Wednesday, March 09, 2011

LET THERE BE LIGHT!!

Let me ask you a question. What do you think THE most important thing to a professional artist is? if you're like most people, your list probably included things like, The right kind of paper, of maybe the right kind of pencils or pens. Some of you might even have gotten clever and mentioned the word TALENT! which, I admit, you kinda need to have if you're gonna draw for a living in the first place. And while all of the aforementioned things are important for any artist, it gets even simpler than this. The NUMBER one thing any artist needs to work efficiently and effectively is.....

LIGHT.

Even God, in his creation of the heavens and earth turned the lights on first!

As a professional caricature entertainer, having proper lighting to do my work is so crucial that I literally write that into my clients contract. For best results, my subject needs to be showered in light from above. Now while I cant bring the sun inside to my party events, Im always thankful when a client uses Pendant Lighting

in their business, or residence to light a room. In you dont know what Pendant Lighting is, its lighting that hangs from a higher vantage point and is usually mounted from a ceiling. This kind of lighting is versatile as well as decorative, but for my purposes I love its functionality, namely it bathes my subject in that gentle shower of illumination that allows me to view the entire face at every angle without having to guess what a particular feature looks like.. In my line of work, you dont wanna guess what a face looks like ! Getting faces wrong has a tendency to get people mad at you. and some of em may be so moved to put out YOUR LIGHTS if you insult them too bad.