 Hello, everybody, and welcome to another hobby-cheating video, and today we're going to talk all about one of the most important things for your painting success. Lighting. Let's get into it. Uh, the strict techno-mancer that is Vinci V. Let us get to the technique and learn it Vinci V style. Right after brushes, paints, and water, I really think the next most important thing you need to have is good light at your painting desk. A good light is so important because it lets you actually see the miniature you're working on, the colors you're actually using, how clean the blends are you're achieving, and most importantly, the more light you have in the area, the less strain there is on your eyes. This is a hobby where we're looking at often very tiny little people, and we want to be in a bright light situation so our eyes can take all that in without any kind of strain. If you want to paint for an hour, two hours, three hours, eight hours, twelve hours, as I sometimes do, then the last thing you want is your eyes to get strained to get tired to be unable to focus or see detail. Having a good, high amount of light is how we're going to get that. So today we're going to talk about the kinds of lights that are out there that are available and what you should look into for lights for your own painting space, as well as talk about my new favorite light I've ever used, and I've used a lot. The first thing to say here is that you don't have to spend a ton of money on your lighting. As you may notice, I have a ton of lights behind me over my shoulder, but I'll show you some more shots of those as well. Now realistically, with the lights, you can go the cheap option. There are basically little clamps or arms or things like that you can buy at Ikea or the hardware store, depending on the setup of your office desk or painting area. And just as long as you get a good bulb, we'll talk about the bulbs in a second, these are usually anywhere between like six and 15 bucks for these kinds of arms or clamps or swings or something like that. And then you just simply drop any high quality bulb into it and job's a good one. For somewhere probably around 30 bucks, maybe 40 bucks, you've got a great couple of painting lights for your desk area. Many very high end painters use lights just like this. So as far as that functionality goes, that's really all you need if money is a concern and you don't want to spend a lot of money. There are options which we'll talk about which you can take the next step up after that. However, before we get into those other options, I do want to really talk about what makes a light that you want. Because yeah, getting the arm or the clamp or something like that is easy, but the bulb is what matters. This should not come as a surprise. So what actually makes a good painting light? Well, to begin with, you want it more or less daylight balanced. So lights can be warm or cold depending on the sort of K rating of the light. So you want a light that is roughly between 4500 and 5000K, roughly daylight balanced. That is going to give you the truest vision of the colors that you're utilizing. If you use something too much lower, warmer, unless a lower K equals warmer, you're going to end up with like think of painting by candlelight or torchlight or campfire or something. That's going to be really warm and it's going to really watch everything out and you're not going to get a true sense of half the colors in your palette, really, or all of them. At the flip side, if you go into a light that's too high K, that's too cold, then it will end up knocking and desaturating all of it. And when you look at the piece under a normal light, it will look weird. So nice right in the middle daylight balanced bulb is important. The other thing you want to think about is light diffusion. So when you have something like a bulb, you don't want a single just tight bulb. So a larger, wider bulb is good. Then putting a piece of white paper over it or something like that, like a cover that's rated to be on top of a hot light. Please don't put anything over your light. It's going to start a fire. But having some sort of thin film over it to further diffuse the light is also quite valuable. You generally don't want to be blasting a bright light directly at your painting area. Strong, direct lights create hard shadows and again will wash out colors, even if they're daylight balanced. So you do want there to be some diffusion to the light. And this is done through coverings on them that are generally white. It helps to scatter the light around. Think of the covering on a fluorescent light, for example. That helps to diffuse it out and spread it all around the room. In the same way, it will help spread it around your desk. The other thing you want to be thinking about is the lumens. When you're buying a bulb, the lumens are really just how bright it is. I mean, effectively. There's more to it than that. But for our purposes, that's close enough. And in general, you're going to want something that's at least like a thousand lumens. So you're going to want a fairly bright bulb. That isn't the most common thing. Most lights aren't that intense. LED lights will tend to be up there more. It really depends on what's going on. But those lumens are really important because again, it's how much light it's going to cast. And because you're going to be putting some kind of diffusion cover over it, you're going to want it to be pretty strong and powerful. That way it can still shine through that like piece of paper or film or light cover or whatever you happen to have. So something that's relatively bright like that, a thousand lumens plus is going to be your best answer. Now let's talk about actual, if you're not going to just sort of go the DIY route, let's talk about actual light options. Now over time, I've used lots of different light options. Most of what I've used over time have been like architects drafting lights. And those are generally pretty good. There are LEDs now more than anything else. They obviously weren't back in the day. But they tend to be long