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.
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