The Amulet - Putting the things that I have learned so far to the test

 Two rogues entered a tomb and sought the Amulet. Once they found it, the dead came back to reclaim it.

This time I didn't even put it in the AI. I can see that there is polishing to do, but I wanted to see where I was at on my own. The colors are muddy and clearly extracted from the black and white. 

I wonder if I can give it another pass and really push it to final.

Thirsty Dragon - Working on details

Final Painting

This time I had a strong idea on what I wanted the painting to look like. Once I got it to a point where I though I was done, I put it in the AI and asked it to cleanup/polish it. That made me realize that mine was quite blurry and unpolished. 

I asked my friends side by side what they thought and they agreed that mine was just not polished. 

So I put in the hours and painted all the details. The thing I learned is that once you pick a size of the brush for your details (that is small) you will realize how rough your painting still is. But then I didn't want to detail every inch of the painting, just the focal point, which is the dragon head, the kids and the lady.

My friends also gave me good feedback: 

- Remove the boat, it's not important to the story,

- It looks like the dragon is drooling... yup... until they said it I didn't notice it.

- Looks like the lady is sleeping - I used the liquify tool to rotate her head up a bit and made her look less sleepy and more like she is looking down.

- Simplify the foliage in the FG

- Clarify that pot.

Using the AI picture as reference, I also did some color adjustment, and used it as reference for the level of detail that I wanted. I also changed the color of the clothing of the lady. I think I liked that blue-green better.

Thoughts

Working on this painting, made me think about art in general while using AI.

There are I think 3 scenarios:

1) You ask the AI to make a picture and you use that as final... I don't think that really counts as art... even if you use it to adjust it. The only thing you put in is a thought... but there is nothing of your experience in it.

2) You ask the AI to make a picture, and then copy it. That's what I did earlier in the painting of the sorceress. I think that's a great way to learn the technique. I would count this as a Study... not as art still...

3) You make a painting by yourself, or do the initial idea with thumbnails and put that into the AI and get a picture back. This can spark your imagination further and can lead to a better painting. I think this can be considered art, as it is your idea, your work and technique, and the AI is used more as a reference rather than the medium.

The way I see it AI can give you a mirror. It's like looking at your picture from another perspective, and that I believe can help you turn your painting into more of what YOU want. 

I have not experimented with taking pieces from the AI and paint on top of it.... but that would be cheating, and that is not why I study how to paint.

My Initial Painting

The AI Picture generated from my painting.

 

If you can't beat 'em... LEARN!

After eating a massive humble pie by putting one of my drawings in the AI and see how it would fix it, I figured, why not use it to learn something? So I asked it to make a dark fantasy painting with a sorceress and ruins, and it spit out that image below. Now that's quite a reference to start from!

Yes, I can't get it as crisp as the AI, and obviously not nearly as fast, but I am happy with the result. I also noticed that in a way I am more happy with my painting because it's a bit more cohesive and painterly. I also noticed that the AI made some mistakes, such as the column on the left, I instinctively painted it with a cool highlight due to the sorceress' magic, while the AI ignored the lighting and made the column reddish. I also simplified the sky a bit and lost a bunch of edges to keep the focal point onto the sorceress. I can see that her skin probably need a bit of a highlight - trying to make it pop a bit more.

I used a few adjustments layers, but I was merging the layers pretty fast, because I wanted to keep it as a painting. Some adjustment layers were to turn the greyscale to the initial colors, then an add layer for the magic. I also messed around with the saturation to bring out the color in my focal point.

I used a pencil (Waratah) brush for most of the painting, for both drawing and coloring. By tilting the pencil on Ipad I can get the pencil to soften and do softer edges and blend near colors together.

The pencil is also great for the value painting, and it's really good at describing edges. I think I will make it a part of my normal toolset.

For the clouds I used a watercolor brush.

I had a lot of problems with painting the face. I was not happy with the level of detail so I would zoom in and try to work on the features, but when zooming out it looked weird, so I started from scratch. I did not zoom in and instead I used the larger pencil as if I was doing a value study. I left her features not as defined as the AI but in the end I am happy with it.

