STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Dave Greco talks engaging with the community by streaming on Twitch

When I decided to start streaming my art in 2017, I saw it as a way to hold myself accountable to painting at least three nights a week in order to drive my skills to the next level. My initial plan was to stream for 30 days while working on a few portfolio pieces and then I would be done.

What I didn’t anticipate was how much I would end up loving it. It was the community that built up around me that convinced me to create a Youtube channel. I only intended to post a few simple tutorials, but even that blew up into something bigger than I anticipated. Art streaming is a category on Twitch that isn’t supported very heavily and the ceiling for it is quite low; because of this, I sometimes found it hard to justify the time spent streaming art. I balanced this with the love I had for the community and the opportunity to help newer artists who were just starting out. I even had the chance to collaborate and work with Mike Shinoda, which is an experience that would have never been possible otherwise.

My best advice is to stream art for the love of streaming and creating art in the company of others. If you are jumping into it with dreams of riches raining down, it may be pretty rough.

ETERNAL LOVE This was a pivotal piece of work in Dave’s career as it was featured in Spectrum 25. GOBLIN This kindly goblin was whipped up for #goblinweek. Rather than being cruel or mischievous, he’s a goblin with a big heart. RAVEN Dave wanted to create some “comfy vibe art” for his Twitch channel, so Raven was born. ARTIST IN ACTION Catch one of Dave Greco’s streams at twitch.tv/davegrecoart, and check out his video tutorials at youtube.com/c/davegreco.