Rob Adams a Painter's Blog painter's progress

When the various digital developments arrived in the past they were almost immediately put to work. We got Pixar and other wonderful entertainments. After Effects and other 2D software was there behind the scenes. So what will Ai bring us? I did a few comic style tests and worked out that with a minimal amount of hand refine you could produce the artwork of a 30 page comic in a couple of weeks. So where are they? As far as I know technology doesn’t seem to be making inroads into storyboarding though it seems perfect for the job.

Despite complaining about their images being sampled the picture libraries are packing their catalogues with rather poor Ai images… mostly knocked up in Midjourney by the look of it. What I am getting at is Ai is somewhat short of practical uses. I see a few examples in adverts, but where are the Ai illustrated picture books? I did a few samples, to see what could be done.

This took me about an hour, based on a pencil sketch I did first.

I hate to think how long this would have taken to do by traditional means! If I was to use such an image I might rework the face by hand to remove the generic look.

I’ll put in a couple of silly comic strip tests…

These were a few hours work. You can see why artists are running scared. The strange thing about the ease of production is the drop in value of the artwork. Not only financial but in social value. People dismiss an Ai image after a brief glance. The very same image put before the same people a decade ago would have elicited Ohhs and Ahhs. Worse, I had some of my hand done pen drawings dismissed as Ai and scorned. People very much don’t want to be fooled and are suspicious of any imagery. Perhaps they don’t wish to be seen to accidentaly like an artificial image as that would discredit their powers of discernment.

I did a slightly immoral (and very unscientific) test of this and presented a hand done image and an Ai image for reactions. Except I switched them. The hand done image was duly scorned! The sheer scale of Ai image production is staggering, there are many millions of images produced every day. Far more than there are eyes to see them. I don’t want to sound pessimistic but it is hard to see it all turning out well. Oddly I think actual physical paintings might benefit. I suspect people won’t want Ai images on their walls, indeed they may not want anything that might even be suspected of being Ai.

So what is Ai image making for? Perhaps nothing in particular. It is a Swiss Army knife you could apply it anywhere. The thing which consumes current artists is that you need no particular skills to use it. Anyone with a keyboard who can type a short sentence can make an image in any style. To make a good quality image takes more practice but not the years of study learning to draw well takes. I have mixed feelings but there is no point in crying over spilt milk. The weavers faced with the Spinning Jenny and then power-looms saw their years of experience made valueless and now hand weaving is for most a hobby. Image making will I suppose go the same way.

Hand made art has in any case been in decline for a very long time. First came photography which automated recording the world. Although photographers talk up their skills it’s still mostly pressing a button at the right time. This reduced hand made image making to representing things which didn’t exist to be photographed. Still a pretty large market and imagination was brought to the fore. Then cheap reproduction took another chunk out of the required artworks. At each of these points the numbers of people (relative to population) gaining the skills and earning their living by them reduced.

I might leave the fine art world out of this as it is essentially a cult producing tokens for trading and possession. Rather like the trade in religious relics, the item itself has no value, it borrows its value from its context: The rich person’s apartment or the gallery wall. However it might be considered another nail in the coffin of skilful art, the prestige of being a creator could be claimed by anyone with little effort.

I will end with a couple of random observations. Ai art seems to be producing no stars. Illustrators have a following, some draw their comic books on line so their fans can watch the process. Ai produces people who demonstrate the process. There is little interest in the final image only in the workflow which made it. Indeed the workflow might be considered the artwork rather than the image it creates. So there we are, a looking glass world. We are still in mid-air falling down the White Rabbit’s hole, what sort of landing is ahead is anybody’s guess.