This brain dump is not endorsed by this site. It is not reflective of official policy (which has been clearly stated several times) and is not an endorsement or condemnation of AI. I’m just chatting because some of the stuff said here makes me very curious.
If everyone adapts to AI-generated content, drawing and painting yourself will cease to exist
I am sure this is going to sound snarky, but I’m sincere.
Do you feel that everyone has abandoned traditional media for digital art, like Adobe’s products, Clip Studio Paint, Corel Painter, ProCreate, ArtRage, SAI, Inkscape, Vecteezy … all the other drawing tools?
All of the artists I ever talk to have adapted to digital art. Most have digital versions of their work available on line, like on Amazon. I am pretty sure all of us have more than one graphics tablet and drawing program on our computers that we use at least once a day. Sometimes all day. Sometimes all night, too.
But we all also have our favorite kind of paint, our favorite paint producer, our favorite canvas sources, our favorite pencils and pens.
Mine is the
Mitusbishi Hi-Uni 2B. Peal the wood back and the exposed drawing-part is like a little paint brush. It’s incredible.
Mitsubishi still makes traditional art supplies. They make a lot of money doing so, and there’s no sign that they’ll ever stop.
Hell, people are still inventing some of the most amazing quill nibs that you’ve ever seen in your life.
When photographs became possible, some feared traditional art would die.
When movies appeared, some feared books would fade from existence.
When the internet appeared, some feared the coming of the singularity.
But we all have the ability, often within reach, to sketch something. And we all have books. And brains that are not wired to each other.
This is kind of the same thing. People who write copy are terrified that their jobs will be gone. And, to be fair, some probably will. For myself, I sometimes have to write copy for something, and I do use ChatGPT to help me. It’s like holding a drawing up to a mirror. Sometimes when you see it from someone else’s perspective, it helps. Even if that someone else is an AI.
And drawing programs like Photoshop and Krita have existed since the early nineties. But we still have drawing pads and pencils specifically for line art.
It’s been a quarter of a century that digital drawing has been a think, but traditional media and artists are not gone, nor are the tools and materials for them. If anything there are MORE traditional media and tools available today than ever before, in some ways because of the internet.
Like the Takahashi G-Pen dip pen nib.
Gaze upon it and fall to your knees! Be overwhelmed with AWE!
Those little cuts on the sides of the nib? The hold ALL THE INK IN THE WORLD! You can ink an entire FACE with one of those from a single dip!
Personally, I don’t see traditional media going away at all for any reason other than humans are completely wiped out. In fact, I see traditional media becoming more fun, more of an art, less of a 12 hour a day grind to create images for advertisements.
It’s kind of like what Jay Leno says about horses.
The car didn’t kill the horse, it saved them. Hundreds of them a day that were dying on over crowded streets or in overstuffed stables in big cities. The car made the horse a valued luxury item. It made horses precious.
Ebooks is doing the same for Books.
And the more people get into the AI stuff, the more I’ve seen them slowly begin drawing for themselves.
Because the AI stuff right now is limited and self-tainting. Getting an image that matches what is in your head is … well, kind of a game of chasing pixels and negotiating with the AI as to whether what you wanted was what you wanted, or what the computer wanted to give you. And with in-drawing and all the stuff that goes on trying to create a perfect image, people who do it are becoming better at getting what they want from digital tools.
And that includes Photoshop. It didn’t result in a world with no paper or pens.
So … I’m curious.
What is it that you see that is frightening you so much? What do you see happening around you that tells you that traditional art is dying and doomed?
If the internet were to permanently shut down today (it won’t) the world will descend into chaos …
Funny albeit off-topic story. I accidentally turned off the internet for Minnesota one afternoon. I was trying to fix a routing issue for almost a half hour, and someone asked; “Hey, is the internet down for anyone else?” HA HA Whoopsie!
Minnesota survived. The only chaos was me explaining to my boss the whoopsie and my co-workers giving me shit about it for … well, to this very day.
