His Most Noble Highness Prince Meriendor Fardove, Prodigal Lord of the Night Sky

I recently did my first art commission for a near and dear friend who wanted a portrait done for a character they are role-playing. Aren’t RPGs awesome?!

Here is what the client gave me to help cement who their character is.

My character is His Most Noble Highness Prince Meriendor Fardove, Prodigal Lord of the Night Sky, but his friends call him Meri! He’s an astral elf and he is literally the prince of the moon, so he has a pink/blue galaxy theme going. He’s a fairly feminine pretty boy, high on the androgyny, and he’s an Abberant Mind sorcerer, so a little on the weird side. When he was a child, he was sent to the mortal world to learn from one of the high elf families down there, but when he lost his sense of humor at the Witchlight, his family deemed him too weird to come home and rule. He’s on a quest to prove his worth and be allowed to go home to the moon. He has a deep belief in manners, morals, and always doing the right thing.

I absolutely love the detail in this. There is so much to work from, and it really gives you a sense of who Meriendor is. And yes, we are on a first name basis but you may call his Your Host Noble Highness. This is the kinda stuff I love as an artist. Gives me a lot of ideas for imagery to pull from, which still giving me freedom to bring my own interpretation to the character.

Reflecting on my first art commission

To be perfectly frank, I’ve been anxious of do an art commissions in so much as I am an artist who does this for the joy of it. And while I hope to eventually get to a place where I can pursue my art full-time, I know second-hand from very established artist friends that once you start doing art for pay, your relationship with your art can change. More directly, there is both a tension and a balance of doing the piece I want to do versus meeting the needs and wants of the client, who is after all paying you for your time and energy. So much of where you end on that scale is dependent on the client — choose your clients wisely!

To the astute reader of this site, I’ve certainly done work in the past such as with a local winery, a local pizza/catering , and even a filmmaker friend; however, this is the first art-art commission that is not commercial in nature.

A great client makes happy artist. Thankfully this person is quite familiar with my style. Aside, do I even have an established style yet? I’m flattered that they think so! And as such, they were very comfortable giving me the freedom to create something we both love. Which is always the gift that keeps on giving.

The struggle is real

I will admit I struggled with this piece toward the end, in part as I’ve never quite been satisfied with the image when viewed small-scale. There is something about the mouth – I think it’s the values – that does not quite sit with me. I may finally figure it out and send the client a revised final. But as with any artwork, at some point, you have to let the process come to a conclusion. And more so trust, based on feedback from the client, that they are satisfied with the piece.

Which is to not say I’m not proud of the piece; I am. But as a person is trying to grow my craft, I think it’s important to remain objective about your artwork in order for you to reflect and grow.

Aside from some issues with values, I really do like the more cropped version where you can really see a subtle, dare I say, sublime look to Meriendor. I fully admit I’m enamored with the canvas texture I added to the image even if it’s fully digital picture; sadly, it does not render well when zoomed out due to the moiré effect, but nevertheless I think it looks amazing close-up.

Client reference pieces

The client provided some initial inspiration for their character with some images. It’s startlingly how good AI-generated image (bottom image) are, and while I was tempted to use more of it as a template for my version, I opted to not go to strongly in that direction lest I fall to creating a derivative work.

And then there are my own references

With both textual and visual references in the proverbial hand, I then went on an internet safari hunt for my own reference photos. A lot of times in personal pieces I use myself as the reference, but in this case I thought it was important to look elsewhere to ensure this was not just another vanity piece.

We both really liked the bottom photo, especially as I could see the character’s hand up cupping a ball of magic to help tell the story of who they are. He is, after all, an aberrant mind sorcerer. Additionally the lighting and colors were already close to what I was thinking for this piece, which always makes adapting a reference easier. I really wanted some depth so I added a moon … whether it’s Earth’s Moon or not is open to interpretation.

