Do it

Okay, I understand that the process may not be perfectly clear until you see it done, so let's try to describe one example of an actual drawing session.

It is a dark night, we are in our living room, we have draped a dark blanket over the french doors. Whering black, the artist sits with her back to the blanket. To her side is a small table on which a pallette of different colors, shapes and sizes of light pens are arranged in a convenient order. Across the room, facing the artist is a Nikon D80 digital SLR camera sitting on a tripod. There is a shutter trigger remote plugged into the side of the camera along with a video out cable that is connected to the auxillary video input of a TV that we will use as a monitor. The monitor is optional. It faces the artist and allows her to easily view the results of her drawing and not have to get up and walk around to the back of the camera to look at the little 2" screen there.

If we were planning on a long drawing session, the artist may have thought through a number of drawing subjects and written a list to work from. The session may have a theme or be totally free form.

The camera is on and set to manual for full control. The aperature setting is f8 to start. The shutter speed setting is bulb. I ask the artist to demonstrate how big the drawing will be by moving her arms around and I adjust the zoom until the view is slightly larger then that area. I set the focus to manual and then ask the artist to hold up and light a flashlight that she will be using and then focus carefully on that light.

We are ready to draw and now extinguish all lights in the house that may interfere with our picture. The artist says the word "ready" at which point, I hold down the shutter release and she begins to wave her lights around in the air. When she has completed her drawing, she says "finished", signaling me to that I may release the control and close the shutter. I now tell the camera to display the picture which appears on the TV for us to see. I want to point out here that the artist can not see what they are drawing until they are finished, the shutter is closed and the picture is taken and displayed on the monitor.

The picture may have come out great or maybe not quite as expected at which time you now make some adjustments and try again.

If the picture is too bright or too dark, trying changing the f stop setting.

If the artist drew outside of the picture bounds, adjust the zoom or move the camera back, or tell the artist to draw smaller.

Once we dial in the size, the brightness and focus we can rapidly draw a number of pictures in a row and view them at intervals.

That is it! What did you get? As in all of photography, you will take many pictures and only approve of a few for publication. check out our gallery of pictures that did not make the grade.

Next - Developing the Picture

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