sort of rectangular shaped lights, usually on some kind of adjustable arm. Usually they'll hit the lumens that you need. And they often have different settings of being like warm daylight or cold. So they'll achieve what we're looking for there. The problem with them is they tend to be rather long and thin. And so this can oftentimes, even though they do have a nice little diffusion cover over them, they tend to be kind of not kicking up enough light overall. You can also get sort of arms, lights on sort of swing arms and stuff like that. These can be okay. I use a lot of these for supplemental lights. So you'll notice at my desk, I have three different lights and I use those so I can move them around. Now two of them are basically either painters or architects drafting lights. They're these small LEDs. They don't kick out a huge amount of light, but it's enough that what I'm really trying to do is light the whole space. You don't need to go this far. But my point is, if you're going to rely on these, you generally are going to want a couple of them over the area. Usually try to get like one over each shoulder or each side. So they're kind of even like that and shining down over where you're working in the middle. So that's kind of the nature of those. There's lots of those available on the market. You can get them from Amazon and other places. I'll include a link down below to one I've used before that I like, but not necessary. My actual favorite light is the newest thing I've used. And it's this thing you've seen in shots behind me for a while. So this is the Lucent from Game Envy. And I've tried a lot of different brands lights. This thing just blew me away. So this is 1350 lumens. It has different color intensity and temperature settings and all of that. But it does work at the sort of 5000K daylight setting as well. It's very easy to turn on and off and adjust. I know it sounds stupid, but a lot of the architect drafting lights are honestly really annoying to turn on and off and adjust and get to the right setting. This thing is so easy to work with. It has five different individual light pads. The arms of the thing itself can be adjusted, moved, turned, swiveled very easy. So you can create a nice halo or circle of light encompassing you really easily. It's so bright. It's so wonderful. It doesn't get super hot. So it's not creating a ton of heat on your desk, which can be a problem with some kind of light bulbs if you have them and you're working near them. They can generate a decent amount of heat over time, which will drive the paints on your palate and stuff like that. This thing doesn't get incredibly hot. It's very effective at sort of cooling itself off. I think it is an LED, so it's not that hard. And because it's so mobile and the way I can move it and reposition it and change it. And it's just great because I'm often moving things around on my desk. I need to use my desk to shoot. I need to use my desk for work and other purposes. So being able to just get this thing readjusted in 10 different ways in a matter of seconds is incredibly valuable. Now the amazing thing to me about the Game Envy Lucent is you can pick up one of these for $85. I would have never bought another light knowing that this was an option for $85. That's not cheap. I'll openly admit $85 is not a small amount of money. But I mean that's also just like one or half of a figure kit depending on what miniature you're buying. And so like I can't think of a better investment. Like forgo buying one extra unit of a relatively decently expensive thing and instead buy this light. And you are going to have that light for years. I have been using, I really wanted to put this thing through the paces. So I've been using this thing now for almost six months by the time you're watching this. And I have loved it every day since I got it. It was a complete and total game changer. So it's got the brightness. It does, it meets all the criteria I talked about before. And it's $85 for one or $160 for two. I mean like it's just an incredibly good deal. Game Envy is also a really nice company. I like all of them. I know all of them. This is not a sponsored video. I do not have any kind of sponsorship from them in any way shape or form. I just really like the product. So I wanted to talk about it here. But also give you all a grounding for lighting. So ultimately, obviously I'll link that down below as well as some other options if you're looking at different DIY stuff. I don't want to make you feel like, oh, it's definitely $85 you have to spend to light your desk. That is not true. You can very, very much get cheaper options through stands and bulbs. As I said, just give them a nice cover and you're good to go. Probably less than $30 depending on how you set it up or what the costs are in your local area. So those cheaper options exist. But if you're going to spend the money, that Game Envy Lucent is where I would absolutely go. It is incredible and worth every penny. I will most likely be picking up a second one just so I have one over at my airbrush booth as well. That's how much I love it and just want to make sure I have these things available everywhere. So that's basically lighting. If you've got any questions about it that I didn't answer, if you've used the light that you think is particularly cool, hey, drop that in the comments below. I'd love to hear your feedback, your ideas, your thoughts. If you like this, give it a like. Subscribe for additional hobby cheating in the future. We have new videos here every Saturday. I always read every comment and question, so please drop your thoughts below. If you want to support the channel, there's lots of ways you can do so. You can hit the links below to pick up your gear as well, or your paints through my Monument link or anything like that. You can also, of course, join our Patreon. That's focused on review and feedback and taking your next step on your hobby journey. We'd love to have you as part of the community. As always, though, I thank you so much for watching this one, and we'll see you next time.