Process

Of the pieces I’ve done recently, I think this captures some of the process that a piece goes through from concept to final rendering. You really get the sense I did not have a good handle on the face in the first half during composition and value study. I had to go back and repaint the entirety of the face toward the end. And as noted above, I might still make revisions.

Originally I wanted to have a more bare-chested version, but the client felt it did not fit with the reserved, proper nature so we added a sheer shirt and ensured that arm was mostly covered. I added a lot of finer details included the small unicorn horn pendant, and other embellishments that would convey a person of high pedigree.

Not matter what quibbles I might have as an artist with my own work; it comes with the job description, I think; at the end of the day, it’s ultimately the client who has the final word on an artist’s output.

I love it SO MUCH!!! Thank you so much for this – it’s absolutely stunning!!
The Client

How can I possibly disagree with that?

Kazumichi, Magus Kensei

I recently started an IRL game with folks local to me at a newly opened gaming shop, Secret Lair at Lake Chelan, in our hometown of Manson, Washington.

For the past many years we’ve played entirely virtual table-top (aka VTT), and so actually getting together around a physical table to sit down is quite a treat. There are real dice to roll! And real figurines to move around a map! And there are real people to talk to, oh my! Okay, 2 out of 3 ain’t too bad. Joking aside, to put in context, it’s been more than 10 years since I spent more than a few minutes in-person with folks outside of my immediate family; the joys and tribulations as both a fully-remote technologist and being autistic – so there is some real anxiety being around other folks, even if we are each other’s peeps. So a part of getting out is just re-normalize myself to being around people, and try to continue to make inroads in our community which I adore so much.

I’m pretty familiar with D&D 5e, and while I did play a bit of 3.5e when that was all the rage, I’ve never played Pathfinder 1e which is based on 3.5e. Our DM is bringing us through an urban fantasy to boot, which is also new to me. As a bit of self-indulgence, I opted to roll with Kensei Magus, or in layman terms, a sword-wielding master who can add magic to their attacks. Think a Japanese swordsman of yore with a bit of Gandalf thrown in for good measure.

And before folks try to correct me, the correct pronunciation is KENsei (剣聖／けん・せい／), not KENsai, regardless of what Paizo Publishing might put in print. Just saying.

The self-indulgence? Well, first I have a black belt in Kendo (Japanese sword-fighting). Second, I speak Japanese sorta fluently (fluently enough to have once worked as a Japanese interpreter in aerospace manufacturing). And finally, I named the character after myself. Self-indulgence in three, indeed!

My character’s name is 和道 (KAZUmichi). You can address me, I mean him, as Kazumichi or Kazu, but don’t call him Kaz. He hates that. And for the record, so do I.

A bit of trivia. I choose the name of Kazumichi for myself when I first lived in Japan some 30 years ago as a bit of an homage to 1) Japan, 2) my Kendo training, and 3) a play on words of my English name. On that last part, an alternative pronunciation is WAdou, which is very close to how Japanese might pronounce my English name as WAdo. If I’m being utterly honest, and I am, I really did not like that pronunciation, especially it’s the same pronunciation for Microsoft Word. As for the first part, the first character 和 generally means “harmony” or “peace”, but a more archaic meaning is Japan(ese). So an archaic understanding of the characters might lead one to interpret to “way of Japan”, which is a fitting auto-appellation for a full-of-himself young American kid living in Japan. 🙂

I will admit that my character was (deeply) inspired the recent Netflix series, Blue-eyed Samurai. If you’ve not watched it, stop reading and go and watch. It’s okay, I’ll wait. See what I mean? An amazing TV series. One of the best in the last few years. And, you’re welcome.

Now given the fact that that I named my character after my Japanese name, I thought there was no reason to not use myself as a reference in the portrait. Granted, I did end up creating a character portrait closer to my IRL age of 50 than my character’s age of 27, but a bit of retcon never hurt anyone, right?

