I decided to make a comic using light painting for this year’s 24 hour comic day event put on by the Mid-Missouri Comics Collective. You can see the whole comic in my flickr photo set.

Light painting is a photographic technique where you open a camera shutter for a long period of time and “draw” in the air using a light source. I’ve wanted to try a light painting comic for a while now, but drawing freehand in the air seemed to be problematic without some kind of light stencil. The solution I came up with involved pointing a digital camera at a large sheet of plexiglass that I set up vertically using clamps. I would sketch on a sheet of newsprint and attach this to my plexiglass with clips. Turning out the lights and opening the camera shutter release, I’d use my right hand to trace my drawings with colored laser pointers (and occasionally a blinking LED). My left hand would hold a small dim flashlight so I could see my sketches on the newsprint. When I was done tracing, I would close the camera shutter and allow the digital camera to process the image for several minutes. The final step was to download the image to a computer and flip it horizontally to match my original drawing.

About the 24 hour process:

The event location was the Artlandish Gallery, and I asked for a special space away from the main group of artists so I could work on my comic in the dark. The windows in the room had to be boarded up with cardboard, and I had to have a curtain to block off light between rooms. I had one solitary lamp that I could turn on for light.

I wanted to create a story that involved my character Izzy the mouse encountering a visitor from space. I started the process by spending a few hours sketching out thumbnails for the story. I then redrew my thumbnail images to larger drawings on newsprint (32 inches by 20 inches). Redrawing the panels larger ended up taking quite a while and had to be done while standing.

Next, I attached newsprint drawings to the plexiglass, clicked open the camera shutter, and got to work tracing the drawings with laser pointers. It was a relief to sit down and trace after the prolonged standing involved with the previous step.

The finished product took a while. I had to end up re-doing a lot of my panels because I’d forget to trace one detail or another. I finally got done a couple of hours before the noon deadline.

Conclusions:

Overall, I found light painting pretty frustrating: I had to “draw” every panel three times, I would often forget if I’d traced a line or not, I had to wait several minutes of camera processing time to see what I had just drawn, and I didn’t get much variation in line weight from the lasers. I doubt I’ll be experimenting more with light painting, but I’d love to see what some others could do to create comics or illustrations with my method.

Final comments:

Many thanks to Lisa Bartlett and her Artlandish Gallery for hosting the event, Scott Ziolko for event organizing, Josh Nichols, Keith Chan, & Scott Sutherland for technical support, and to all the other artists for ideas & support during the event. Check out the write up about the event in the local Missourian paper.