How to Record Art Process Videos: A Full Idea-to-Post Workflow

Most guides to filming your art stop at "get good lighting". LP Lucas, who teaches Social Media for Artists on Twotap, spends the longest lesson in his course building one short video from the first idea to the finished upload, changing clothes on camera along the way because the process runs across several days. What follows is that pipeline, including the parts that usually get edited out of tutorials.

Ideas do not arrive at the desk

He is blunt that the worst place to have an idea is in front of a computer or a blank page, staring until something appears. His ideas come while out of the workspace: showering, doing dishes, driving, occasionally while trying to sleep.

The working method is passive rather than forced. He does not hunt for ideas, he stays open to them, and then captures them immediately in Google Keep on his phone, as text, audio or images. Sometimes an entire script arrives in five minutes. He mentions a week where five videos were needed and every idea came in a single afternoon, outdoors, doing something unrelated.

Any notes app will do. The requirement is that capture is fast enough to happen before the idea evaporates.

Write a script like a cookbook

His script template has two columns: setup, and dialogue. Nothing else.

"A great director called Joseph Paglia says that the script is very similar to a cookbook, meaning that the only thing you need are the instructions, clear instructions that tell you what to do."
LP Lucas, in the lesson Recording from Social Media for Artists

So the script records what happens and what gets said, and skips interior description entirely. Anything a viewer cannot see does not belong in it. The job of the document is to orient you while recording, not to be good writing.

Light so the artwork stays clean

His setup is two lights: a key light, positioned high, and a second light lower and deliberately dimmer, there to lift the edges. The test he demonstrates is practical rather than theoretical. Put your hand over the artwork. Your hand should cast a shadow behind itself, not across the illustration. If the fill light is too bright or too high, your drawing hand paints shadows over the work you are filming.

Do not cross the line

Lucas varies his shots, lower angles, medium shots, the occasional long shot, but keeps them all on one side of an imaginary line through the scene. Cross it and the geography flips, and the video feels subtly wrong even to viewers who cannot say why. He points to Kubrick deliberately breaking the rule in The Shining to produce exactly that unease.

Keep the camera inside a 180 degree arc unless the weirdness is the effect you want.

Record fragments, not the whole process

This is the tip that saves the most time and the most discomfort. He does not film his entire art process, because parts of it are boring to watch. He skips filming things like the full background paint or the complete linework, and captures only the interesting passages.

Physically, he draws on a bench positioned around the camera, which he admits is uncomfortable, and the short bursts are what make that survivable. A small fan sits on the desk to dry paint so he is not filming himself waiting, and a hair dryer does the same job.

For digital work he records the screen, while noting that footage of the hand actually drawing reads as more human and crafted than a bare capture.

Open with an establishing shot

Almost every video starts by situating the viewer: a long or medium shot showing where he is. If you are drawing outside, that is a shot of outside. Opening on a close-up is possible, but he warns it is disorienting, and suggests learning the convention before breaking it.

Shoot out of order, then color-code

He does not record in script order. He groups shots by whatever is practical, then rebuilds the sequence in the edit, which only works because of a labelling habit: in Premiere, each group of shots gets a color label, and the correct order can be reassembled by reading the colors.

He also color corrects before assembly rather than after, since grading one long clip is far quicker than grading dozens of fragments. One shot gets adjusted, the settings are pasted to the rest as a starting point, then each is tuned. His underlying rule: the shot has to look good on camera first, because a dark, poor-quality shot is very hard to rescue in post.

The software matters less than the habits. He uses Premiere Pro on a PC and names DaVinci Resolve, CapCut on a phone, or the in-app editors on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok as fine alternatives.

Cut until it hurts

His first assembly is always too slow, which he treats as normal rather than a problem. The standard he edits against came from a teacher:

"If you take out a shot and the story still makes sense, it's because you don't need that shot."
LP Lucas, in the lesson Recording

For short form he cuts fast, though not so fast that the viewer loses the thread. For long form he leaves the illustration shots room to breathe rather than chopping them.

One craft detail worth stealing: he tries never to cut on a moment where his pen lifts from the paper, so the drawing reads as one continuous gesture across the edit. If a shape is not finished, he cuts later rather than at the lift.

Missing shots are part of the job

Mid-lesson he discovers a shot he was sure he had recorded does not exist, and rather than hiding it he goes to bed and reshoots it in the morning. His framing is that professional productions schedule days or weeks purely for pickups, precisely because this always happens. Budget for it instead of treating it as a failure.

Music, and the copyright trap

Music became part of his identity, specifically classical music, and for this video he lands on Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23. He licenses through Epidemic Sound.

The warning attached is worth more than the recommendation. Music downloaded as free from the internet can still trigger a copyright claim when you post, which means the video cannot be monetized or gets muted in some countries, quietly limiting your reach. Verify the license before you build an edit around a track.

Voiceover, captions, and then a formula

He records voiceover from the same script with an affordable Blue microphone, making the point that quality matters and price does not have to. Captions come from Premiere's transcription tool, though he notes YouTube, Instagram and TikTok all have equivalents, so no desktop software is required.

The closing advice is that none of this is fixed. You build a style by testing, posting, watching the reaction, then repeating the elements that worked and removing the ones that did not, until the format is concise. He still changes things in every new video he makes.

The workflow, condensed

• Capture ideas away from the desk, in a notes app, immediately
• Script as setup plus dialogue only
• Key light high, fill lower and dimmer, no shadow across the artwork
• Keep the camera on one side of the line
• Film only the interesting fragments of the process
• Open with an establishing shot
• Shoot out of order, color-code, grade before assembly
• Cut any shot the story survives without
• Expect pickups
• Use properly licensed music, then captions

LP Lucas films the entire process end to end, including the client brief behind that particular video, in Social Media for Artists on Twotap.