Drawing, Traveling, Shooting, Editing
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I’m a workaholic, and although working is incredibly satisfying to me, I’ll also admit that it makes me a little crazy at times. Which is why this trip to Taiwan is exactly what I needed in terms of stepping away from my life and trying to reset. In terms of Art Prof, this past year has definitely been the most stressful of the entire project; the site launch alone I think took 10 years off my life, and then figuring out how to keep moving forward and keeping the project alive from there was an immense challenge.
I hadn’t even thought about creating any Art Prof content while on this trip until Tom (my Art Prof partner) mentioned that the trip would be an amazing opportunity to film a tutorial here. I had been experimenting with Tombow brush pens for some time and had been thinking at the back of my head that I wanted to eventually do a tutorial on their brush pens.
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That’s why this trip has become the best of both worlds: satisfying my compulsive need to work, but under the best, most exciting circumstances possible. I’ve been able to shoot a lot of Broll footage on my own, and my husband Alex has been filling in the gaps an setting up shots of me drawing. In the evenings, I’ve been editing the footage, photographing my drawings, and trying to come up with a narrative for the tutorial.
At first the footage I shot felt totally all over the place and I couldn’t quite figure out how I wanted to format and present the content. While I wanted to highlight my personal experience, I didn’t want it to turn entirely into a personal video about me. After a few days of editing, I think I’ve finally figured out a balance between a tutorial and personal stories. It’s definitely a unique tutorial, I’m weaving in stories of my experiences here with technical advice on the brush pens, while also speaking about what frame of mind to be in when you’re traveling and drawing.
Initially I didn’t bother doing any editing, but once I started editing, it really helped me recognize where I was missing footage and what content I hadn’t talked about yet. Perfect because I won’t be able to come back and re-shoot any missing footage!
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Editing on the go has also been important because all of the tiny details of the trip are really present and fresh in my head. Although I am taking detailed notes in my sketchbook about what’s been happening, it’s great to be able to tell a story the same day that it happened so that the details are a lot more vivid.
