What about AI art?

Just a fun AI experiment

Let's discuss AI (artificial intelligence) Art. If you've been a fan of our blog you might have guessed that most of our images are AI generated. Why? As much as we want to share our thoughts about the challenges that artist's face today, we also want to spend more of our time painting.

AI has provided us with a relatively quick method to create images that relate to the theme of each post.

The big question many ask and answer quickly to, "Is AI art?', is usually a no. It's certainly not the art we are used to but it has it's benefits.

Let's dig a bit deeper to see what AI art is and how it can be useful.

AI art is generated by algorithms and machine learning models that replicate patterns and styles learned from existing artwork and photographs. It's a digital form that uses massive databases of images and text to create new images based on a humans text prompts.

 

It's easier said than done to achieve the results you're looking for. One short sentence is never enough. For the image below I used multiple text prompts to achieve what I wanted. The program I used was Adobe Firefly.

AI "painting"

The prompts I started with were "a woman with short wavy hair sitting alone at a outdoor sidewalk cafe, she is in deep thought; moody atmosphere, simple background, no coffee on the table".  Along with that words are used to descibe the overall look. The first result I got had too many people in the background and the woman looked cartoon like with too much colorful clothing, jewelry, and her hair done up in a crazy style, and an unnatural smile. 

Asking for less and less detail wasn't enough. I also had to add more text prompts that included "front view, plain blouse, hand under chin, no smile". There's a lot of trial and error involved. The program will send me suggestions and there's still tweaking involved by adding words, rearranging them, and figuring out new phrases to bring the presented images closer to what I wanted.

I eventually used an actual painting of mine as a style reference along with the word prompts.

My Sitting Nude painting provided the perfect balance of color and detail that I wanted for the above final AI image. 

Sitting Nude - Ria Hills

Other ways that an artist can use AI generated images is for reference material. There are times when we don't have a photo of what we want to paint. Or have an unusual concept that we are struggling with. There are many royalty free websites with great photos to utilize but using AI can provide a reference that's more unique.

For example, I love painting crows but they don't visit often. I had an idea for a painting of crows in a room. Normally I would go into Photoshop and layer a photo of a room with multiple images of crows placed in the room. I would search for free images of crows online and adjust their sizes, erase backgrounds, etc, etc. Then I would print out my finished composition to use a reference for the painting. It's quite time consuming!

Below is the image result I got from Adobe Firefly after a long word prompt. It took so much less time than Photoshop work! Some of the birds look strange, there's an extra window frame that shouldn't be there, and the swag curtain at the top is just awful. I can work all that out on the canvas.

AI generated image

Since AI images can not be copyrighted, for now, they are safe to use as references for a painting that is your own property. I'm not sure if they'd qualify for a juried art show.

Some fear that AI art will eliminate the need for artists. I don't think so. Machines don't have the creativity and feeling that goes in to an actual work of art.

Fine art did not end with the advent of Photography, as some feared, and I believe it's the same with regard to AI.

Do you use AI?

We'd love to hear your thoughts about it?

~Ria