How AI Saved My Art
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Artists are not a monolith. Ask 100 artists about AI-generated images, and you’ll get 100 different answers. There appears to be contention in certain circles, whereas others welcome DALL-E mini’s potential. I can’t claim to know the art community’s prevailing opinion. However, I do know that AI images saved my art.
I paint with watercolors, like some kind of psycho. A sheaf of 24 pages is upwards of $40, a specialized brush can be $8ish. One mistake can cost an entire painting. It’s normal to screw up a “final” draft beyond repair and start from scratch.
But when it’s good, it’s rewarding.
Some of my work is good too! Nothing gallery-worthy, or that I’d sell on etsy (yet-sy). 10 years ago I sold a piece for maybe $20 to a kid who liked my Watercolor 1 final. Painting is mostly for me. Sometimes it’s fun when my friends gas me up with the oohs and the ahs, but ultimately it’s just a soothing hobby when it goes well.
But it doesn’t always go well, and this is where AI helps.
Watercolor is an iceberg where a gorgeous, flawless painting stands starkly above the sea. Deep below? A ton of shitty little thumbnail drafts; a “waste” of expensive paper. So when I arrived at a design that was difficult to execute, I got frustrated with myself and the project. The subject in question was to be a single palm tree in a wheat field. Frustratingly simple. Sky. Field. Tree.
I’ve seen plenty of fields, but I don’t get out to the desert much and date palms are foreign to me. Usually I’ll Google subjects and break them into component shapes. What is the angle? Where are the shadows?
…Here are the early results of my usual method.
Not bad by some measures, but too chaotic for my tastes. Odd clutter, colors, and proportions.
My dreams inspire me. A surreal idea exists broadly in my head, but the technicalities escape me. If date palms grew in wheat fields, how would they look? Tall? Where are the shadows? My needs are specific, and references don’t always exist. Every draft is an experiment, usually unsuccessful, which can chill artistic motivation.
Eventually the DALL-E mini came to mind. I’d only seen it generate goofy memes, but maybe it could help me out. Boy, did it ever.
It’s blurry. Clunky. Goofy. It’s a visual aid of a surreal situation though, and it’s pretty much exactly what was in my brain. Instead of winging the scale, perspective, and palette while experimenting at a loss of over $1 per page, I now have a jumping-off point. Call it a crutch, say it’s “missing the point” of practice, but AI is a great way for a broke artist to conserve resources.
Most other artists probably aren’t mad about having infinite reference images either. As a casual artist, removing some imagination from a piece can also remove some pressure from practice. Ultimately this frees up more time to paint.
I’m still working on the piece; I might update this post when it’s finished. However, the drafts have gotten easier.
AI won’t replace artists, ever. It’s only as intelligent as the programmer. Find one STEM nerd who can write code for passion, creativity, and personal significance. It can’t be done, and that isn’t just a dig at STEM nerds. These concepts simply cannot be mapped or quantified by humans. Art will always be subjective, messy, and frustrating. If AI is here to stay, we might as well let it help.
