Ai reference making "painting: What the hell are you guys doing"
- Thread starter LeonK
- Start date
This is slightly tangential, but I recently fed ChatGPT some prompts -
"I want to get better at airbrush illustration. Create a 30 day learning plan that will help an airbrush who already knows the basics of operating and maintaining the airbrush."
Here's a 30-day learning plan to improve your airbrush illustration skills, focusing on building technical proficiency, developing creative approaches, and refining artistic style:
"I want to get better at airbrush illustration. Create a 30 day learning plan that will help an airbrush who already knows the basics of operating and maintaining the airbrush."
ChatGPT said:
Here's a 30-day learning plan to improve your airbrush illustration skills, focusing on building technical proficiency, developing creative approaches, and refining artistic style:
Week 1: Technique Refinement and Control
Day 1-3: Gradients and Fades- Practice smooth gradient transitions between two colors.
- Work on creating even fades from dark to light with varying pressure control.
- Practice thin and thick line exercises to enhance control.
- Focus on curved, zigzag, and spiral line patterns to build steadiness.
- Create simple sphere studies to practice realistic light and shadow application.
- Experiment with layering transparent shades for depth.
Week 2: Texture Exploration
Day 8-10: Natural Textures- Practice creating textures like wood grain, stone, and clouds using freehand and stencils.
- Observe reference images closely and try to replicate textures.
- Work on techniques to create realistic skin tones and hair effects.
- Experiment with layering subtle color variations for natural results.
- Practice rendering reflective surfaces to understand highlights and reflections.
- Create simple illustrations (e.g., a metallic sphere or glass bottle).
Week 3: Composition and Layering Techniques
Day 15-17: Stencil and Masking Work- Create complex illustrations using homemade or purchased stencils.
- Practice layering to build detailed multi-layered artworks.
- Work on blending background elements into a piece without overwhelming the main subject.
- Explore fading effects and subtle color transitions for depth.
- Create a piece combining textures, reflections, and different materials you've learned so far.
- Reflect on areas needing improvement.
Week 4: Creative Projects and Artistic Style Development
Day 22-24: Study from Masters- Study airbrush art from established artists. Observe techniques and try to replicate or draw inspiration.
- Analyze what appeals to you stylistically and consider how to incorporate similar elements.
- Choose a subject or theme (e.g., a portrait, a nature scene, or a futuristic cityscape).
- Plan and start a project that reflects your artistic interests while using all learned techniques.
- Review your work from the past month. Note areas of strength and aspects needing more practice.
- Revisit any exercises that were particularly challenging.
- Create a full piece that showcases your improved skills, incorporating various techniques and textures.
- Dedicate time to refining details and making it portfolio-ready.
Additional Tips:
- Daily Warm-ups: Spend 15-20 minutes daily on basic exercises to keep your hand steady.
- Feedback: Share your work with a community or mentor to receive constructive feedback.
- Document Progress: Take photos of your daily work to track your improvements and build confidence.
2nd one was a slight tweak to the prompt -
"I want to get better at airbrush illustration. Create a 30 day learning plan that will help an airbrush user who already knows the basics of operating and maintaining the airbrush. Focus on animal portraits."
Here's a 30-day plan tailored to enhancing your airbrush skills with a focus on animal portraits:
"I want to get better at airbrush illustration. Create a 30 day learning plan that will help an airbrush user who already knows the basics of operating and maintaining the airbrush. Focus on animal portraits."
ChatGPT said:
Here's a 30-day plan tailored to enhancing your airbrush skills with a focus on animal portraits:
Week 1: Foundational Skills for Animal Features
Day 1-3: Fur Texture Techniques- Practice short, medium, and long fur strokes using different airbrush nozzle settings.
- Study animal photos and create fur swatches for various species (e.g., cats, dogs, horses).
- Work on rendering realistic animal eyes, focusing on reflections, shading, and the depth of the iris.
- Practice creating the wet look and layering transparent glazes for lifelike results.
- Sketch and airbrush simple head shapes of different animals to understand proportions and structure.
Week 2: Realistic Features and Expressions
Day 8-10: Nose and Muzzle Studies- Airbrush noses of various animals, paying attention to textures and highlights.
- Experiment with skin and nose textures (wet and dry).
- Focus on airbrushing ears of different animals (e.g., floppy dog ears, sharp cat ears, rounded bear ears).
- Practice creating inner ear details and hair transitions.
- Combine eyes, noses, and ears into a cohesive animal portrait sketch.
- Start with simpler animals (e.g., a fox or rabbit) to build confidence.
Week 3: Full Portraits and Realism
Day 15-17: Layering Techniques for Depth- Work on multi-layered approaches for full animal portraits. Start with base layers and build up highlights and shadows gradually.
- Practice airbrushing different animal fur patterns (e.g., tiger stripes, leopard spots).
- Experiment with realistic color palettes, understanding how to layer colors for depth and vibrancy.
