The Challenge of Learning Digital Art

I am impressed by digital art programs. I had my Chromebook set up for making digital pictures. I learned how much easier it is to lay out light and shadow patterns on your original drawing. Blending colors is so much easier with a stylus on a touch screen. And a stylus is easier to maneuver with arthritic fingers than a colored pencil is. And no amount of eraser curds flying in the air fixes a mistake better than a simple back-up click and redo. But of course, before I could make the process start to fly, my Chromebook decided for whatever reason to commit ritual computer suicide, apparently shorting out during a long walk with the dog.

So, I bought an AI-assistant program to help me convert my colored-pencil drawings into digital pictures. But you don’t have control over details to the degree that you would if you were drawing the whole thing with a stylus. The AI has to interpret everything it sees and render it with properly lit and blended colors trying to mimic the patterns you have presented it with. Of course, the AI is stupid and has to be trained. You can’t just edit the details like the finger damage you see above. You have to adjust the amount of control it has to interpret things the way it thinks is stupidly correct. You adjust from 1% to 90%. O% is the same picture you gave it. 91% and above looks nothing like your drawing. And then you re-create the entire picture again with the new percentage and whatever the AI has learned from your picture.

This one looks more like my version of Valerie, but the AI still has work to do on the background, the box of quilt pieces, and making the girl less anime-cartoony.

This is better. Still not there. But better.

I really like the face and hair on this one. Colored rocks in the box? And I would have to remove the writing on the box with a paint program from HP. In other words, a pixel edit.

This one is the best one so far. That almost looks like quilt blocks in the box. The expression on Val’s face is right for the Snow Babies story.

So, I almost think I need to rush out and buy a new Chromebook with touch screen. I can’t wait to have more control over this whole process. Still, I enjoy noodling with this stupid AI.