Today's adventures in AI and Photoshop. Let is be understood on Day One, I do NOT approve of AI art ... which is why each of these images is heavily painted, reworked, turned into something new. Honestly... the artist in me is just about to throw up hands and tear out hair. I did these in Lexica AI + Photoshop (80% of one, 20% of t'other) in less time than it took me to drink a cup of tea. No exaggeration. On the one hand, I'm gobsmacked, waaaay beyond amazed; on the other hand, I'm appalled, because I have this vision of people forgetting how to paint, because you basically tell the AI what you want and it gives you something you can work with ... maybe not anything like what you imagined, but something -- at a fidelity, a resolution, that you would work days or weeks to achieve with a paintbrush. Argh.
Speaking purely as an artist, frankly, I find it scary. Verrrry scary. I mean, it's fun, and hobbyists like myself will be enjoying the heck out of this, but why would a publisher hire an artist to paint for a week for hundreds (or even thousands) or bucks, when you can type in "fantasy warrior, man, long black hair, longshot, full length, Frank Frazetta, silver armor, broadsword, full face, brooding, stormy sky, not portrait," and it hands you the base canvas for this? I shipped them all into Photoshop and added birds, smoke, clouds, fire ... changed the eye colour, added feathers in his hair, dodged this, burned that, saturated the colour ... and signed off on it. And frankly, I'm a bit sheepish about signing off on something that is really only 25% me.
In fact, the whole concept of AI art has been bothering me for some time, which is why I find myself so bemused to be doing this stuff for the fun of it. As soon as I really learn how to do this, I plan to use AI elements and feed them into Krita etc, to be forged into new and utterly unique PAINTINGS ... by the time I'm done, the result will be my work, no one else's ... at which point the source images are no different from tracing over a photo to get a rough guide from which to paint. AI will be incorporated into my work as a replacement for the beaucoup bucks I can't spend on 3D props any longer. I ain't got the cash, and like any boot-end artist these days, I don't expect to get any more low price gigs. AI has made sure of that. Still, it's humungous fun, and it'll give me the ability to do more and better paintings, when I fully learn this. But -- honestly ... sigh.
