I am still creating AI Art, but I notice that there is a certain shift of focus. I spend at least an equal amount of time painting with my colored pencils, and there is even a tendency at the moment to spend more time experimenting with my pencils.
I used watercolor paper, and I deeply enjoyed the process. So I think that colored pencils will be my art medium for the time coming - of course in addition to creating images with Artificial Intelligence!
I am not paying any money for creating with AI Art generators, and in the meantime I do this with Nightcafe Studio, Mage Space, Dreamlike AI, Civitai and Bing. Limewire cannot be used for free anymore, and Playground AI does only design anymore. However I am absolutely content with the AI Generators I can still use for free.
As you can see, Bing created two images, showing different interactions between the polar bear and the cub. It would be easy to use these two illustrations in a story telling about the polar bear mother and its cub.
All in all I am still fascinated by those vivid colors you get when you use liquid watercolors. I keep my originals safely packed away in a binder. I scan them and use the scan for prints or cards or whatever.
So I looked for alternatives and found watercolor inks. They are beautifully bright, and you can thin them down to a very light color. I use Ecoline from Royal Talens and Colorex from Pebeo. You can layer them quite nicely - but you have to wait till they are dry. I must admit that waiting is not one of my strong characteristics. But I noticed that my paintings get better when I am more patient...
I used Forest Green and Pine Green from Ecoline, and Siena from Colorex.
The only disadvantage you have with those watercolor inks is that they are not lightfast. However I do not sell originals - I use my paintings for Greeting Cards or for Art prints. The originals are safely put away in a binder.
I used stone paper for this painting, and I used oil pastels for the background. I dipped a q-tip in a drop of baby oil and blended the colors with it. Then I let it dry for one day.
Step #2 was to grab my acrylic paintmarkers and to apply them to the paper. Acrylic paintmarkers do not go well with watercolor paper, but with this kind of paper they did.
Both brands come in small bottles of either 30 or 48 ml. The bottles now have droppers, which makes application easy. I had bought a small selection of Colorex colors more than five years ago and added two bottles in the meantime. I also have a few ecoline colors - fir green, forest green, siena, warm grey and indigo.
Last week I felt like switching to this medium again. As with all liquid mediums color mixing is not that easy. The Ecoline forest green is a real green green - which in my opinion is a bit too much. But add a drop of warm grey, or siena, or chartreuse and it changes to wonderful quite natural greens!
Then I watched this video where a guy told me how to reactivitate dried up acrylic markers. I removed some of the tips and let them soak. I exchanged two tips. And alas - I got all of these paint pens to work again!
The next thing was the paper I chose: I finally focussed on these papers:
PicFinder AI was among the first AI Art generators I have been using. But with Nightcafe Studio, Ideogram AI and Mage Space I neglected it because most of the results I got weren't very satisfying. However now, almost one year later, I rediscovered PicFinder again. I found out something very important: PicFinder works best with longer prompts. What I am doing now is to go to Ideogram or Nightcafe Studio and look for one of my images there and then copy the magic prompt:
Here is the prompt:
A photo of an indoor jungle with a variety of tropical plants. There are large plants with big leaves, like palms and ferns. There are also smaller plants with colorful flowers. The plants are placed in pots of different sizes and shapes. The pots are arranged on wooden shelves, crates, and the ground. The background is a white wall with a few holes.
Well, it's acrylic ink again! This time I did a pencil drawing first and then inked the drawing, and only then filled in the colors. It is a bit of a new procedure for me - I have been applying the colors rather spontaneously without thinking about the composition first. I think that I stick to this new way of painting.
By the way I also also used craft paint in this painting, together with acrylic inks. The paint is called "Acrylini" and made by Rico Design. It is a soft body Acrylic paint out of a tiny bottle.
However, there is one disadvantage: It is almost not possible to apply marks with a gel pen or an ink pen afterwards because of the waxy and chalky surface the crayons create. With acrylic ink I do not have this kind of problem. And yes, acrylic inks are more difficult to mix. You can easily have too much of the dark color (especially black) if you are not careful. But I intend to get better at that by practicing.
Here I used the prompt:
a beautiful purple flower in a dark forest, in the style of hyper-realistic sculptures, dark orange and green, post-apocalyptic backdrops, light red and yellow, museum gallery dioramas, soft, dreamy scenes, orange and green, surreal 8k zbrush render
and the prompt style: "Fauvism".
