Hithergrass
Coming Home
The New York Times Ethicist recently published a "ruling" on the ethics of AI generative art. He was responding to a person who wanted to use an Etsy image but was concerned the seller was profiting off the work of artists used to train generative AI. The Ethicist pointed out that artists have always stood on the shoulders of other artists, an argument that resonates with me. The image you see here is not simply the result of prompting an image in Midjourney because I made quite a few changes to it in Kira, using the Stable Diffusion plugin and using my digital painting skills and tools (like rearranging the chickens, recreating the woman in the distance, giving the man a hat etc.). But my influence on the image goes deeper. I used Midjourney's personalize parameter to generate images that reflect my aesthetic, color choices, brush work, level of detail and so on. The training was simple. I was given four thousand sets of widely diverse images and told to choose one of them. In other words, this is my unconscious "style." Unconscious because I did not deliberately tell Midjourney everything I prefer when I am painting. And in the act of grabbing from the gush of images this personalization parameter produced, I chose this image. Probably because I have re-discovered NC Wyeth who is famous for his illustrations of the old childhood novel "Treasure Island." He influences how I use illustration to tell stories. And Edward Hopper influences the mood of my work. And Norman Rockwell. Did Rockwell absorb NC Wyeth? I think so. Caravaggio gives my work its lighting. And perhaps NC Wyeth's son Andrew suffused my work. He taught me how to pay attention to the world immediately around me. And perhaps to some degree hundreds of more artists famous and obscure seen in museums, art workshops, videos and Internet images. In fact I have produced over 800 images of the Ravensway world using this amazing productive power of AI. A world that has storytelling power.
Coming Home
The New York Times Ethicist recently published a "ruling" on the ethics of AI generative art. He was responding to a person who wanted to use an Etsy image but was concerned the seller was profiting off the work of artists used to train generative AI. The Ethicist pointed out that artists have always stood on the shoulders of other artists, an argument that resonates with me. The image you see here is not simply the result of prompting an image in Midjourney because I made quite a few changes to it in Kira, using the Stable Diffusion plugin and using my digital painting skills and tools (like rearranging the chickens, recreating the woman in the distance, giving the man a hat etc.). But my influence on the image goes deeper. I used Midjourney's personalize parameter to generate images that reflect my aesthetic, color choices, brush work, level of detail and so on. The training was simple. I was given four thousand sets of widely diverse images and told to choose one of them. In other words, this is my unconscious "style." Unconscious because I did not deliberately tell Midjourney everything I prefer when I am painting. And in the act of grabbing from the gush of images this personalization parameter produced, I chose this image. Probably because I have re-discovered NC Wyeth who is famous for his illustrations of the old childhood novel "Treasure Island." He influences how I use illustration to tell stories. And Edward Hopper influences the mood of my work. And Norman Rockwell. Did Rockwell absorb NC Wyeth? I think so. Caravaggio gives my work its lighting. And perhaps NC Wyeth's son Andrew suffused my work. He taught me how to pay attention to the world immediately around me. And perhaps to some degree hundreds of more artists famous and obscure seen in museums, art workshops, videos and Internet images. In fact I have produced over 800 images of the Ravensway world using this amazing productive power of AI. A world that has storytelling power.