How AI Solved My BIGGEST Art Problem!

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[SixtoLuna_art]

I did a pencil sketch, took a photo and uploaded to Midjourney and it gave me a bunch of versions of the sketch in different compositions (that looked like my original drawing), then I continued to refined it further, took another photo and wrote a prompt to turn the drawing into a photorealistic version of the sketch and then I had my final reference that I used to create a collage in photoshop that I later oil painted. AI is just mind blowing and fascinating to me, it’s like having 100 studio assistants/minions during the renaissance helping you execute your own ideas 😂

[megandaniels]

I never thought about using it to create references. That's pretty cool but it's annoying the way it's normally being used. I hate that artists have to compete with AI accounts on insta and and people selling AI prints on etsy. Like people that don't know any better assume they actually created that work and comment stuff like, "wow you're so talented!" It's like no, the artists that actually contributed to that work were talented. These people are just frauds that posts mash ups of other people's work. I even had someone tell me they were gonna try to "recreate" my artwork by putting my concept into the prompt. I'm like "you don't even make art. Now you want to copy the concept too. Do you need anything else spoon fed to you?"

[LarsRichterMedia]

the AI output will replace digital art jobs, though. I use it the same way you do, as a reference generator machine and then I turn it into a physical piece. But I'm also a digital commercial artist and the next versions of these tools already looming on the horizon will make a lot of stills illustration work, especially for editorial, books, online, stock etc. plummet in price. One artist who uses this process will be able to do X amount of more work in a much shorter time. Art for art's sake where people buy a physical piece and hang it somewhere isn't really affected the same until there are robots crafting those pieces in pretty much every home on earth like smartphones. I would like to suggest to take the concerns of digital artists more serious especially because these models are built on top of harvested data from public webspaces.

[chukukaogude]

I started digital painting two years ago. Although in this second year I haven't been painting much. Only doing small sketches playing around with composition and perspective. I saw midjourney and instantly liked some of the stuff it made. My first thought was "impossible" I praised who I thought was the artist and even commented how what he did is almost humanly impossible. (The colors were placed in such a way that no human could do.) Then went on. Then the next day I saw art that had a similar signature as the other artists. However it was a different person. Then I saw this signature again and again. I then realized it was being created by midjourney.

When art is made by a person I can see how they derived their art from scratch. When I see art from midjourney I think "impossible" almost instantly.

The other dead give away of when the art (midjourney sided or not) has not had any human touch to it is there is no story to it. Overall it looks good but makes no coherent sense.

Midjourney is a king in Color Theory. It has some skill Composition. It has no skill in form, value, brushwork or perspective. It still needs to be guided by humans. It still can't fully understand humans requests.

I posted a video of me doing a self portrait after one year of learning how to digital paint on my own. It has it's flaws but I am proud of it. I've of course gotten better and enjoy losing myself in the process of finding ways to improve my art. If I have to compete with an A.I. it can only make me better. There are millions of other human artists better than me. Do I think they will take my job? No because I went through things on life that no other person or A.I can reproduce. I plan to inject my life experience into my art. Some will resonate with it and may want to hire me.

Nowadays the thing that doesn't sell is the art itself. It's the person behind the art. Picasso, banksy, the countless YouTubers, etc. Let people see where the art comes from and you'll always have customers. At least in my eyes.

[CM-cknl]

I find this very interesting, because often I'll look for references of a VERY specific thing and can't find anything close. Alternatively, I need a reference for something that literally doesn't exist yet. I came to a similar conclusion that ai can help in those situations where reality and photobanks just don't quite cut it. And just like with reality, we can iterate as much as we want on the source image.

[sarjslack]

I think this is awesome. I personally haven’t noticed many artists lauding the applications of this unique tool and being so transparent about the process. Go you!💫

[andersonslade]

We had the same tool in art school back in the day, it was called getting your friend to draw it for you.

[sonpanchan]

I'm all for using any tool that helps you with art block and aids you in your creative process. Obviously you don't copy 1:1 what the AI produces but what it makes can inspire you to work out a pose or make something interesting out of it by tweaking it. I use Dalle-2 to work out complex poses or specific complex landscapes I don't always find on the internet. It helps me a lot and gives me ideas. Ai will never replace an artist and it can be a good tool to help them.