I really wanted to role-play with a familiar as I’ve not done in a quite awhile, and thankfully Pathfinder 1e makes that pretty easy. And when I raw across a Dracula parrot (it’s real, google it), I knew exactly what my familiar would look like. And I decided to name them 闇 or YAmi, which is the Chinese character for absence of light, and resonance with both the benign such as twilight or darkness, but also the more sublime such as Japanese mythology where some gods exist.

Since Kensei can’t use armor or a shield, we need a way to survive first contact with hostiles. We opted to make dump both his strength and charisma stats to ensure both his dexterity and intelligence are at 18 or 17, respectively. In gaming parlance, he’s a lanky DEX(terity) monkey. And while folks might assume he’d wield a katana, as a bit of meta-gaming he’s a master of scimitars in order to leverage Dervish Dancer feat to wreck the game’s action economy. We might be leaning toward role-playing, but it’s hard to resist a bit of Min-Max’ing.

As an artist, I love to share my references as I think too many people, especially other self-taught artists think that references are some kind of sign of weakness, when in fact since time immemorial, references are a staple of every accomplished artist’s toolset. I’m not saying I’m accomplished, I’m just saying references are super important. And that fellow has one hell of a head of hair; color me jealous.

Left is the first version I made, but I really did not like a few elements such as the hair, lack of interesting embellishments, and Kazumichi’s clothing. Again, thank you for references to help find elements to help guide the details. I opted to do a bit of a paint-over to change out the hair, add some details like a Chinese dragon tattoo on the head, and a Chrysanthemum tattoo on the forearm. Kazumichi will not welcome at any Japanese onsen (hot baths) anytime soon; sadly. While I still not entirely stoked about the horns, I opted to put the proverbial pen down and call it complete. Who knows, maybe I come back to in a bit, but I’d rather move to another portrait.

Say hello to all the nice folks, Kazu.

和道と申します。どうぞよろしくお願いいたします。

Night at The Threshold

Normally I’d not post the following on this art site; however, given I created some original art assets for my group’s D&D sessions I thought it might be fun to share.

For some quick context, this post outlines the first half of a two-shot submodule I created for our ongoing, weekly D&D group. We are presently about to have opening night of our new inn, The Threshold, in the city of Waterdeep. My character, Erel, has gone out and bought some party favors, as it were, to help with said opening night.

Cast of Characters

Erel (me) – Aasimar paladin who was raised as First Fist of the Temple at Earsa. Suffice it to say, Erel is not city-slicker, and is often not entirely in sync with everything a large city has to offer. As explained in more detail below, Erel is a devote advocate for a martial art he calls shadow poetry, which establishes his motivations to create the most epic opening night for their new inn.

Oscar – Feywild ranger with a randy side to him. If it has a heartbeat and is attractive then expect Oscar to saddle up to become buddies with them. In two words, Oscar is a concupiscent trickster.

Sylvia – Goblin mage with a ferret, Thalum, as familiar. While a one-shot wonder of fire and ice, she is not amused by her natural feats in the magical arts. She appears to have an unhealthy relationship with Death.

Lucius “Leo” – human seafaring druid with a passion for ensuring all doors are closed. He also appears to be cursed. He is a granite anchor of the team.

Taryel – Triton fighter who loves shiny things and casually making friends with underwater dragons. She’s also good in fight, although we all know Erel is better at the long-game.

Background

The new owners of The Threshold are just a few days away from a grand opening of their new eating experience establishment. They’ve hired some eclectic chefs and bartenders to concote food and libation wonderments for anyone bold and adventurous enough to walk through the door.

Erel, erstwhile First Fist of the Temple at Earsa and now fallen Aasimar paladin is a founding member of The Threshold. He is most excited by an opportunity to introduce shadow poetry to the denizens of Waterdeep, where he knows there is more than ample fertile ground for his martial and literary arts, especially from those who enjoy the operas of Waterdeep that Erel finds enjoyable in the way an adult might enjoy children’s theater.

