Pegasus

 

Pegasus, the horse with wings, is a mythical creature out of Greek mythology. The saying goes that pegasus was born out of Medusa's blood when Perseus - a half god and a one of those good guys - cut off her head (she's the one with snakes on her head, and everyone who dared to look her in the face was immediately turned to stone). 

But Pegasus is also the symbol of inspiration, of the arts in general, of the hope to reach the stars, of flying high. 

So I tried to create an image which symbolizes the "flying high" meaning of the pegasus. On the image on the right you can see the wide span of the wings - which would be necessary for a horse of this size in order to leave the ground and fly.

Pirates and AI Art

 Lately I have been creating quite a lot of pirate images with AI Art Generators. Obviously I am fascinated by them. Why? Well, one of the reasons is that I am highly fascinated by the way you can create images with submitting text prompts, so I have been playing around with various themes and subjects. But there is more to the subject of "pirates".

• History in general has been and still is one of my favorite subjects - which means that I love to read books about history, and I love to read historical fiction. I also love to read history novels playing aboard ships - for example the Hornblower series written by C.S. Forester. They play in the 18th century, and naval history from that time cannot be told without saying something about pirates.
• In addition to the historical aspect of Pirates there is a social one which I find extremely important. Nowadays pirates seem to be described as heroes who took from the rich and gave to the poor; in the 18th century they were described as brutes, as a danger to society who had to be killed. In my opinion they were not much different from the people who went after them: they often left their homes in order to escape the bad conditions there; they also escaped the ships of the Royal Navy where the ordinary sailor was often mistreated. Becoming a pirate was one way of making one's living or even get rich, but alway risking getting killed in battle or being caught and hanged.

So I tried to create images like this:

An old pirate who looks like a pirate because of his hat, the long hair and the fancy clothing. 

The prompt for that image is very simple:

"Generate the portrait of an old pirate with a tricorne"

When I saw the image I was quite impressed with the quality - I think that this image on the left could be used in a historical novel or even in a fiction book about pirates without any problems.

Of course there were a lot of pirates who were young.

With this pirate boy on the right I used the same prompt, just replacing "old" with "young".

I must say I am quite touched by the image. The boy looks like he is not older than 15 years. Mind you, in the British Navy there were ensigns who were younger than that. In the 17th and 18th century you were considered a man at that age.

Pirates

Pirates were essentially sea robbers who operated during the 17th and 18th centuries in the Caribbean and along the coasts of Africa, North America, and Europe.

Many of them were pirates because they wanted to escape from harsh living conditions either on land or on the ships of the Royal Navy with their often brutal and inhuman discipline. Of course they also dreamt of getting rich quickly.

There is no reason to romanticize them - they did not fight for the poor but for themselves. They were brutal, they killed for money. But at that time life in general was not worth much.

The fascination of Unicorns

We all know that children are fascinated by unicorns; they love fantasy and magic, and unicorns are creatures of fantasy land and they also are magic, they help the good guys and they fight against the evil. 

But I must admit that I love unicorns also. But it s not only because they look like horses and I love horses; they represent a world so totally opposite to our daily life: forests which are dark, and mysterious, where man does not dare to go into, with elves and fairies. 

Unicorns are strong - they can carry their friends without getting tired. They are quick - they run like the wind. And they can defend themselves - with their hard hooves, and most of all, their horn which so sharp that they can kill their enemies with.

Unicorns are white, and white is the color of innocence. They are elegant, they are peaceful when they are left alone.

We all know that unicorns do not exist - but let us give the permission to dream of them!

Poseidon and the other Olympians

Poseidon

Poseidon is one of the twelve Olympian gods in Greek mythology, and is considered the god of the sea, earthquakes, and horses. He is often depicted as a bearded man with a trident, riding a chariot drawn by sea horses or dolphins. He was also known for his bad temper and was often prone to angerwhich resulted in earthquakes.

The other eleven Olympan gods were:

• Zeus: God of the sky, thunder, and lightning; king of the gods;
• Hera: Goddess of marriage, childbirth, and family; queen of the gods and wife of Zeus.
• Demeter: Goddess of agriculture, fertility, and the harvest.
• Athena: Goddess of wisdom, war, and crafts; often associated with the city of Athens.
• Apollo: God of the sun, music, poetry, and prophecy.
• Artemis: Goddess of the hunt, wild animals, childbirth, and virginity.
• Ares: God of war, violence, and bloodshed.
• Aphrodite: Goddess of love, beauty, and sexuality.
• Hephaestus: God of fire, metalworking, and craftsmanship.
• Hermes: God of commerce, thieves, travelers, and messenger of the gods.
• Dionysus: God of wine, parties, and festivals.