[Girlszia]

AI to think for you, ahh the heights we have reached...

[especimenmarginal]

This tool is a great advantage that will allow many to save many hours and effort, but the cost will be soulless repetitive works that will flood the market and will make the work of artists in general cheaper.
The wet dream of big corporations! 🤑

[zaraleafclover]

What about the ethics of it. If someone sent images of your own work and told the AI to make something in your style and it produces something very similar and that same person posts it as their own, wouldn’t you feel robbed in a way?

Sometimes people are accused of stealing or leaning to heavily on other peoples work and take the credit online, this is basically the same but way easier.
Yes it can come up with cool concepts but the whole ideia that it can be trained to produce artwork in anyones style as long it as the images is a bit scary and of course artistically unethical.

[lukedorny]

Omg 10:10! Okay I’m in and have already used up my demo requests. Great tool to explore inspiration. Thanks, Lioba. Love the resulting painting.

[krismarshall]

"AI isn't the end-all-be-all for making art. Its lacking one element, that's you." Okay, this is where you lost a lot of AI enthusiasts cuz they frankly don't give a damn about that lol. They straight up are using AI programs fro the end-all-be-all in making art, with some tinkering at the final image. Doesn't matter you're one of the few artist out there using AI for less drastic things when the vast majority for it are using the programs to literally pass all the steps in making art. *sips Tea* Lets not act like its a foreign concept that people have been using this as actual art and selling it / winning awards while not actually revealing its AI art. It's literally running in a marathon but you got yourself a bike and win and you go "Well I picked out the bike myself and made some adjustments to it, so technically its not just a bike I bought" when at the end of the day, you literally just bought a bike to win a running marathon lol.

[fablecouvrette]

The example of the Sumerian figure is exactly why I *wouldn't* want to use this tool- by going a much longer way around, like examining artifacts, researching archeological theories, and making your own inspired conceptual leaps as to what such a figure might look like, you end up with something very authentically specific, unprecedented, and uniquely visionary. You end up *contributing* something totally new, and placed in its own meaningful context, to the great big library of human imagination.
Let the AI skip all that process for us... We just get something predictable, general, and already known. By design AI can *only* show us averages of what has already been imagined. It saves work, but at the cost of glazing over specificity with generality; substituting fact for assumption.
And to me, that's the biggest problem *I want to avoid doing myself*. This AI process is familiar to me, as a reflection of my own *least desirable* habits as an artist. I'd rather have art that is ugly, suprising, and grounded in real referrence, than art that is aesthetic, unchallenging, and generated from the average impulses of existing visual language.

That *is* just a matter of taste, but, ALL the economics of art aside, I would feel so malnourished if all the art we have was saturated with the taste for the later....

I mean, we already *do* live in that world, and I already *do* feel malnourished. I wish we could see technological developments that *change* that tendency, rather than push us further into it.

[ArtOfIntenso]

Very succinct grasp of the usefulness of AI image generation for natural media artists. Now, some systems allow training on the artist's own work, so the reference images might be closer to what that person would come to naturally.

[themorrigan]

My greatest failure are backgrounds, and this is a great for coming up with ideas! Thank you for showing it!

[jinri_p]

This AI stuff is just making me want to end my life, I seriously picked the wrong career.

[TribalAngel]

It's awesome to be able to use technology to fast forward the initial planning of a painting. Thank you for sharing.

[bedefancyalouette]

Dalle E and other ai programs completely fixed my artblock, i used to struggling with ideas sometimes and just putting anything into an Ai and getting instant inspiration really helped me, i defintly reccomend using an AI if you have art block its great.

[Baekstrom]

I would recommend anybody to at least play around with some of these tools, even if you are not interested in creating art. Watching videos on YouTube about them gives you the impression that they always spit out wonderful creative works of art that can be used as is, because the videos cherry pick the best results. But when you have played with them yourself, you realize what the limitations are pretty quickly, and you get a more nuanced and informed view of what they can actually be used for. This video shows very well that it is not a tool that renders human artists obsolete, and creating a good prompt is almost an artform in its own right. Not yet at least. Maybe in the not so distant future, the algorithms will be improved to a level where they can dial in on what you as for in a few steps, and can deliver a result that is ready for publication, but for the time being designers and artists still have work to do.