Being a Digital Artist in the Age of AI

When I started teaching myself to draw, it was about 4-5 years ago. A friend on threads suggested I get some number 2 pencils and practice. Over the next several years, I kept changing mediums. I did oil pastels, pens, ball point pens, micron pens, gel pens, alcohol markers, acrylic markers and acrylic paint. They all had the same problem. Space.

Our house is about 800 square feet. Mind you its 100 years old, so I don't mind the small space as the place has a lot of character. But its hard to store piles of canvases, sketchbooks and art supplies. So a few years ago on Father's day, my wife got me a Samsung tablet with an S-Pen. It was the greatest gift I could have asked for.

I know the popular go-to drawing tablet is an iPad with Procreate, but I hate Apple products and have used Android since it first came out. Nothing I use is Apple and wanted my art to sync to my current devices. So we got a Samsung and I found Infinite Painter to be a great art app.

For one, it costs 10.00 for a lifetime license. That makes it less headache out of the gate. There are numerous styles and brushes to use, and using oil or acrylic brushes, people have complimented my prints on the texture and how much lit looks like a physical painting.

The tablet has also helped me not have to rely on one style:

My favorite is liquid abstract and drawing the whacko faces and people. I like to see how unhinged I can make things. As I learned, people say they love how they look, but I rarely sell anything when I was actively selling art.

Mind you, the economy sucks and everyone is broke so art is likely not people's top priority right now. But its times like these that it is important to keep creating. So I made this blog. It's also a haven outside the clutches of corporate social media. That's a nother blog post for another day.

I know a LOT Of digital artists right now really struuggling because of AI. Their art is so precise and pristine, people just assume its AI. It's a rather sad commentary of the state of things when amazing manual artists are constantly haveing to prove they created their art by hand.

I haven't had this problem yet, and I assume its because my stuff is so messy and imperfect that no one thinks its AI. And that is what I love about my art. The imperfections is what makes it perfect. It's easy to fuss over a perfect straight line or a stray mark, but to me, its those things that give each piece unique character.

I think my autistic and bipolar brain functions in such a way to embrace the chaos. I know not everyone is wired this way. Some friends of mine can't stand any kind of imperfection on their art, but I wish they could, because that would add so much to their work.

I don't really have a solution. The AI accusations have become witch hunts in some part of the artist community where people go around accusing everyone of using AI. Here are some realities. Something is NOT necessarily AI if:

You can't do it yourself

It looks hard

It looks "clean"

It took a long time to finish or a lot of work

I could go on. The key here is, just because an artist has incredible skill, especially among realism artists, doesn't mean its AI. Just because you yourself couldn't do it, doesn't mean its AI. There are certain tells if something is AI. Those tells are getting harder to differentiate as the technology improves. That said, I think we as artists could all stand to be a little nicer to each other. It's already tough for us out there.

I totally understand the frustrations. But eating each other alive isn't going to solve anything. The best we can do is support each other, enjoy each other's art and if you see something you think is AI, maybe do a deep dive into it before popping off.

On a side note, those AI detection tools are bunk. They use AI to tell if something is AI and they are wrong a good percent of the time. A writing one said Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was AI. Now on meta, if you use certain tools in Canva which uses a lot of AI, it will flag your post as AI which has created a whole new level of mayhem in the community.

I use Picmonkey which so far doesn't use AI and banners I make there don't show get flagged on Facebook. Just one suggestion. Ultimately the world is going to keep advancing and it is up to us to keep creating.

I don't fuss over AI because I have little control over it. I've lobbied my local lawmakers to crack down on data centers and tighter regulation as to what AI can be used for and how its implementaed. But yelling at someone on Facebook for using AI isn't going to benefit me or anyone else. Especially if I'm wrong. I don't like bullying people and think there is already too much of that. No need to cut each other's throats.

I get it AI is a plague and everywhere. One baffling trend I see lately is actual artists and tatto artists who create and draw their stuff by hand, using AI flyers to promote their work. Its really bad in the indie film scene. Whats funny is these same folks will terrorize someone for using AI in their art, then they post an AI flyer for their project or event.

I don't get it myself or undertand the lack of self awareness. Recently with my logo just out of curiosity I had Google Gemini fix the lettering since I inititialy hand wrote it on there, It looked good but I felt bad about doing it. So I did it in picmonkey manually.

It's not perfect, but I think it has its own character. I tell people honestly I'd rather see your poorly hand drawn flyer than an AI one because it is YOU. I'll take authenticity over perfection any day. That is the key, hand made art, be it digital or physical is authentic. Its our real thoughts and feelings. AI can never duplicate that. No matter what kind of elaborate prompt you put in, it will always be a machine generated art, incapable of feeling or provoking feelings. That's the gift every artist has and to which we must hang on to at all costs.

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