Erel, in his infinite wisdom, has decided to surprise his fellow adventurers with a grand, elaborate opening debut of both their inn and shadow poetry. It’s both a ceremony and celebration, an opportunity for each member of the party to be more formally initiated into Erel’s arts and learn more deeply about themselves. For this is the truest expression and intent of his moving poetry: find the truths hidden behind the facades (masks) we all wear in daily life.

Day of Shopping

Notes to DM

This section is meant to be interspersed with other party activities. These are light vignettes that are largely setup for Opening Night (not included for now due to spoilers).

First Thing in Morning

Erel wakes before everyone else to gather supplies for the celebration.

For any member of the party, they easily spot a mug with a note underneath it. It reads:

“hey all!

I’m off to get opening night materials for The Threshold.

It’s going to be epic!

I’ll be back later tonight. Don’t wait up for me.

yo, erel”
Erel, note to group

If they investigate (5 or better) they flip over the card and discover the poster-invitation on the other side. Regardless of this discovery or note, members will find larger versions of this side plastered throughout Waterdeep on poles and in the front of shops, et cetera. Erel has been busy.

Later That Same Day

Notes to DM

The party will not be able to find Erel, but throughout the day deliveries and packages start to arrive at The Threshold.

Feel free to embellish and create your own characters for the merchants, depending on party interaction.

Deliveries

The following items will be individually delivered by different merchants.

Water Fountain

This will be a large, stone basin that can fit in the courtyard. There is a pedestal in the middle of it, large enough to hold a large humanoid.

Investigations

5 or better: They will also see The Threshold carved in script on one side.
10 or better: anyone looking at it will ascertain that it could hold a reasonably sized statue.
15 or better: they will notice small doors carved all around the fountain near the base. Each door or gateway is different. Some are proper doors. Others are archways. You get the distinct impression a lot of thought has gone into each one. Each doorway can be connected back to a party member. Each doorway activates a glamor when examined closely by the person it’s related to, whereupon it comes alive and seems like reality in miniature.

Sylvia: a smaller door with what looks like smoke, fire and lightning coming from it. Icy wind escapes through the door. There are the markings of Death all around the door, and a hooded skull looking down upon any who might enter. The door is only slightly open.
Oscar: a woodland scene with a door made of two intertwined. There is a sense of movement in the bushes, and there are thorns such that it is easy to imagine that getting through the entryway without getting pricked is hard.
Taryel: This one is only discovered on the inside of the fountain near the bottom of the water. It’s an underwater cave entrance with gleaming eyes radiating from within.
Lucius: This one is discovered on the fountain pedestal. There are stairs coming up out of the water that goes to a closed door. It appears locked. There is a small rodent entry to the side of the door.
Erel: There is a round columned entry-way with carved columns toppled and shattered. Behind is a temple set up in the distance. It’s not entirely clear whether the temple is abandoned or not. The columns block further ingress. Next to the entrance is a single glaive resting against the remains of a standing column.

Insights

20 or better: They know Erel and while they do not entirely understand how Erel’s mind works, he is obviously up to something. They cannot quite put their finger on what or who, but they suspect it has something to do with a party member

Koi Fish

A merchant will arrive and start to fill the fountain with water and koi fish. The fish will be of varying sizes and colors. The merchant will add some lily pads to the fountain for the fish to find some shade and protection from aviary sorts.

Investigations

none

Insights

10 or better: the number of koi fish coincide with the number of party members and employees of The Threshold
15 or better: each koi fish actually resembles each party member in some way. Each member must roll independently to discover their own koi

Sylvia: There are a pair of koi (one small, one tiny) that always travel together. The tiny one is constantly swimming around the small one while shuttling to other koi.
Oscar: Medium-sized that appears to enjoy playing tricks on all the other koi. If anyone tries to interact with it, it will squirt water into their face.
Taryel: medium- to large-sized koi with iridescent scales, its colors changing from greens to blues to even purples. Even for a fish, it seems even more comfortable in its surroundings than all the other koi. It will explore the entire fountain and interact with air-breathers by coming to the surface.
Lucius: medium-sized koi that appears to change its color to camouflage itself. It tends to stay toward the bottom of the fountain wherever there are shadows.
Erel: large-sized koi with golden scales that remind members of his eyes. The fins of the koi come off in long, sweeping strokes and seem to more fly than swim through the water.