The petals of the flower and the leaves looks quite different, the colours of the petals are orange and blue, and the flower is placed in the forest.
By the way, I took the prompt from Lexica. Once offering a free account, Lexica now has to be paid if you want to create images. But you can still search for images and the respective prompts for free.
I must say that I have a blast using my Neocolor II crayons!
So, after having painted with acrylics for a while I decided to paint with my Neocolor IIs (watersoluble wax crayons made by Caran d'Ache). There are various ways to use them: The painting on the left hand side was done with putting the shavings in a little container and wetting them with a drop of water. The crayons are very richly pigmented. Yes, it is difficult to layer them, but on the other hand you can easily mix your paints on the paper!
This acrylic painting is the second painting I did in August. Due to personal reasons - first a family meeting in the South of Germany and then a bit of a nasty flue - I didn't create any more traditional paintings. I must also admit that I do not like painting with a brush when it so hot inside that you almost need a towel to soak the sweat. So let's hope for September!
a living being whose powers are enhanced by computer implants or mechanical body parts.
Well, look what the AI Generator Freepik made out of the following prompt:
"Cyborg sitting on a stone in a garden with many colorful flowers"
We definitely see a quite human looking character sitting on a stone in a garden with many flowers. By looking closer we notice that his body consists of non human parts, built together. However, look at his face! I think that his face is almost human - he looks like he is waiting for someone or something to happen.
So what makes a human human? Or - what makes a cyborg a cyborg?
Then on the way back (I was taking the train) I obviously caught some kind of flue, and I am still recovering from that.
It is not easy for me to accept that at the moment I am not able to do the things which I usually do like creating AI art, or painting. But instead of focussing on what I cannot do I am focussing on what I can do... So I created that cute panda sipping a delicious cup of tea, using Nightcafe Studio.
With this image I used a new technique (new for me!): I used glazes and washes in the last stage of the painting. Acrylic inks are highly pigmented, and so it takes quite a lot of drops of water to thin them down. I used a dark brown glaze to darken parts of the painting and a yellow glaze to lighten up the parts on which I wanted to put a focus.
So here he is - Vince, the efficient vacuum cleaner! He looks like he's waiting for something - maybe he is expecting your next cleaning order? Or he wants to get ridd of all the dust he's been collecting in the meantime?
I had a very relaxing and joyful time. Whenever I paint with a brush or with a pen I get into a kind of zen status. Time flies and I do not notice it!
I've got quite a long list of AI Art Generators which I have been using in the past. Some of them I do not use anymore because the condition of use have changed drastically. So I really liked to use Lexica AI, but they stopped free usage, so I crossed it off the list. I also used to use Stablecog AI quite a lot and Full Journey. I do not do that anymore, but I use them now and then. The same applies to Deep Dream Generator. However I tried it today, together with a prompt I put together with the help of promptomania.com.
weeping willow at a little pond, by Diego Rivera, Chalkboard
I used the DDG model "AIVision" and got the image you can see on the left.
AIVision is a so called PRO Model - it takes away 40 energy points, and you can only use it 3 times a day.
I must say that I am pretty impressed of the way DDG's AIVision Model is interpreting the prompt. So I will definitely use it more than in the last weeks, especially with a prompt put together by Promptomania.
What you're seeing below is one of my latest products in my Zazzle shop - a notebook showing a grumpy vampire sitting on a rock. I created the design with an AI Art Generator. In earlier times I had created designs with Inkscape or even with my watermedia paintings. And yes, using AI art quickens up the production process - once you've got the image, you can enhance it (there are free online tools for that), remove the background, upload it to Zazzle and create a product with it.
But: not every image created with an AI Art Generator is a good one or one which would look good on a product. In addition to that you will need something special in order to make the design and the product stand out. That means: Trial and error, trial and error. It takes time. Not to speak about the fact that not every design looks good on every product - but that is the case whether you create a design digitally or in the traditional way.
Now, 7 years later, Nightcafe Studio, one of the AI Art generators I am using on a daily basis, offers the "sketch to image" tool. I had tried it before, but not with a "real" sketch.
Here's the result of using the "sketch to image" too:
I used the prompt:
"portrait of a seal, watercolor painting"
As you can see there is a difference regarding the gesture of the animal: Whereas the original sketch shows the sideview of a seal with open mouth, the AI image portrays a seal with its mouth closed. So we do not have a mere copy but an image standing on its own!
