I've now been on the current generation of tools for about a year. I like them, I'm going to keep using them, and expanding and doing new stuff. But the real thing this last year has taught me about making art with AI is that I really enjoy doing the same kind of art I do by hand.
It's funny how that works. You pick up something new and exciting, and you learn everything you can about it, only to fall back into quirks and style types you've always used. And that makes sense here. After all, my starting point with AI was using it to paint over my sketches.
The way my brain works, I like things that are deep, and detailed, and over-rendered and busy. Bustling with action and movement, where you can look at something forward and backwards and sideways and get a different experience from the thing. It turns me on. I find it fulfilling.
If you looked at the gallery work I did between 1997 and 2004, and the stuff I'm doing now, and I told you it was the same artist, that would make sense to you. Things like the line work and the way I draw by layering textures hasn't changed. What has changed is how fast I work.
AI has cut my production process way down. I was doing the math on this today. Pieces that would have taken weeks, and required a studio, paint, and monoprinting, and made a huge mess can now be created reliably in Photoshop and Stable Diffusion in a day or two.
For now, I'm still doing all my oh so serious 3D work by hand, but that's changing too. And I'm really excited about the freedom and flexibility that AI tools offer creatives. All kinds of new economies of scale that make art so much less painful.
It's beyond me how people can look at what's happening, understand the power that artists have now, and the power that everybody now has to onboard into art at any skill level or place in life, and see it as anything but the literal marvel that it is. I do not understand the fear.
We're entering an era that's totally new. Where the skills you develop as an artist are no longer dictated by your level of privilege. Where absolutely everyone who wants the freedom to make something beautiful, can learn enough to make a masterpiece in a few months. It's magical.
And the community that's built up around this has been incredible. I've never been good at communities, or community stuff. And this is legitimately the first time in my life where I've felt like I fit anywhere. I feel empowered, and it's refreshing to know I'm not the only one.
Anyway, I guess this is all a very long-winded way of saying thank you. Y’all are beautiful, and I love you.