A.I is the worst thing to happen to Art.

A.I is NOT an artist’s tool. It does NOT add to the creative pool. (Note: I have reworded and reread over this post many times before I submitted it to make it more coherent. Few things enrage me like A.I does. Previous versions of this included more swear words than anything so here's a better attempt at it.)

As a former photographer's assistant, the above comic is irrational and absurd.

Some of my most favorite artists take horrible photos. And it feels so ironic because they know about lighting, their art says they have some knowledge of lighting. So why do they take bad photos?

Sure, every person out there has taken lucky photos that happened to have the right lighting, right timing, and a balanced composition. Those are lucky photos. If you're sitting here mumbling to yourself that you've done it on a consistent basis, maybe you're a natural photographer. You should definitely explore more so you can take amazing photos consistently.

I digress.

Lighting IS EVERYTHING. This is part why I'm successful as a traditional artist. I see other traditional artists struggling, and the first thing I notice is DARK PHOTOS. Or they photograph their art under a bright light that drowns out their colors or turns their black into a brownish faded blotch on their art.

For every art photo I post online, know that there are at least 5-15 other shots of that image in various lighting (shades open, shades closed, lights behind me, lights in front of me) this is how I get the closest to accurate real depictions of my art in a photo. This is why clients are always thrilled with my art because there is no drastic change in what they saw online versus in person.

No camera can create the perfect lighting, you have to create the perfect scenario to then take a great photo. And take many! As you look at the group of photos you took, you may notice a fly flew in one of them. Or a shadow passed over your painting as a truck drove by obscuring the light ever slightly coming in. TAKE MORE THAN ONE PHOTO PLEASE.

I completed this piece that evening, so these photos were taken around 10 pm at night in artificial lighting. I needed to take daytime photos as well to get a good medium of the actual colors. It would rain for days, so I didn't get a daytime sun photoshoot till the following Wednesday.

Different lighting, different angles, it's so subtle but each makes a world of a difference if you know what you're doing.

And none of that knowledge is just from using a point and click camera

A.I should never have been introduced to the arts. It needed to stay within the medical community, where it helps advance medical technology.

A.I just allows lazy people to use it and claim ownership of nothing but a few words they wrote in a prompt. Then the A.I takes from artwork that already exists and morphs it into a hellish lifeless corpse and calls it art.

I can draw a cat with my eyes closed. I have enough muscle memory from drawing for 30+ years that I can perform drawing things like stars without a second thought, my hand and wrist just produce them.

I liken this to a martial artist who has practised the same kick for 30+ years. Both people are practising an art that takes sacrifice and time to build.

When I was a photographer's assistant in the 90’s, we were still painting colors physically onto black and white photographs. Remember that fad? Of black and white photographs with one solitary Red balloon or Green ball bouncing in a puddle. Everyone had them in their homes. I had to learn how to apply a special ink designed for photographic paper, it was painstaking because real photographs have ridges, they're not flat, so the ink pooled easily, making it blotchy and a fail.

Digital editing apps were not readily available to the public. I had just finished learning how to paint properly onto black and white photographs, without leaving blobs and brush strokes, when digital editing was publicly available and now what I had just learned was instantly obsolete. It's kind of funny to think of having a useless skill, knowing how it was at one point such a thing of pride to know.

But there were still many huge advancements to digital editing and cameras that it didn't clear out all the photographers worldwide. It was a true tool that we had to learn to keep up with everyone else because it was very useful. No more tears over wasted inks and expensive papers.

A I had been wiping out art jobs from editorial artists, writers, animators-and illustrators, we are seeing whole animation companies shut down because contracts got ended and the people with the money are going to A.I where they don't have to pay 30 people. They pay 2 people now.

They say that if you feed the A.I generator your artwork, that it can help you by predrawing stuff to get you to detailing points faster, etc. No and no. The fact that it spits out random shit every fucking time, even with the same prompts and same images, proves how much of a waste that is. Then the artist has to fix the bloody thing before they can get to finalizing details. So where was any time saved? I could go on till I turned purple of why A.I is shit and not helpful, but I don't need to. The ones who know, already know this. The ones on the fence can't be convinced by someone like me. This is purely for my “I told you so” moment in x amount of years from now. I've always been anti A.I and continue to do so.

I'‘m scrolling on my social media feed and see my illustrator heroes- who used to charge hundreds for their art, are now offering their wares for less than what I charge!!! Artists of all ranks are desperate, we have mounting bills and living during a pandemic with multiple wars, a housing and humanitarian crisis, our jobs are disappearing and have consistently stayed this way since last year when A.I generators were forced on us. There has been ZERO job inventions by A.I, that didn't displace roomfuls of artists in turn. For every new A.I job, at least 30 real artists have been let go, lost contracts or regular commissioners.

Now we are seeing the birth of A I newsrooms, where there is only one human putting it all together. The rest is all A.I. only one salary to pay now.

There has to be a universal income for everyone soon as A.I continually displaces whole groups. Free schooling should be mandatory for everyone who now has to change their whole career scope to a job field that A.I can't touch.

Or does A.I get all the jobs now?

Adding A.I to the art industry was never like adding digital art to the industry. A.I has never CREATED jobs. It's just taken away. It's allowed lazy people with too much money to find a way to puff their egos. They don't sacrifice anything but money that was never theirs to begin with. Crypto is equally a bullshit scam, it's in line with NFTs and A.I so just miss me on all that.

I will be over here drawing with charcoal from my fireplace, I will bake mud clay sculptures in the sun. The artist in us all will prevail. It's what keeps the fires burning inside of us to fight this shit as it's forced on us.

If I didn't need to pay bills with my art, I would still be creating. I have so much to say with my hands. It's never been about doing it for money. It was always a genuine love of bringing something from my imagination, out into the world. But if noone saw it, I would be fine. I've always been fine just being the sole viewer of what I've made. Because I’m old enough that most of my art has been created in secret, pre-internwt times, there was no social media to share it. It never originated in my head as a child to create things for money. It eventually turned to that, in a desperate attempt to survive as an artist and pay bills.

Not now, not ever, 🚫 NO A.I 🚫

This is an example of what my social media feeds look like. It's scary out there. A.I is NOT helping artists. It was all for capitalistic gain.