  

  Hephaistos

  
  

Phoenix

 

The Phoenix is a mythical bird that is said to have originated in ancient Egyptian mythology, and later became a popular symbol in many cultures, including Greek, Roman, and Chinese.

According to the myth, when the Phoenix approaches the end of its life, it builds a nest of twigs and sets itself on fire. From the ashes, a new Phoenix is reborn, symbolizing the cyclical nature of life and death. This new Phoenix is said to be even more magnificent than the previous one, with bright, radiant feathers and a powerful, immortal presence.

In some versions of the legend, the Phoenix is said to possess healing powers, and its tears are said to have the ability to cure sickness and injury. In others, it is said to be a symbol of resurrection and eternal life, and is often associated with the sun and rebirth.

Blue Willow - another AI Art creator

 

Many young people do it every day - they are using a discord server. Well, I haven't so much up to now.

However, there is an Artificial Image creator which is free but can only be used on the Discord server itself. It is called Blue Willow. The moment I learnt about it I had to try it out. 

I must admit that it was - and is - quite an adventure for me. But there are friendly people who answered my questions. So I managed to create - and download - some images. In Bluewillow you have to add to the prompt whether you want a portrait or a landscape format. I did not know that, so I got squares. 

Learning new things is time consuming, but I love to learn new things. It is good for the brain, keeps it in shape.

Wine Glass design with AI Art

With AI Art Generators you can not only paint, you can also design. 

In my experience it can be useful to look up the various glass styles on Google. For example there are Bordeaux or Merlot wine glasses, Riesling white wine glasses etc. 

I then began to design wine glasses - this is one I got from Dreamlike AI. 

And this is one I got from Bing Image Creator. 

The different AI Art Generators interpet prompts in a different way - some of them fill the glass with wine although the prompt did not say anything about that. 

In general Bing Image Creator is one AI Art Generator which follows the prompt very well. 

Candyland Puzzle on Zazzle

 

If you create images on various AI Art generators there will come the time when you ask yourself what to do with all those images. Of course you can decorate your walls and create nice greeting cards to send off to your family and friends. All AI Art generators I know permit using creations for personal use.

But maybe you want to do more with them - to use them for designs on a print on demand site for example. Now you have to be careful. because that would be commercial use, and you have to look very closely whether an AI Art Generator allows that.

Up to this day there are two artificial art generating platforms which permit commercial use: Nightcafestudio and Dreamlike.AI

The design for the Candyland Puzzle which you can see below was made with Dreamlike.AI. But the job will not be done with generating the design and downloading it to your device. In order to put the design on a puzzle on Zazzle for example you have to make sure that the image is big enough. I used upscale.media.com. In a second step you have to make sure that the image has a nice contrast and is sharpened. The better the quality of the image the more it will be noticed.

Beautiful Candyland Landscape
by ullahennig

Snakes

 Today I felt like creating snakes with various AI Art generators. Well, it looks like most of them do not like snakes - or the images of snakes have not been fed into their databases. At first I tried Nightcafestudio with Stable Diffusion, and the results were total fails. So I thought it might be helpful to use a starter image. I downloaded the photo of a snake from Pixabay and uploaded it to Nightcafestudio.

Okay, nothing spectacular. It is a snake, nicely decorated, but nothing spectacular. 

I also tried Dreamlike, with similar results. 

Unfortunately, DALL-E2 on Nightcafestudio was not working, so I could not try that. However I know that the new Bing Image Creator is based on DALL-E. So I tried that one,

And what a difference! I used no starter image at all, just the prompt:

painting of a snake in the style of Anne Stokes, watercolor and ink, intricate, highdefinition, highly detailed

In addition to the quality of the results Bing has another advantage: it works with a system of booster points which allow your creations to be generated relatively quickly. One booster point is used for four images. However, you can easily get Bing award point which can be transformed into booster points.

Same prompt - three different images

 The prompt was:

Digital painting of a cute bunny holding a colored egg in his paw

The first image was generated with the use of Nightcafestudio.com:

The result: 

A cute white rabbit is putting its front paws on a blue-green egg. 

Then I tried the same prompt with Dreamlike,AI and got the image on the right. Well, the Easterbunny is actually holding something between his paws, but definitely not an easteregg...

And then finally I tried the prompt with the new Bing Image Generator:

Okay, we get an Easter Bunny holding an Easter egg between its paws!

Waterfall in the Jungle

 

I created this image using the Deep Dream Generator. It could be an illustration out of a fantasy novel, and when I am looking at it my brain wants to write a story about it.

This image has also a painterly style. However, the style is different to the one of the image above. It could be an oil painting done after a research trip to the waterfall.

I am still pretty impressed by the fact that adding the name of a certain artist or mentioning a certain style in the prompt can change the output so much!