Visual art and AI
(Nimue)
Right now we have sophisticated software that can draw data from a lot of images and turn it into new(ish) images. Defenders of the process say it’s just doing what artists do – learning from other artists. This is such an absolute misrepresentation of how to do art that I felt it needed tackling.
One of the things missing here is the intense physicality of making art. We don’t learn to draw, paint or sculpt by looking at art. The first stage is to learn how to use a pencil – most of us learn the basics while learning to write as small children. We learn the fine motor control needed to do more than smear colour across a surface. Training the hand to do what the brain intends is a long process.
To create visually, most of us have to spend a long time learning how to look. I’m not qualified to comment on what visual impaired artists do, but I expect that exists and also doesn’t involve purely looking at existing art. Once you start looking, you start making decisions about what to prioritise – shape, texture, light, shadow, colour, mood, movement. The person trying to capture a sense of movement in the sea will paint a very different picture from the person trying to capture light on water, for example.
Most young humans aren’t looking at art in a deliberate way. They draw for fun, are exposed to a whole world of experiences and are most likely to want to depict their own ideas and imaginings. Many of us only start looking in earnest at other people’s art when we’re taught to do that. When we start looking critically it’s not just about the surface appearance – we study technique, context and the ideas underpinning the kind of art we’re looking at. Art movements exist in historical and cultural contexts.
Some artists want to work in particular ways that align with existing kinds of art, and some don’t. Either way, how you do art will be really individual. Unless you specialise in art fraud, then the exact way that you put your chosen medium onto your chosen surface will make what you do unique. There’s something of the individual that comes through in how you draw your lines or put your paint down. With artists I know well, I can tell a lot about what mood they were in when they did a drawing because of this it impacts on the lines. This is all also true for digital art where an artist is creating a piece using their own skills rather than word prompts.
Making visual art is a very high percentage about study and practice. The rest of it is about developing your own way of doing things and having ideas about what you want to create. The way that ideas and technique combine is what makes your work unique. Anyone willing to put in enough time can learn to do this.
Art isn’t something that happens by magic. Great paintings do not pop spontaneously out of an artist’s head to appear on a canvas. Pop culture has given us some really misleading ideas about the whole thing. Artists study, learn, practice, plan and rework their creations. It’s mostly about doing the work. If you can’t draw it isn’t because you missed out on magic drawing powers, it’s because you haven’t put in enough time. Generally speaking, invest ten thousand hours in anything and you’ll become an expert – some of those hours may involve needing to be taught by someone who knows the techniques. What you do in that ten thousand hours will be yours alone, and will be part of you. Doing this changes a person. Art isn’t just about having a finished piece, it’s about becoming the person who can create the piece in the first place.
