I’ve been thinking about video again. I say again because I’m often thinking about video. How can I not be? A ton of our social media is video these days. The time of six second looping Vine videos has moved on to ten minute TikTok videos. Not to mention three hour YouTube videos.
My main thoughts on video are about how to present my artwork on camera. I see a lot of artists out there presenting their artwork to the world on social media. Some of them are really popular but most aren’t. That’s the way of the world. It’s tough figuring out what way will be best for me. There is no one recipe to follow to bake the best bread.
The one I see the most these days is the turn around. That’s when an artist has a painting or drawing in their hands but it’s facing away from the camera. They slowly turn it around to face the viewer and it’s like a dramatic unveiling. Or at least it’s supposed to be. I don’t know how successful this method has been for individual artists but I see it a lot so it must work for some people. It’s also easy to do so that probably helps its popularity.
I think the turnaround method also depends on the artist. The first thing we see is the artist with a backwards painting. So how the artist presents themselves is important. If people see that artist on first look and aren’t interested then they’ll scroll by. But I have no idea what the answer to how I should present myself is. I can only just stand there like most people who do the turnaround do.
I used to make ASMR drawing videos. I would put a camera right above a 5×7 inch piece of paper and film as a did an on the spot marker drawing. Each one was about ten minutes long. I had some fun making them and made a lot of them but I eventually stopped. They took a lot of concentration and I think I just got bored with making them. That and they never really got me more subscribers on YouTube anyway.
I just checked and I made 161 of those ASMR videos from 2014 to 2019 and then three in 2021. I guess I was trying them going again in 2021 (it’s May 31, 2025 as I write this) but it didn’t take. That’s a lot of videos though. I gave it a good shot.
I’ve thought about making art instruction videos too. Years ago I even made a couple of them on a second YouTube channel. I remember seeing a bunch of successful art instruction channels so I thought I’d set one up. I made a few videos that no one watched and then stopped. One lesson I learned from that is not to have two YouTube channels. I don’t need to split my attention like that. If I ever make art instruction videos again I’ll post them on my regular channel.
Strangely enough the one type of art video that I’ve made that I’ve gotten the most response to is my tape peeling videos. When I make a 6×9 inch ink drawing I put tape around the edges of the paper as a mask so that I can draw over the border of the drawing. That way I don’t have to stop my hand when I hit the black line border of the drawing and can go right over into the white paper outside the border. I find that helpful in making the drawing.
After the drawing is all done I pull up the tape that has ink all over it and reveal the white of the paper. The now white border is only about a quarter inch wide all around the drawing but it looks nice. I started filming myself pulling up the ink marked tape to reveal the clean paper because I thought it looked cool. After posting some of them other people thought it looked cool too. Then I’d also reveal the drawing.
I still make those tape peeling drawings because they’re short, under a minute, and easy to make. But it was my Facebook friends who comment on them and they never expanded my audience.
Now I’m thinking that I have to present my art with some kind of story behind it. But what story? The story the art suggests? The story of making the art? The story of the time the art was made? I’m not sure. I have a lot of art to show off. I graduated from art school back in 1988 and have been making art since then so I have a lot of pieces. What’s their story?
These are all big questions to answer and I don’t have the answer yet. Plus telling the story of my art might take a lot more time, video, and video editing than I’ve done before. I’m not a fan of editing video so I’m hesitant to. Plus I have the nagging idea that the solution I’m looking for should be a simple one. A simple idea that gets across to a lot of people. Simple is not easy.
Another of the problems that I (and other artists) have is that presenting your art to the public is a whole other job. Making the art is a job in itself and that’s the job most artists like to do. Most artists don’t make their living from their art so that they need a paying job too. So that’s two jobs just to make art. Promoting your art is a third job. It is really hard to do three jobs. Especially since making and promoting art are two different skill sets and are, generally, unpaying jobs for the individual artist.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about along with making video is how to make it easy on myself. I usually shoot my YouTube videos with my iPad, a microphone, and a tripod. But I have to take those three things out and set them up. I have other cameras and I want to find the easiest one to set up and use.
I sometimes find it a pain to drag out my full size tripod. I need to find an easier video setup to encourage myself to use it. Any little impediment to creativity makes it harder to be creative.
So all I need is the right idea, the right setup, and the time to do it all. This could take a minute.