Masks

An artisan brings masks, each individually wrapped and a note attached with their names written in eloquent script.

born and bourn
into and by our ignorance

we our masks don and donnée
silent shadows we simper

moved till stumbling
we fall and fallen so arise
Poem on card attached to each member’s mask

Sylvia: ferret
Thalum (ferret familiar): goblin with a golden star over one eye
Oscar: Satyr
Taryel: Sea Serpent, its color changing in a fashion similar to one of the koi in the pond
Lucius: Rat with its mouth open
Lizardfolk chef: lizardfolk (it looks just like them with it on)
Magic chef: crystal facemask that refracts and reflects light. When you look toward her with it on, you can see your own reflection
Death chef: skull mask that goes down to top of mouth. His lips and lower jaw are visible, but his skin takes on a pale luster with it donned
Robot bartender: human face of nondescript features, it could be male or female, albeit slightly childlike features. The proverbial blank page for which a persona can emerge.
Mute bartender: mouth mask of clasped closed hands. When donned, their eyes glow.

Investigations

10 or better: these have no real magical properties other than some fey-like glimmers on them that help enhance some of their aspects

Insights

None

Crate of Figurines

A large wooden crate is delivered. Inside the crate are dozens and dozens of hand-sized figurines of a humanoid pirate in a dynamic pose.

Insights

10 or Better: They look like Lucius

Investigations

10 or Better: On the bottom each figure is inscribed “Lucius, Doorman to Heals”
15 or Better: At the bottom of the crate they will discover a set of human-sized clothes that match what the figurines are wearing.
20 or Better: On top of finding the aforementioned wardrobe, they perfectly fit Lucius and Lucius alone.

30 Years in the Making

30 years ago I tried to create a masterpiece. Discover whether I did or not. Or more precisely, learn how I took that “masterpiece” and made it better. And if not better then at least different.

Some thirty years ago while I was in high school I made a self-portrait using inks and water-colors (see below for this “masterpiece”). At the time, I was very much on a self-journey of a discovery of lines. I believed that all art was the intersection and continuation of lines, and as such my great conceit of that time was that all art was just lines morphing from one shape to another shape.

It’s obvious that this is a decidedly too narrow a view of art, but such are the thoughts of a teen living in a pre-internet day with too little access (or curiosity) of the greater art world, and too much hubris to go out and search for it. We’ll get back to this in a bit. First, a quick re-telling of the first self-portrait.

The Original, A Short History

As for this original self-portrait that I created circa 1992, I ended up giving this to my very best and dearest friend Nils Passion, then an exchange student from Germany. I never quite understood why he wanted it, at least on artistic terms it was not worth much mention. As if any of my art today warrants such mention is another such matter. But I digress and me being who I am, only on reflection I realize it must have been on a more human level of connection with me that gripped Nils to want such a piece; a realization that would never have come to me way back then. But again, I digress.

At some point, Nils or his parents saw fit to frame this work in one far too valuable for such a piece, but nevertheless they did and here we are today. My artwork in a gilded frame, a reminder to me that our friendship was valued far more than the art itself. That in itself is maybe worthy of its own post.

While recently looking at that rather baroque frame and my decidedly abaroque (sic) picture sitting in it, I thought it might make a good example of “progress as an artist” as it were. By doing a then and now comparison, I could capture my evolution as an artist over the last three decades. Albeit, to be fair that while it’s three decades on the clock, it’s really less than six years as an artist. To wit, I had largely been on hiatus to art, at least anything illustrative or painterly for more than two of those three decades. But that is a story for another time.