At the end of the painting I added a soft noise filter to posterize it a bit and avoid the fully digital look. 

In conclusion, what do I think about AI? When used correctly it can be very useful for quick iteration. I just imagined making a bunch of sketches, putting them in the AI and ask for different color combinations. Using it as a reference tool it would be pretty amazing. It is frustrating how quickly it can spit out incredible images, but the way I see it it's like a very clever collage. 

One thing I do NOT like is that people call it AI ART. The AI is not doing anything inherently artistic. The way I see it, AI should be thought as Photography or Collage. It is an Image Processing software, nothing more. I believe that art is reserved for humans, or at any rate creatures with the creative daemon. While the artist plunges in the depths of humanity, and brings pieces of it to the surface of reality, the AI simply takes a screenshot of it.

 

My Painting

What Chat GPT spit out

The process

A Pearl for the Necromancer

I made this one on an IPad. There was an update for new brushes on Procreate, so i wanted to try them out. 

It's not great, but I had a lot of fun painting it, and I learned a lot too. 

I kind of resolved the issue of turning lines into shapes without losing the details. 

It starts with the pencil, if I get a lot of the shadows with the pencil (red in this case) I am already half way there, as I can figure out the big stuff early on.

Then for each figure I color with a local color mid tone. To choose the color I think "What is the local color of this object?" let's say it's yellow Then I think about what is the ambient color for the parts of the shape that is in shadow? (blue, red etc...) or what is the light color for the part of the shape in the light. Then I hue shift the chosen color towards the light or shadow color.

Once I have a mid tone on the shape (usually I keep it a little darker) I choose the shadow color as described above. At this point it just becomes like shading with a pencil. Some brushes are better than others, but I can always use the blender as a last resort. 

This was all done with a single brush called "Velleia" under the new Paint section of the brushes.

When I was done, the colors were too bland, so I know I have to work more on that, and also how to create strong lighting effects. But this was a blast and reminded me a lot of those old painting in tabletop rpg rulebooks. 

The picture was inspired by a Clark Ashton Smith story: Necromancy in Naat.

 

Barbarian

Una tecnica in divenire

Ma si', dai, questa tecnica funziona, ma ci sono cose che non mi sono venute bene. Pero' l'idea e' li', ancora offuscata dalle mie mancanze tecniche o di pratica.

Innanzitutto faccio il disegno con la Pencil, poi disegno con la PencilCarving per creare la silhouette del personaggio. Poi con layers con "clip to layer below" continuo ad aggiungere dettagli. Questo e' importante per rimuovere i "blurry edges" della figura.

Poi scolpisco il personaggio con la pencil a low opacity (aggiustando la size e saltando dal bianco al nero). Poi uso il Blender (quello normale) per togliere le linee troppo definite. Questo rende il disegno un po' pastoso. 

A questo punto uso l'Airbrush fino alla fine. Praticamente uso 3 settings su questo brush:

Density/Opacity: ovviamente, piu' o meno coperto di colore.

Size: usando i shortcut allargo e restringo il brush per creare linee piu' piccole (definite) o larghe (ombre soffici).

Hardness: questo non lo uso tanto, ma si puo' usare per creare linee piu' dure sugli angoli del brush. 

Poi salto dal bianco al nero per creare luci e ombre. Mi pare davvero di scolpire la figura piuttosto che disegnarla. 

Quando devo aggiungere piu' dettagli torno alla "Matita", li aggiungo su un altro layer e ricomincio il processo. Quando sento che il layer e' pronto ad essere combinato lo faccio, perche' poi posso continuare a dipingere all'interno.

Nota: Quando faccio il merge, mi tengo una copia del layer precedente... giusto in caso... e anche per comparare i disegni.

 

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Value Studies

 Trying to practice painting. Starting with value studies, which allow me to focus on composition, depth, and of course light and shadow. This is probably my favorite step in the process. 

I use a simple flat pencil tool on Clip Studio and adjust the opacity. Sometimes I use the Painterly Blender, which has become one of my favorite tools.