I would like to say something about the 'image creators' or 'image generators' that are currently popping up like mushrooms on the internet. They are apps that independently draw, paint, or create pictures with a 3D effect. They do this on the basis of sentences that people type in. These sentences are also called "prompts".
It works like this. The app asks: what do you want to see? And then you type something in the box provided… hold on… and you have a ‘work of art’. If you don't know what you want to type in, you can take inspiration from absurd examples, such as: "a punk monkey eating cake" and you will see a punk monkey eating cake. (No, I'm not making this up! This example comes from the app StarryAI.)
The image generator StarryAI expresses its task as follows:
"Generate art 🎨 by simply describing what you want to see and our artificial intelligence transforms your words into art."
That is really different from working with Procreate, which is what I do. I paint myself, not with a real brush, but with digital brushes and pencils. I don't give the app sentences that it then translates into images. I create my iPad art myself.
Procreate offers me endless possibilities to draw and paint with different brushes, pencils, etc. Moreover, I can use many different layers and they can be switched on and off. I can also switch the order of the layers. I can use filters. I can change the transparency of colors. And so on, and so on.
Procreate is a complex combination of techniques and materials. you can interact with them, as artists normally do with their tools and materials. You can't command Procreate to draw a picture like you can with an image generator.
Besides, you don't want to know what comes out of such an AI image generator. That punk monkey I was describing just now, may be funny. But when it comes to people, the images are worse than clichés and prejudices; they are “harmful representations.”
Women look like Barbies. People in high-paying jobs and/or leadership positions are likely to always be white men. Germans walk in uniform. Criminals are black… And I can go on like this for a very long time. It's to cry. Because who created all those apps and fed them with information? That's right: we humans did.
So, just in case you think I'm typing in sentences and then wait for pictures to come up… No! I really create it myself. And I don't paint Barbies ;-) Just wanted to let you know.
Here you see a photo with a screenshot of StarryAI on the left and a number of cut-outs / details of my iPart artworks on the right.