To Be An Artist or Not to Be An Artist

The short of it is that it was not till the time of my first visit to Norwescon back in 2016 did I entertain seriously getting back into visual arts. To be clear, in the years prior to this I had gotten quite serious into digital photography, and even dabbled with processing my own black and white medium-format photographs. This was while at Amazon when I met Tracy Boyd, part-time UX designer, full-time fine artist. I was loath to call myself an artist, but it was Tracy who insisted on the appellation, seeing in me something I could not see in myself at the time. For the curious, I saw photography as my way to come to terms with color. I hated using color in my teens. Color was magic, it was mystical. It was not meant to be used lightly, and as such I stuck to largely black and white artwork far into my early twenties as evidenced by my own self-portrait from this period. But again, I digress.

Prior to attending Norwescon for the first time in 2016, my partner Marit had recently went to a writers’ retreat where she meet, amongst other luminaries, Mark Ferrari. When she showed me Mark’s work, I arrogantly said (or minimally cowardly thought) I was as good as him. Hubris is something I have a few lifetime supplies of just laying around for times like this.

To be clear, I was not and I am still not anywhere close to Mark’s narrative abilities, visual or otherwise. But for whatever reason, seeing Mark’s work reminded me of my own work from my high school years. While too long to fit the full telling within this post, I had a conflicted relationship with the arts that culminated in me “leaving the arts” in my early twenties. Suffice it to say then that when I saw Mark’s own work it awoke in something I had forgotten I had ever possessed: a passion to be a visual story-teller. I yearned to be like Mark. I ached to be an artist. I needed to do art. Not photography; not that it is not art; but, I wanted to do art like I used to create for the first two decades of my life: with my hands, telling stories that only I could envision in my head.

Discovering I’m Not All That

So I got myself an iPad Pro, Procreate.app, and Apple pencil and immediately discovered I sucked. Not like sucked bad from my times from high school, but like sucked bad as if “I had never drawn a line before in my life but still delusional that I was amazing-balls bad”. That kinda bad. In short, bad bad. Insert a line about Dunning-Kruger here.

I was more than naïve about art and my abilities, I was whole cloth ignorant. Even wantonly ignorant. I had forgotten about composition. I had forgotten about values or shapes. I had never learned color theory. I had never seriously studied anatomy, if you can count Marvel Comics guide to drawing figures as anatomy study. In a word, I had forgotten everything and worse, had not really spent the years learning the fundamentals during the first two decades of life; pre-requisites to what it takes to create art or be an artist. I had no real foundation to draw upon, even though in my mind I was a Michelangelo just waiting to put brush to fresco to paint masterpieces. It was humbling in the mightiest of ways, and no amount of hubris (and I had and still have a lot) could anneal me against this truth.

To another person this might be common-sensical. I had spent more time “not riding the bicycle” as I ever had done riding it. It would be natural that I’d not be as good as I had been, but that was not a truth I was comfortable with at that time. In my head, I was a gifted and talented artist. Granted, maybe I was at the time of measurement; as a teenager I was moderately talented, but talent is but a mere accelerant. Talent in and of itself does not make you an artist, and especially not a master. Skill does, though.

Skill is something to be acquired, to be learned through the hard knocks of life unlike talent that is doled at in varying degrees at birth. Skill comes from thousands and thousands of hours of practical study. At the end of it all, talent provides but a thimbleful in comparison to the ocean that skill provides.

Thankfully for myself, I had matured a bit in three decades, and more than any amount hubris I’m maniacally accountable to myself. If I say I am an artist then I ought to get to the work of becoming an artist. And so, starting in 2016, I got started on trying to prove to myself that I was truly an artist – not just some memory of one – by setting out to acquire the skill necessary.

Some six years later and I’m still learning the fundamentals. I do not practice nearly as much as I would like. If I had as much discipline to art as I do to exercise, I’d be light-years further than where I am today. But still, I’m making progress. I have even done some professional work on the side that I’m moderately proud of.

