The Wild God Stands in Your Kitchen

The Wild God Stands in Your Kitchen

​"The Wild God Stands in Your Kitchen" - oil on paper, 14 x 20.  Available here and at Artfinder.


The wild god stands in your kitchen.
Ivy is taking over your sideboard;
Mistletoe has moved into the lampshades
And wrens have begun to sing
An old song in the mouth of your kettle.
​
‘I haven’t much,’ you say
And give him the worst of your food.
He sits at the table, bleeding.
He coughs up foxes.
There are otters in his eyes.
- from Sometimes a Wild God by Tom Hirons

It is time to face the wild god's dragon, and that dragon is A.I art.

Dear reader, if you are feeling a huge emotional revolt against the surge of A.I art and what it means for creatives (and how damn good some of it is), you are not alone.  And as with all things I set my jaw against, I know that I absolutely must go there.  So I got to wondering, is there an upside to this thing?

Like any new technology, it was wildly frustrating in the beginning. But then (but then) little glimmers of oh and ah and hmmmmmmm. And two months later (the amount of time it has taken me to be mildly proficient) it has become a cyber version of the wild god - inspiring, pushing, challenging, stuck-in-my-thoughts-all-the-time and making me leap off cliffs.

It is an unapologetic critique group. I load my own paintings and photographs and sketches and scribbles and demand its feedback - what would the bot do? I give it a composition and it demands I look at it with fresh eyes - as if I had centuries of art experience and exposure.

Here is the story of one painting.

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I was inspired by a fashion photo of a woman who seemed part cyborg, part future samurai (below) and images of samurai with arrows as I browsed the google machine.  And also my own whimsy.  So I combined the concepts in a painting (second image, below) and it just fell flat for me.  Something was missing.  

Using Midjourney, I put my own painting in the prompt and asked it for a whimsical female samurai with arrows based on the image I provided, and then specified it to be in my own style (since I have images on the internet, I presume the bot pulls from my catalogue just as it does for other, more famous, artists).  The bot spit out an image that was a big improvement - deeper colors, better composition and more abstracted versions of "arrows".  Whoa!  It was like having my own group of savvy critics point and advise and critique.

fashion photo

initial painting

art bot rendering

beginning the piece

I am standing in my studio at the intersection of art robots and inner dragons.  And somehow, it seems the wild god knows exactly what it is doing when it coughs up foxes.  Oh and OH!

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What are your thoughts about using A.I. as an art tool? Or about A.I. art in general?  Leave a comment below, or send an email to [email protected].  Wonder Mike and Lilly think someone needs a little original art in their hands, and will choose one commenter at random to receive something sweet. xo