Most people can't draw a convincing stick figure, let alone create anything you'd call art. But Darren Pearson is so skilled that he can draw with light, creating fanciful photographs and videos filled with glowing illustrations. He has a background in both film and graphic design, but became fascinated with the technique by happenstance.
“My interest in light painting really started a couple years back when I saw the famous Picasso Draws a Centaur photo where he's light painting. The second I realized that you can draw within a photograph, that’s what turned the light on for me,” says Pearson.
To create a light painting, Pearson waits until dusk or evening and sets his camera on a tripod. He then takes a photo with a long exposure---usually between two and seven minutes. While the shutter is open he jumps in front of the camera and "paints" with various tools that resemble flashlights. The result is clever, engrossing images teetering between fantasy and reality. Though his illustrations appear to manifest with ease, the process can be tedious and labor intensive.
Because he can’t see what he’s drawing until he looks at the screen on the back of the camera, Pearson has developed some rules to help keep things straight. He starts from one point, usually the eyes of the figure, and then works his way across or down, through the body and limbs and finally to the tail. He also uses environmental references---some rocks, perhaps, or a bush---as "boundaries" so he keeps the image to scale.
“I’ve got the system pretty down,” he says. “I’ll do one mock-up just to double check the placement and to see if it looks okay and then I usually nail it on the second try.”
It’s taken a while to master the technique. For years he just drew stick figures, but later conquered more complex forms. Pearson then tried his hand at motion. In his most recent video, he’s brought various creatures---dolphins, camels, dinosaurs, and more---to life in locations across California.
It takes 24 individual light paintings with little movement variations to create one second of video, which is 24 frames. This makes the illustration look life-like and fluid. It's a time-intensive process. Pearson will spend anywhere from two to four hours just to animate one person or animal.
“If my girlfriend isn’t asleep in the car she’ll help for a while, but it’s mostly all me,” he says.
For his tools, Pearson started with store-bought flashlights, but now designs his own homemade lights---a pen-like object with an LED. The ergonomics of a pen help him draw more smoothly and he can turn it on and off quickly. For colored animals, Pearson uses a series of flashlight attachments from the Light Painting Brush System which allow him to modify the colors and the shape of the light. The brushes also give Pearson extra reach, which is helpful when he’s trying to draw larger animals like elephants that are true to size.
"The attachments are great because without them it's like a fine painter's brush," he says, "And with them it's like being able to paint a house."
