This post contains affiliate links. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more about it here.
What’s the best lighting setup for drawing videos? Having good lighting is essential if you’re shooting overhead videos. I’ve watched a lot of tutorials on Youtube about overhead lighting setup but none of them helped me get the result that I was going for.
I’m not saying that they’re not helpful, but they are usually geared more towards cooking or unboxing videos where little shadows don’t really matter. In our case, shadows are absolute no-no.
For cooking or unboxing videos, it’s all about getting that cinematic shot and that creamy bokeh effect. We don’t care for bokeh effects. Our goal isn’t to get cinematic shots, our goal is to get crisp, clear shot of our drawing with little to no shadows at all.
In my other post where I talked about cameras, I’ve mentioned about how dark my apartment is and how I’ve been struggling to get the perfect lighting for my drawing videos.
Unwanted cinematic “bokeh” effect
I’ve tried so many things and initially it got me nowhere. Adding more lights just because the footage is too dark would only make it too bright. So I ended up with footages that were either too under-exposed or too over-exposed.
Too much light could cast harsh shadows so that was another problem I had to sort out. It was a constant struggle. I even got to the point where I stopped making videos because I just couldn’t I get it right.
Key Light
The key light is the most important source of light for your video. So how to set up the key light for your video? After several tries and a lot of money spent trying various kinds of setups, I finally found the perfect overhead lighting setup for my drawing videos.
And the funniest thing is, the simplest setup is the best setup! The key here is indirect lighting. Indeed, indirect lighting setup is the best lighting setup for drawing videos.
Any light that’s directed to your drawing will become a problem. I couldn’t believe that it took me so much time to finally figure out that direct lighting was my only problem to begin with.
So what kind of lights do I recommend? Currently I have two indirect lighting setups that I use for my videos. In one setup, I have a ring light that’s directed to the ceiling.
In another setup, I have 2 softbox lights that are also directed to the ceiling. Currently I only use the ring light.
The softbox lights are not really necessary, but they were one of my “test subjects” when I experimented with different setups. They now serve as backup and I use one of them to shoot shorts Youtube videos, but that’s a story for another day.
To keep it as simple as possible, I recommend getting a ring light. Since it is also dimmable, you can adjust the light intensity freely. Neat, isn’t it?
We now get to the point where it gets abit tricky. Having the light pointing to the ceiling would mean that we end up with a workspace that’s quite dim. Afterall, indirect light means that the the light source we get is the diffused light resulted from the light reflection on the ceiling.
Soft, diffused light is a good thing and it is a blessing when it comes to shoot drawing videos since it prevents harsh shadows. Now you look at your camera and you’ll quickly realise that your shot is kinda dark. So what do we do now? Add more indirect lights?
Absolutely not. All you need to do now is to adjust the aperture on your camera. The bigger the aperture, the more lights your camera lets in. It could get kinda confusing because the bigger the aperture is, the lower the aperture number. The aperture f1.4 for an example, has a bigger aperture than the aperture f1.8.
You don’t have to understand the science and the mechanics behind it, just adjust the aperture on your camera until you’re happy with your shot. Want to know which aperture settings I use on my camera? You can read more about my camera settings here.
Practicals (Optional)
If you want your videos to look more interesting, consider adding practical lights to your lighting setup. The most popular lights used as practical lights are RGB LED lights. The good thing about an RGB LED light is, you can pretty much change and adjust its color to any color you like.
Try adjusting the color of your RGB LED light to orange to add warmth to your video, or blue to add that calming or cinematic effect. However, you don’t need to overdo it. Try to keep it moderate. Just one source of practical light would be more than enough.
If you plan to use practical lights for your drawing videos, adding too much and bright practical light might not be a good idea since it may alter the colors of your drawing in the shot, and you might need to color correct your footage before posting it online.
So it makes more sense to use practical lights for other types of videos, e.g. art supplies reviews, art supplies hauls, or something as simple as refilling your copic markers, just like what I did here:
In the video, I used this RGB light bulb and set its color to blue. I turned down the intensity a tiny bit and directed the light to the wall. My intention was to avoid any harsh shadows and at the same time, cast that soft blue light on the subject.
The light bulb is kinda bulky though and together with its stand, it takes quite amount of space.
It doesn’t bother me that much since it pretty much does its job. But if you want something that’s lightweight with a small footprint and portable, you can get something like the IVISII G2 RGB light.
The light is rather pricey, but much less expensive than the big brand ones. If you want something that’s even cheaper and smaller, you can get the Ulanzi VL49 RGB light. Both of these have built-in rechargeable batteries, so you don’t have to plug them into the wall, which means less cable mess.
