YouTube is an amazing site, I use it every time I get into something new to find a community that enjoys it as much as I do. There are so many of these communities that everyone can find their own niche. What the viewers don't tend to think about, however, is just how much goes into making the views we watch in our free time. As an art YouTuber, I can tell you from personal experience some common issues.
Camera Battery
There is nothing worse than finally getting into the zone while working on your piece than your battery suddenly running out. While charging your overused electronic your stuck being inspired but unable to work on the piece since you don't want the viewers to miss anything. So you pass the time by doing something else, and once your battery is charged again you're not in the mood to work on the drawing anymore. A solution here would be to buy a second battery so you always have one charged, but I haven't been able to do that as of yet.
The Inevitable
As artists, and humans in general, we are prone to mistakes. As a YouTuber, however, all of these mistakes are caught on camera. Sometimes we're not thinking and other times they just happen. I've been so deep in thought before that I stuck an open marker in my mouth, while recording. In addition, if you are like me and live in a house with a good amount of other people (and dogs) they don't always care that you're trying to talk to yourself up in your room. This makes it difficult to get that perfect audio you want.
Head Placement
While many of the items on this list can be related to many types of videos, this may be one that is a uniquely artist problem. Many art YouTubers use tripods to create a birds eye view of them working, which is a great way to relate viewers to the process. However, myself and many others have realized- we put our heads down when we're working. When this habit works it's way into frame all the viewer gets to see is a wad of hair. It can actually be quite difficult to keep your head out of frame especially in tricky portions of the piece that require a lot of focus(and also happen to be what the viewer is interested in).
Focus, and focus!
There are two types of focus that are important when making videos- camera and cognitive. When your camera is out of focus it's possible to tell what is going on, and unless that is what you are going for there's really no point in that footage. If you aren't careful with this you could lose a good chunk of your footage. The other type of focus relies on your attention span if you have one. If you find yourself on your phone or computer scrolling for a new video to watch every five minutes that can add up in editing. You don't want to have to waste your valuable editing time removing dozens of clips of you not doing anything productive.
How much time?!
Biggest downfall of making art videos- they can take ten times as long as other types of videos. Don't get me wrong, I know some other types of videos take plenty of time. However, I occasionally make videos covering books, and these don't take nearly as much preparation or recording time. Excluding cut footage generally the length you see on the book videos is how long it took to record. With art videos they tend to be "speed paints" or sped up versions of hours of work (plus however much was put in before the artist pressed record.)
Should I record everything?
This is a hard question to answer, and I think it differs creator to creator. Personally I've learned I do better sketching off camera so I tend to exclude that and just show my inking and coloring processes. This is far from the only way to do things however, and it depends on viewer demand and personal comfort. You also don't have to record every piece you ever do, or every minute of the pieces you do record. While recording everything can make you seem transparent or make videos move smoother the most important thing in the end is you still having fun making your art.
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