As a consequence, as much for myself, I wanted to try my hand at something I had done in the past. I was curious how I might re-interpret something, both as an artist and as a person, with thirty more years of lived experience to draw upon (bad pun) along with the most recent six years dedicated to improving my craft.

Today’s Self Portrait, A Short Reflection

As I noted above, when I was in teens I saw all artwork as lines. So when I re-created this piece, I wanted to keep that philosophy intact. However, given I was not using linework, I instead tried to use values and color to tie elements together. In this regards, clouds morph into eagle and dragon, my face melts into muscle that flows down to a digital waterfall, and so forth. I’m quite pleased to be keep with the spirit of the self-portrait, even if this new approach is fundamentally different.

I think it’s pretty clear to even a casual observer that the original piece was not just naïve in technique; it was also thematically naïve, too. While I did not want to drastically to change the composition, I did want to reinterpret parts of it to be have a fuller vision of the original theme of the internal aspects of myself flowing out of me as expressed by the aforementioned connection that all things are lines.

On top of just making the piece more complete, I also wanted to incorporate elements that are more emblematic of who I am as I approach my fifth decade. In this aspect, the biggest addition is the dragon in the lower left. If you’ve spent any time on this site then I know I quite love dragons. I otherwise kept most of the other elements in the original, albeit with a few twists.

In regards to the muscle reveal on the right side of my face, it should be noted that this is not inspired by 進撃の巨人 (Attack of Titans), but instead my sister. It’s maybe a reasonable conclusion to make given my long connection to Japan, but it’s one of my older sisters who first introduced me to the concept. She had done pieces during her college years depicting people pulling their skin off like you would removing a shirt or parts, revealing the muscles underneath. I am not sure if she was inspired herself by another artist, but regardless, as an impressionable teen I was literally blown away by this, promptly trying to emulate this in my own pieces from that time.

Overall, I’m quite pleased with the results of this re-interpretation. I think it shows a clear evolution in visual story-telling. From the perspective of technique it’s clear that I’ve improved my rendering, along with overall improvement to anatomical correctness with own portrait. I definitely do not suffer from a fear of applying color like I did as a teenager where, as I wrote above, I saw color then as something mystical in nature, aberrant even. I think this self-portrait is a vast improvement, and one that I’m proud of (for now). I will be curious to come back to this in another decade to see what else I might bring to the narrative.

Attack of the Artistic AI Bots!

Earlier this month it was reported that an AI bot by the name of Midjourney took first place in art competition held in Colorado, quickly creating a storm of comments spanning the spectrum from welcoming our new benevolent overlord artists to the downfall of society (or at least art) as we know it.

No matter your take, the world of Art just heard clearly the clarion call of a revolution as great, and likely as disruptive, as the advent of photography. It was only two centuries ago that the photography was introduced to the world, and it would not be till the 1940s before it was seen as an artform. A similar journey awaited movies, and now video games.

The groundwork for this revolution has been quietly happening underfoot in some of the least likely, read: geekiest, of places such as at Google’s AI labs amongst others. While OpenAI’s DALL-E has been out and available for awhile, we now have any number of publicly available AI bots that have been created with toolsets that make them significantly more accessible to the average person.

More so, they are being commercialized as we speak. Midjourney, which made public its beta on July 12, 2022 – a scant two months ago – is in talks to raise capital at a $1billion valuation. While Midjourney has made the headlines, competitors are not very far behind with Stable Diffusion from CompVis along with a handful or more of AI generating image tools gaining traction.

But I’m not really focused on talking about the latest AI bot tools as this is changing, if not by the hour, then by the day presently as new training models, updated and improve toolchains, et cetera are developed and released. Regardless of whether you are a “glass half full” or “half empty” person, the last few weeks have been quite a white-knuckle ride.

