The History of Dave the Painting Guy

Dave was sitting alone in his studio one night in early April 2008. He had a portrait commission to complete and was, in his own words, "afraid to get into it. Those blank canvases are still intimidating to me, even after over 30 years of creating art."

David R. Darrow is an illustrator-turned-fine-artist, who hasn't done a commercial illustration job in over a decade.

And Darrow is also the host of the free, online broadcast Dave the Painting Guy and tells how the monotony of a quiet studio, the dark of night, and a highly-distractible mind were the beginnings of his popular internet show.

"I was avoiding starting an important portrait commission, using that old subconscious delay tactic called if I don't start, I can't do it wrong. I had stretched the canvas, sketched in the two figures, placed it on my easel, and stalled out for hours. I washed the dishes, vacuumed, made some coffee... and then an open Firewire port on the back on my PC made me wonder if I could connect my mini-DV camera and use it like a webcam and maybe talk to my then 79-year-old mother 400 miles away and show her my face, via Skype."

After Darrow got it up and running, it was too late in the evening to call his mom to give it a test, but another idea popped into his mind; he had heard of uStream.tv which lets users connect a webcam and broadcast "a show." Wanting to test the video connection with his PC Darrow created a new account on uStream.tv, and in a matter of minutes was broadcasting whatever his camera was pointed at.

To no one.

First he pointed the camera out the window at the lights on the hill across the way from his Oceanside, CA studio, then at the little kitchenette inside, and finally spun it around at his canvas. "There was my canvas right there in a little viewing window on the Internet. I was intrigued. And I wondered if anyone would want to watch a guy paint pictures in his studio. So I pulled the big 36 x 40 canvas off the easel and tossed up an 11 x 14 and started scribbling out a figure painting in oil on this fresh canvas. I had just started when one generically-named ustream user popped into the chatroom and typed a question into the chatroom interface.

"What are you doing?" the person typed.

"Can you hear me?" Darrow asked, wondering if the video camera's mic was picking up his voice.

"Yes," came the typed reply.

"Well I am just starting a painting, and I will see if I can get it done in less than an hour."

Over the next hour a few other uStream.tv users dropped in and out, commenting, chatting to each other and typing questions to Darrow, including "WIll you be on tomorrow?"

Darrow agreed to turn the camera on again the next day, and the next, and the next -- discovering that the "audience" and the "conversation" made the hours pass more quickly, and helped him focus on his paintings more. "I found I tended to stick at it and solve my inevitable painting problems when I knew there were people watching over my shoulder."

By the time he'd finished the commissioned portrait, Darrow had 15 - 20 viewers tuning in regularly to say hello, watch his progress and chat with each other. "Since I started my art career in the early 80s, I have always introduced myself to people as 'David' but I started jokingly calling my broadcast "Dave the Painting Guy," creating show graphics for it and trying to lend it some legitimacy."

Within a few days, he started this show-related website www.DaveThePaintingGuy.com, at the suggestion of a now-regular viewer, fellow painter and web programmer, Chris Vodnik, who liked the show so much that he offered to donate his time to build the first few pages of this site to help Dave out.

Darrow coined the term Paintcast™ in reference to video shorts he's made in the past, realted to painting, so it seemed natural to call his regular show The Dave the Painting Guy Paintcast™.

Over the next few weeks, thanks to generous donations from many viewers, Darrow was able to add a second camera, new software, a better microphone and other features to the show, allowing him to present his painting and a view of his palette in the same screen.

In the time since his first Paintcast, the audience has grown, often topping 100 viewers at a time, and Darrow has committed to three nights per week, Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 5pm - 8pm, Pacific time. The show has turned into a bit of a "free, advanced concepts and techniques School of Painting" as people tune in and listen to Dave 'think out loud' as he paints.

"I never intended fo this to be 'painting lessons' but there are a lot of "stuck artists" out there who just need to be drawn back to the fundamentals of what makes the painting process flow, and so I just remind people of what they have already heard, though I know some never have. They need to find their freedom again.

"It's quite rewarding to see my viewers' work improve over time, and to get some of the many e-mails I receive where the sender tells me they have a renewed enthusiam for painting — some even getting the box of paints and brushes out of the gragae or attic after years of neglect."

Darrow has a wealth of knowledge about creating art, and coupled with his quick wit and friendly, welcoming demeanor, the show is engaging to painters and non-painters alike.

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David and his wife Teresa, a San Diego, CA real estate agent, moved to a larger home in coastal Encinitas, CA where they share the larger space between their two home businesses.

"Teresa has been terrific through all this," Darrow muses. "She encourages me to do the show each night, even though it goes live right when most folks in this time zone would normally be having dinner. And she's right in there chatting with the rest of the crowd. I wonder how many husbands get that kind of support for their work?"

The Darrows readily admit they would love to turn this into something bigger for a much broader audience via cable or satellite TV. "That would be an absolute blast," says Dave, "but we'll need a lot of help to get there."

Meanwhile, Dave the Painting Guy just keeps painting.