Nevertheless I like the result!
I love to do abstract pieces with my markers. I notice, however, that it takes me much longer to finish a piece. I often look at the work in progress when I am sitting at my breakfast table, thinking about which colors to use next.
For me AIart and traditional art exist along each other.
The painting on the left was done with Gouache, and it probably is the last one of a series of Gouache paintings for the time being. I changed over to another medium as you will see in one of the next blogposts.
It's European Football/Soccer Championship in Germany. People are watching the games outside, friends meet and have fun together.
As you can see the froggie is really having a blast with the ball, whereas the penguin seems to be in a bit of pensive mood.
I discovered Cecile Yadro's YouTube channel a few days ago. She has a lot of helpful videos about painting with Gouache on her channel, but also does art with other mediums. The video below is one I have been watching a few times...
The image on the left was created using the simple prompt: "Colorful butterfly" and the prompt filter: "cubism".
These are only two samples out of a series of four images with different prompt filters. I am far from knowing what each and everyone of Mage Space's prompt filters means - I am slowly working through them!
However, sometimes we need something that gets a smile on our faces. And here it is - a bird wearing a raincoat, sitting on a branch in the middle of a heavy downpour.
The image was created with Bing Image Creator.
Coloring line drawings is a way of getting familiar with your paints; so I decided to color this mask with Gouache paints. Then I applied colored pencils. I noticed that the pencils are doing quite well on the surface created by the gouache paints.
Since the beginning of this week I have been experimenting with the "Sketch to Image" Tool provided by Nightcafe Studio, and I must say that I am a wee bit obsessed with this tool.
It works quite simple: You upload one of your sketches, drawings, illustrations and add a prompt to it.
In 2022 I did this illustration of a fluffy monster with watermedia.
It was the result of practising with brush and paints, and of trying to create on paper what I had in my mind.It is actually just a colored sketch. So I thought it might be a good image for trying out the "sketch to image" tool.
This is the beginning of a series of - very personal - recommendations of YouTube videos on all kinds of subjects regarding art.
After so many years of doing art color mixing is still something I have to practise. Often I like the color combinations I managed to achieve, but more than once the color which I have in my mind and the color which I am getting on the surface is not the same. So I have been looking for videos on YouTube about color mixing (there are thousands of them there actually), and I found this one very helpful.
This is
So I transferred the line drawing to a sheet of watercolor paper and selected the following paint tubes:
Burnt Sienna (Reeves)
White (Nerchau / Lucas)
In addition to that I grabbed Fir Green liquid watercolor (Ecoline) in order to tone down the Burnt Sienna. As a tiny droplet of this liquid watercolor goes a long way you have to be very careful and not take too much of it.
I have several other line drawings and I definitely plan to color rhese with Gouache - I am having so much fun with it!
Some days ago Mage Space came up with a new website, and as I am a very curious person I had to try it. I was very, very pleased with the results I got with this AI Generator. I have a free account and have unlimited generations - which is quite an extraordinary thing. In addition to that Mage offers so called "prompt filters". Instead of talking about them I give you two examples:
With this image I used the prompt: "a beautiful mermaid with long flowing hairs swimming underwater" and the prompt filter "Neo-Baroque" (Pack 1).
When you browse through pack 1 you get a huge list of prompt filters. Well, they are called "filters" but in reality they are different styles. I looked for a filter / style which would create something very different.
So I chose "Watercolor 2", with the same prompt.
The result is really quite different - more of a watercolor illustration. It could serve as an illustration in a children's book, whereas I would not use the image above for that purpose.
I also found my ideal palette, a paper tray / plate which is used for party purposes. After having finished the painting I can easily put it in the trash can. I know that there are some people use dried gouache, but then it loses its opacity, and the opacity of the gouache paint is the thing I am after.
When I visited California in 2016 our group - of course - went to the Grand Canyon. I even dared to particpate in a Helicopter ride which showed us the gorgeous landscape from above.
Now, that AI gives us the opportunity to create amazing images I wanted to recreate the Grand Canyon.
Other than that it looks quite realistic, a bit too realistic I thought. So I decided to play with the image a bit.
I used it as a starter image and added in the prompt:
