River to the Sea 4x6
I did this scene a long time ago, and I painted it as a square. It's very interesting, I've had successes with the square format, but it can be difficult sometimes. I think rectangles are actually a lot easier, whether they're vertical or horizontal. That said, I have done successful square paintings, and one thing I'd heard years ago was that a lot of the Old Masters, when they did a square painting, would make sure that it wasn't exactly square.
River to the Sea 4x6
On todays video I chat about AI. A lot of people are freaking out because the AI does really good art. It writes pretty well too. personally I find it's quite handy for certain reference images that have problem areas and helping me with text based tasks. The AI doesn't have an agenda; its whole agenda is to serve us. What this means for us as contemporary artists, is that we really need to focus on what it is we want to do. If it's painting, then you need to do paintings. Now, the AI can't do paintings, and that's why real world art is a great place to inhabit.
The AI can do a lot of things better than most of us, but that's nothing new. There are a lot of painters that are better than me, and I don't worry too much about it, what I try to worry about is expressing myself. What I am, and what you are, is a unique individual. There's never going to be anyone else like me or you, ever again. When you decide to make a painting or any creative work, that's what you should be putting your focus on. Your perspective is unique. Embrace your own funky self. Don't worry about the people that do things at a much technically higher level than you can, or that are able to paint or draw things that you can only dream of painting or drawing. Worry about what it is that you want to and can do, and then do the heck out of it. If you do enough painting, it will come together eventually; and you're going to be expressing yourself as an individual.
The AI can be a heck of a time-saver b for solving reference issues. Reference is very critical to the painting process. It's very critical that it is good. If the reference is bad and there are too many things wrong with it that you're not addressing, you may make make a bad painting as a result. When I'm painting with the reference in front of me, I paint lots of stuff in my painting that is not in the reference. I don't slavishly copy. I don't use a projector to project the image onto a board, trace it, and then fill everything in like it was a coloring book. That doesn't work anyway. What works better is to have some good reference that's inspiring, and if you can spot things that you think are weird or that you don't like, you can try to fix them in Photoshop. If you can't fix them in Photoshop, hopefully, you can fix them while you're doing the painting.
That's it for this post. I hope you're having a great week, and until I come back with another post and video for your edification and enjoyment, take good care of yourself, your family, all your loved ones. And stay out of trouble!