piece of equipment. It’s been on my wish list for a year now and I finally bought it. I must say it works well so far.

The first video I made for the channel was fairly easy to do. It wasn’t so far removed from my usual videos. It was an art supply tip showing how a person can refill a thin black marker. All I had to do was point the camera at my desk and show my hands holding my markers and refilling them as I said the instructions. Piece of cake. If I do more video like that one they’ll be the easy ones.

The really tough task is shooting myself as I draw. Even with the extender it’s a little cramped but without it it’s nearly impossible. Plus I have to make sure the paper is always in frame. Being that I move the paper around as I draw I was having a hard time with that. The first video I made I had only half the paper in frame for the first few minutes. I caught on after a while and began to learn to check the camera’s viewfinder often.

The first video I made with the extender was about ten minutes long. My ASMR drawing videos are about fifteen minutes long but they are easier to make because I’m not talking. With this how-to video I’m talking as I’m drawing and that turned out not to be so easy. Plus I think it was a little boring. I just don’t think I had enough interesting things to say.

In that first drawing video I took out a five by seven inch piece of paper and drew a head and face on it. I used two different pencils. A Generals Sketch pencil and a basic 4B pencil. I think I did okay with the drawing but the whole thing seemed a little uninspired. I don’t know what it was. When I looked back at the video it was okay but a little off. I decided to go at it again.

For the second drawing I decided to strip things down. I wanted to make a video all about just the very basic proportions of the face. In the first video I made an actual face but in this one I was just going to have basic markers of a face. I went smaller with the drawing too. I used one of my baseball card size pieces of paper and only my 4B pencil. This second time through was a lot smoother and snappier. It wasn’t anything new or revelatory. It was the most basic information on the general proportions if the face that you can find in any drawing book. But it’s where I wanted to start. And I kept it to a tight five minutes.

After making the videos I messed around a little with them in iMovie. Not too much. I added a photo of my artwork at the beginning to use as a title card and one at the end for the same purpose. I didn’t add any music though. I’m not sure if I ever will. I’ve seen a lot of videos with cheesy background music and those aren’t the type of videos I want to emulate. I stayed away from music and sound effects in my title cards too because that’s another thing that often annoys me. People put a little intro before their video but the sound isn’t leveled out. The intro is blaring and the video is quiet. I’m trying to avoid that.

I written a lot about my artwork over the last three years in this blog. From my beginnings in school to my various paintings, drawings, comics, photos, and other projects over the years. I’m now going to try and transfer some of that into the realm of video. I’m not sure how that’s going to work but I’ll give it a try. Video is still a fairly new medium for me. I’ve been shooting it for years now but that’s different than making a finished project out of it. It’s the difference between sketching and making a finished painting. It’s a long way to go from one to the other.