In a lot of ways, these recent advances mirror the same ones I saw back when Adobe Photoshop and other digital photo tools become available for the Mac and then PC. Albeit the pace of innovation in 2022 is orders of magnitude faster than it was in the mid and late 1990s. Nevertheless, it’s the same conversation. It was said then that “real artists don’t use Photoshop”. Nowadays you cannot find amongst popular artists who do not include some amount of digitization into their toolchain. And I suspect will live through a period of “real artists don’t use Midjourney” nonsense.

If music videos killed the radio star, then there are people who say digital art killed the fine artist. But the reality is that none of this true. Yes, there are people who will always prefer the value of a physical object, as evidenced by art galleries the world over. My point is not that more traditional artforms are being replaced by digital, but that digital is maturing to be on par and peer to these other forms of art. The sale of Beeple’s work for $69 million at Christie’s is proof that there any people in the world putting “their money where their mouth is” when it comes to this thesis.

For myself, as an artist, worse than the doomsayers are those who have the opinion – both within and without the art world – that digital art, and now by extension art created with AI, are not real artists or real art; that somehow the use of more advanced tools diminishes the essence of the art produced. But if that is the case, then the whole of history since our ancestors put art on cave walls is so reduced.

The simple reality is artists throughout the ages have leveraged whatever tools were available to them to improve their craft. Just look no further than the camera obscura and camera lucida. There is mounting evidence shows that many masters of the time extensively used these tools. I would further argue that the use of these tools improved their work, minimally at least for those who did representational, perspective pieces.

Camera Lucida used by the great masters of the 18th and 19th century

I wrote on this before about art as artifact versus art as process, but too often we do not separate art as a consumptive experience from the creative experience. Which is to say, when we talk about “what is art?” there is rarely an explicitly shared common understanding of what qualifies as art. Worse, we often conflate the qualities of art, or aesthetics, with the art itself. We are all our own Justice Potter Stewarts when it comes to the definition of art: “I know it when I see it“. Which is really just an admission that art is subjective. Has been. Is now. And forever will be.

Just yesterday, I was chatting with Mark Ferrari, my good friend and artist/author extraordinaire, about this post’s topic. And while I may butcher what he said more elegantly to me then, I subscribe to his notion that:

“the essence of art is to take the internal and make it external so that others may experience it as the artist experiences it in their mind.”
Mark Ferrari (paraphrased)

That’s it. Everything is mere window-dressing, or more specifically technical aspects of the craft to make art.

Whether you use traditional processes and mediums such as oils, gouaches, watercolors or use, as I do, digital matters very little to whether something is art or not. These tools do not add to or detract from the value of the thing created. What really matters, and who is ultimately an arbitrator of the goodness of the art, is primarily the artist and secondarily the viewers of the art. Primarily the artist as only they know if what they created is true to the imagined internal concept they had. Secondarily the viewers as they can only affirm or deny whether the art they experience conforms to the expressed ideas of the artist. Note, you can invert the priority of primary and secondary, but then this is difference by degrees but not of type.

Based on this definition of art – which I believe is the only honest definition of art one can make – then the advent of AI bots to generate (or assist) with the creation of art in no way influences whether something is art or not. Or whether someone is an artist or not. To be clear: art itself is devoid of relationship to the means of its creation. The only question then is if the tools enhance or impede the artists ability to meet their own intent.

I do not foresee a world where art loses its meaning with the advent of these tools; quite the contrary, we will see art continue to evolve as these tools, and yet to be imaged one, evolve. Just as it did with the advent of oils. And camera obscura and lucida. And photography. And Photoshop. And now AI-generated art.

The question is not even when this revolution will occur, it’s already happening. We see professional artists learning how to incorporate Midjourney and other AI generative tools into their workflows from game asset creation to creating a graphic novel in a day to proof of concept web design.

The bigger question is to where will these tool take us? For myself, I think these tools will continue to help bridge that gap between what we as artists imagine and what we dare to create. And that is an exciting thing indeed.

I, for one, welcome our new benevolent artlords.

Note: all images in this post are all generated by the author using Midjourney.