New Year, which brings more robots...

Coming back from a short break over the Holidays, and I am digging back into Vizcom as a tool to refine existing drawings, make them fresh again, and in some cases, make them more complete than they were before. In this case, I had an old iPhone drawing that I had done that I was never quite satisfied with, so I re-rendered in Vizcom, and then painted over in SketchbookPro. 

Update on Friday, January 5, 2024 at 2:55PM by Matthew Seydel Connors

Here was the original drawing that I started with, mainly Sketchbook on an iPhone.

AI Paintover Tutorial Series

About a month ago, I gave a presentation at my company, the Volvo Group, on generative AI tools. I will post the video of the presentation, but in preparation, I also made a series of videos showing off some generative AI tools, and then methods of editing the 2d content in mostly Photoshop and SketchbookPro. 

Inktober 2023

I have been participating in Inktober, the challenge started by illustrator Jake Parker, for some years now. The idea is pretty simple, there is a list of daily prompts that you can use as inspiration, and then you make a drawing every day.

My own interpretation has been more loose: though I do try to have about half of the drawing in ink, I also like to use digital and even VR tools. What I noticed this year is that as I posted images to Flicr, in some cases, when I used even an AI render engine on a drawing that I made IRL, some people got a little upset. People are very upset that AI will take over the creation of art, and I am in the minority of artists that are trying to find a balance between traditional and AI tools. 

This 'Castle' was inspired by a recent trip to Poland for work, where I stayed in a manor house just outside of Wroclaw for a work retreat for a few days. It reminded me of Italy, which resulted in the drawing above. 

A few other Inktober images were done completely in my sketchbook, with a mixture of watercolor pencils and crayons to add color and depth. 

For a few of the days, I used virtual reality tools such as Kingspray Graffiti, using an image that I had sketched as a resource in the application. 

Where I seemed to cross the line in some people's minds, was to use Gravity Sketch to make 3d models in VR, then use an AI render engine to add details, then finsih 'by hand' digitally in Sketchbook Pro on my PC with an XP-Pen screen tablet. 

The start of my AI journey...

And to continue the backpedaling through what I have been doing creatively, I first started dabbling with AI image engines in late 2022, when I saw a presentation as part of a Gravity Sketch online conference, talking about using various AI models as inspiration. One that really caught my eye was ArtBreeder, which you can 'train' with your own images. I found the online interface interesting, almost like a game from the early 2000s, and then the results had me hooked. The results were a high enough resolution to be able to do a paintover in Photoshop or SketchbookPro, my fave 2d raster tools. 

Really belated update...

It's hard to excuse such a long absence, but I don't mind saying that the rest of my life took priority, but that did not mean that I was not creating, and if for no other reason that catharsis, I will start a bit of backtracking, to pick up where I left off in 2021. I fee like there are quite a few of of who lost some time in the last few years, so many of you will understand. It was at the end of that summer that I picked up a slightly used XP-Pen tablet, as I thought it was worth trying one of the Wacom competitors, as Cintiqs are both hard to find, and very expensive here in Sweden. Though I will say that it took me a while to get into a rhythm with the way that I use the XP-Pen 22, overall I love it, and that love has resulted in me just drawing more.

For 'pure drawing' Sketchbook still remains my go-to application, though I was still experimenting at an early stage with Gravity Sketch, a VR drawing and modeling application.