Another abstract alcoholbased Marker Painting

This is the third marker painting I've done in February 2024. After having done the black lines with a Faber-Castell PITT Artist brush pen I thought about the color combination I wanted to have, decided on it and picked the relevant markers. And I only took these markers to my drawing table (which indeed is my breakfast table by the way). 

I really like the result of limiting the number of markers in the painting!
 

AI version of my Marker Painting

This AI version of my latest marker painting was created with Deep Dream Generator. Deep Dream generator is not my favorite AI Art Generator when it comes to using starter images. But sometimes the result is quite nice, as it is in this case. I love the stained glass effect and the vividness of the colors. 

 

Another abstract painting created with markers

Some time ago I bought "The Compete Color Harmony - Pantone Edition" from Amazon. Beneath interesting articles about certain colors like Red, Brown or Purple, just to name a few, the book contains lots of color palettes (circles with three colors) in relation to certain moods. Of course it is a bit difficult to find markers corresponding to Pantone colors; but I took the book as a challenge to l. imit the number of colors in my abstract paintings down to not more than four colors. 

I must say I am quite pleased with the result!
 

Using ChatGPT for creating prompts for AI Art

 I had created a few monster AI images using my own art as start images. Well, there are some AI Art Generators which do not allow the use of starter images. I wanted to create monsters with them as well and was thinking about possible prompts. But I had no ideas regarding the prompts, so I went to ChatGPT and wrote:

I am an AI artist and I want to create images depicting cute monsters. Could you provide me with some prompts, please!

ChatGPT provided me with 10 prompts; most of them would never have come to my mind. I picked one of them:

A shy monster peeking out from behind a curtain with a bashful smile

and used it with Lexica AI.

Now we could discuss whether the monster in the image on the left has a "bashful smile" - but it has a smile.

Of course the prompt given by ChatGPT could be specified: We could ask the AI Art Generator to create a curtain in a certain color or texture: we could go for more details regarding the monster.

The main point is that I got 10 prompts full of ideas and contexts for the monster.

Fluffy monsters

 

I did this monster quite some time ago with gouache. My aim was to use a limited palette and to get more familiar with my gouache paints.

I scanned the painting and added it to the folder "scanned documents" - and there it was until today when I was looking for an image to use as starter image.

As I mentioned before not every AI Art Generator which allows the use of starter images creates good images. Playground AI is one of the AI Art generators I go to when I use starter images.

The image on the right has the same color palette as the starter image, but otherwise the differences are quite big. I like the fluffy guy, but I wanted to create something more similar to the original painting.

Now there are two ways to do that: You can change the weight of the starter image, and you can change the seed number.

I did that, and look what I got now:

This image is way more similar to the original starter image. The style is that of a 2D illustration, and the only thing which differs from the starter image are the eyes in his face.

Abstract Marker Painting

 

I decided to have a short break with creating AI Art and focussed on painting with my alcoholbased markers. I first did the black lines with a PITT Artist brush pen, and then colored the spaces between the lines. I must admit that my alcoholbased markers are mostly on the not so expensive price range - with only one or two copics between them. Some of my markers are ten years old and can still be used. Some of them I will have to replace soon. I will have a look at Stylefile markers which can be bought as single stock at Boesner's, a big art shop in Berlin. Stylefile markers can be bought with a bullet tip and a brush tip, and they can be refilled!

Stablecog

Stablecog is an AI Art Generator which allows the use of Starter images. However each time I tried to do this the result was disappointing. Of course this can be due to my not using Stablecog in the proper way, but there are AI Art Generators which I had been more success with so far. 

But this does not mean that you cannot get nice results by simply using a prompt. Here are two images I created with the prompt: "beautiful wooden carved ornament, blue shades, intricate".

Goblins, created with AI and a starter image

I did not have a special character in mind when I did the illustration on the left quite some time ago. I was interested in the roundness of the shapes, and in giving the creature some kind of headgear. 

Now, with AI Generators allowing starter images I thought: "Why not create a goblin out of this creature?". Up to now I got pretty decent results with using Playground AI, so I used that Generator in this case as well.

I used the prompt: "portrait of a goblin, colored pencil illustration, intricate".

I am quite pleased with the first result: the shape of the head and the colors are similar, and the headgear looks quite nice.

The only thing which could be made better are the eyes. They are big, yes, but still looking quite human. 

So I changed the prompt to: "portrait of a goblin, big eyes, colored pencil illustration, intricate"
 

Playground created this image. Look at the big bulging eyes! It was just what I wanted to get.

Cherry Blossoms Pillow

Spring is still more than a month away, but you can get it into your home by buying this lovely Cherry blossom pillow. 

I made up the design from one of the photos I took of the Japanese Cherry Blossom tree standing in front of the house I am living in. Every year I feel so much joy when I see the tree in full blossom, and every year I am a bit sad when the blossoms have gone.

Cherry blossom photo
by ullahennig

Changing the seed numbers in Stablecog AI

 Stablecog AI is one of the AI Art Generators I use quite often. A few days ago I watched a video about the importance of Seed numbers (the video referred to Playground AI, but the information given is valid for all AI Art Generators.). I do not want to go into detail here, I just want to give you some examples for the impact of varying the seed number.

The prompt for this image was:

dwarf holding a tulip in his hand, digital painting, cinematic photography

Seed number: 4

There is a dwarf, and he is holding a tulip in his hand. However to me the stem of the tulip does not look right, and the dwarf looks like thinking: "What is this? It looks dangerous to me!"

Instead of changing the text of the prompt I changed the Seed number from 4 to 44.

Well, the dwarf is holding a tulip in his hand and the tulip definitely looks better. The dwarf himself looks more relaxed. But there is this long tulip on the right side of the image which seems to grow out of the dwarf's back. Of course one could always think of removing that unwanted item digitally, but it would cost me a lot of time.

So I changed the seed number again, this time from 44 to 55.

And this time I was quite pleased with the result: The dwarf looks relaxed, the tulip in his hands is an eyecatcher because of the orange yellow colours, and the tulips in the foreground form some kind of a frame.

So if you are not pleased with the first results of your prompt try to change the seed number! In most cases you will get something usable out of this process!