- Practice blending techniques for smoother transitions between different fur colors.
- Create mid-size animal portraits, focusing on capturing the animal's expression and character.
- Work on popular animals like domestic cats or dogs to refine details.
Week 4: Advanced Techniques and Personal Projects
Day 22-24: Study Specific Animals- Choose specific animals (e.g., a lion, owl, or horse) and practice full portraits focusing on distinct features and texture variations.
- Incorporate background elements to add context without overpowering the subject.
- Work on portraits with different lighting effects, such as backlighting or dramatic side lighting, to create a sense of mood.
- Practice emphasizing highlights and reflections to add life to the eyes and fur.
- Analyze your progress over the past month and compare your work. Identify improvements and areas for further practice.
- Revisit any challenging areas to solidify your understanding.
- Create a detailed, full-scale animal portrait, using all the techniques learned over the month. Include varied textures, realistic lighting, and a strong composition.
- Spend time on final refinements to make the piece polished and professional.
Additional Tips:
- Observation: Spend time studying animal anatomy and how muscles affect fur direction and texture.
- Photo References: Use high-quality photos for reference to capture realistic details.
- Warm-ups: Dedicate 10-15 minutes daily to practice fur and eye exercises as a warm-up.
- Feedback: Share your work with fellow artists or a mentor for constructive feedback.
- Keep a Journal: Document your process, noting techniques that work well and areas you find difficult.
LeonK
Triple Actioner
That is of course also an approach, requesting a whole course. You wonder if it will come to the point that we discover fragments of tips and tricks from Dru Blair for example. Enough fodder to start lawsuits about.
I don't think it's enough of a threat - the LLM doesn't actually understand a word that it's written, it's acting like a very good parrot let loose with a search engine. If you've looked at Gemini's summaries on Google, there's a distinct pattern that if enough people talk utter nonsense online, that's what the AI is going to repeat... And people will take it at face value, which is a significant problem.
I'd defer to anyone with an ounce (or 28.3 grams according to Alexa) of actual knowledge of a subject over the AI's presented data
Anyway, who'd you actually sue? The LLM creators? The person who wrote the prompts?
I'd defer to anyone with an ounce (or 28.3 grams according to Alexa) of actual knowledge of a subject over the AI's presented data
Anyway, who'd you actually sue? The LLM creators? The person who wrote the prompts?
Maryf
Detail Decepticon!
that’s very funny.I don’t know enough about airbrushing to comment, but if I had the time and didn’t have to work and had other obligations I would have liked to have tried it, I might follow it anyway as an interesting experiment, aside from my usual playing around but it would probably take me a year at least.
Well, at its heart it's a very, very advanced parrot. But it's not magic
I can see things I feel are missing from the lesson plans, but there's no reason anyone has to stick to just that. And if I spent more time refining the prompts I could, for example, get it to do dagger strokes, dots etc. However... Much of the progression plan is sufficiently generic that it could be applied to any medium. Not all, but a lot of it.
*squawk* Polly wanna cracker.
I can see things I feel are missing from the lesson plans, but there's no reason anyone has to stick to just that. And if I spent more time refining the prompts I could, for example, get it to do dagger strokes, dots etc. However... Much of the progression plan is sufficiently generic that it could be applied to any medium. Not all, but a lot of it.
*squawk* Polly wanna cracker.
bex
Mac-Valve Maestro!
I think AI is both a curse and an amazing tool .
My opinion is it needs regulation which it doesn’t have currently.
I think the whole use of it is really messed up currently -
• positives
Step forward in tech
Blending art and computers
Given artist an amazing new tool that could open doors for art
Amazing aid for imagination or trying out ideas
Away from art ai has amazing Medical /social/ technological advances are limitless almost
•Negatives
As usual someone will control it for profit/capitalistic gains
It’s being used to put people out of jobs in all the creative industries
It’s flooding the internet google searches with fake images it’s going to be difficult to know what certain things should look like soon
It can be used to con/hurt/divide people ( I know there’s controversial artists out there who will paint anything requested - but when any Tom, Dick or Harry with half a braincell can type into ai program I want a picture of hate crime so I can provoke all the decent people on internet or scammers request ai for a fake image to fool vulnerable people into believing a lie. Most artist if someone turned up and asked for something like that the person requesting would be shown the door and told I’m not painting that - but ai computer has no morals so it creates these horrendous images)
It’s using more energy and greenhouse gases to store the images on servers
The images are “-stolen” for ai use to me it should be using a database of donated images for its program use.
And then there a really weird phycological thing happening at the moment with ai generated art which just has me in disbelief is that someone can look at a computer prompted image that was pixels mashed
together from all the other images on the internet in seconds creating people with 8 fingers and fridges with 3 floating handles etc and they say “oh my goodness - it’s amazing!” Yet an artist spends weeks painting a unique representation of an image and a person will say “ it’s ok, but my 8 year old niece can draw that”
I’m also not a fan of people claiming they have created something and they are an artist if it’s solely just putting prompts onto a program.
I think if you can use /incorporate ai but make it your own art and it’s used for positive, genuine art then it’s good and I just hope that ai in future gets some regulations to it. I’m not a huge fan of humans giving over thinking control to computers I’ve watch too much sci fi movies in my time to be happy about that
My opinion is it needs regulation which it doesn’t have currently.
I think the whole use of it is really messed up currently -
• positives
Step forward in tech
Blending art and computers
Given artist an amazing new tool that could open doors for art
Amazing aid for imagination or trying out ideas
Away from art ai has amazing Medical /social/ technological advances are limitless almost
•Negatives
As usual someone will control it for profit/capitalistic gains
It’s being used to put people out of jobs in all the creative industries
It’s flooding the internet google searches with fake images it’s going to be difficult to know what certain things should look like soon
It can be used to con/hurt/divide people ( I know there’s controversial artists out there who will paint anything requested - but when any Tom, Dick or Harry with half a braincell can type into ai program I want a picture of hate crime so I can provoke all the decent people on internet or scammers request ai for a fake image to fool vulnerable people into believing a lie. Most artist if someone turned up and asked for something like that the person requesting would be shown the door and told I’m not painting that - but ai computer has no morals so it creates these horrendous images)
It’s using more energy and greenhouse gases to store the images on servers
The images are “-stolen” for ai use to me it should be using a database of donated images for its program use.
And then there a really weird phycological thing happening at the moment with ai generated art which just has me in disbelief is that someone can look at a computer prompted image that was pixels mashed
together from all the other images on the internet in seconds creating people with 8 fingers and fridges with 3 floating handles etc and they say “oh my goodness - it’s amazing!” Yet an artist spends weeks painting a unique representation of an image and a person will say “ it’s ok, but my 8 year old niece can draw that”
I’m also not a fan of people claiming they have created something and they are an artist if it’s solely just putting prompts onto a program.
I think if you can use /incorporate ai but make it your own art and it’s used for positive, genuine art then it’s good and I just hope that ai in future gets some regulations to it. I’m not a huge fan of humans giving over thinking control to computers I’ve watch too much sci fi movies in my time to be happy about that
Maryf
Detail Decepticon!
Good points Bex. There’s definitely something wrong with AI stealing everything.
We’re learning fast not to trust what we see on the internet and it will have an effect on how people judge all art online. Things are changing now and there will be divisions, it’s hard to predict what will happen.
We’re learning fast not to trust what we see on the internet and it will have an effect on how people judge all art online. Things are changing now and there will be divisions, it’s hard to predict what will happen.
OK, but what?
Bearing in mind my focus on ML/LLM/"AI" isn't entirely in the artistic world, I'm not sure exactly how it should - or could - be regulated. Most regulation is after the fact, reactive rather than proactive, so what would/should it prevent?
In terms of learning, most of what I use gets its data from open source software, so training an LLM on that data is within the stipulations of the licence. For images, they're covered by copyright so they can't be reproduced by the AI, but it can learn the style. I'm conscious of the practice of copying the old masters (some copy the images down to the brushstrokes - they're not all counterfeiters...); is learning a style and producing work "in the style of" that different? One school assignment had me copy a Roy Lichtenstein picture (3 guesses which!); while that was nominally human learning, is it a world apart? No, I still can't churn out art-in-the-style-of in response to a few keywords.
I am concerned about the use of generated images to dupe people - I've seen some fairly poisonous ones lately; I like the idea of a moral compass for LLMs, but it presents problems such as whose morals? If you have an LLM operating on one culture's morals, there will be another culture which wants it to operate on theirs instead. And still others who will want none whatsoever.
One of the other areas that concerns me drifts into "conceptual art" - where a person has an idea, but no ability to execute it. Treading on thin ice - I'm inclined to only see someone as an artist if they can do both. Someone who styles themselves an artist on the back of AI prompts is - to me anyway - nothing of the sort. I've had the same issue with "contemporary" jewellery - while yes, you can wear a picture frame as a necklace, it doesn't make it so, nor does it make the "creator" a jeweller.
The whole area of regulation reminds me strongly of the attempts to legislate the internet. There's always a workaround.
Maryf
Detail Decepticon!
Duping people is definitely not good.
I suppose it depends what a person decides to create with AI images that would determine whether they would be considered an artist or not, they would just be a different type of artist. I think AI imagery is a great tool for airbrush artists. I’ve not explored it much and only discovered this week what it can do and I’ll be exploring it a bit more.
I suppose it depends what a person decides to create with AI images that would determine whether they would be considered an artist or not, they would just be a different type of artist. I think AI imagery is a great tool for airbrush artists. I’ve not explored it much and only discovered this week what it can do and I’ll be exploring it a bit more.
