Jigsaw Puzzles, AI Art, Bears, Angels
Jigsaw Puzzle Talk: “Children of God” by 🧩 Jester Puzzles
Yes, we’re still on bears.
My previous article featured an angel and bear. This is a second one — because why not? Bears and angels are both visually striking, especially when you juxtapose them.
Whenever you’re screwing around with AI and you’re mixing two main elements like this, I find it’s best to specifically try to find two subjects that differ greatly in coloring, intensity, texture, etc.
Thus, a furry black bear next to a fair-skinned angel really sets off both. (I have angels of many various complexions in the set, of course.) But, keep that in mind, as you really get more visually striking images (in my opinion) when there’s contrast.
Here’s a shot of the final image that I used to make the usual puzzle / print / playing card suite of products for sale:
Contrast or not, I had to bring a lot of that quality out in the Photoshopping stage. For some reason, AI imagery tends to come out more washed out than you’d think. I have no idea why, but you pretty much always need to mess around with the contrast.
This image had a whole bunch of issues, though. One was her thumb which, regardless of how much I manually tried to fix it, just never would look right (to my eye, anyway).
Finally, I came up with the “orb” idea, which was to add a bunch of those floating bubble-like elements to this, in various colors and sizes. Somehow, it worked, perhaps because it adds a sort-of magical element to what’s already there.
The quote I chose to lay over this piece is: “Bears are not companions of men, children of God.” This is part of a longer quote from famous Scottish-American naturalist John Muir.
I’m not certain what prompted Muir to make such an observation, but it *really* fits in well with this bear/angel image. So, I added it.
A few people have told me that this is their favorite of all of the images in this Jester Puzzles collection. Just goes to show what you can do with some AI imagery plus about 5 hours of Photoshopping, lol.
I don’t like taking artistic credit for AI art creations, so I’m careful not to do so. That said, I love bringing these amazing artistic creations to life via tons of prompting, testing, refining, Photoshopping, and adding details manually. Thus, I refer to the process as AI-collaborative art.
I have a good time doing it — and it’s a great way to enhance your Photoshop chops, btw, as there’s always anew challenge (or ten) with every project.
Thanks for reading! Some links for you:
- This puzzle on my web site: https://jpd3.com/puzzles/the-midnight-carousel (includes more description and purchase links);
- All of my current “Jester Puzzle” offerings: https://jpd3.com/puzzles
- Finally, the link below talks more about AI and “AI Collaborative” artwork, as well as this overall project:
