#looking like a fucking renaissance painting

[thewadapan]

I do recommend people take this test, it's a riot.

But like, it's not a study. (The site linked above appears to be yet another waste-of-space Amazon-affiliate-advertising content aggregator grift, which talks a big game about Creative Commons but why would I want to repurpose any of this material in the first place? The only original content I can see here is obviously-AI-generated thumbnails for the art, which look like dogshit. The original results post for the test is a much better read.)

The way the test is designed is like this. Images were roughly balanced by art style: so of all the digital-art pieces, 50% are human, 50% are AI, same for the renaissance paintings, same for the impressionist stuff, same for abstract. Except, obviously, the human pictures have been selected to exhibit stereotypical signs of AI-ness: overdetail, odd scaling, incorrect proportions, random meaningless shapes, illegible text. Meanwhile, the AI stuff has been filtered to avoid anything that had obvious tells to a layman's eye, like fucked-up hands or whatever.

So it's basically a game of like... whatever your gut instinct tells you the image's provenance is, it's probably the opposite.

When you filter out the human works, and look at the provenance of solely the AI pictures (as given in the results post), that's when you find out what this test is actually indicative of. The pieces were mostly generated by two ACX readers, Ryan Wise and Jack Galler. I remember spotting every single one of Ryan's images, without fail. Meanwhile, nearly all of Jack's images fooled me. (There were also a handful of other AI images taken from social media or whatever, which again, I easily pegged as being AI-generated, they're pure slop.)

I'll actually go so far as to say that it's pretty embarrassing for Ryan that he thought these images were good enough to share. Wall-eyed figures whose clothes blend into flesh, abstract shapes with eerily-lifelike inhuman faces leering out of the picture, inconsistent details... but most of all, a sense that the prompts themselves were bereft of any creativity. "robot skeleton abstract painting", "woman in field impressionist". Come on man. AI is the ultimate tool for ideas-guys, and yet here you are without a single idea to show for yourself.

Ryan was apparently using StableDiffusion. Meanwhile, here's Jack talking about his process:

I just used Midjourney. Most of the prompts were just describing some generic impressionist scene. I've never had an art history class (but I am an art history fan!), so I worked with ChatGPT to identify key trends of say, Impressionism, so I could prompt better. I generated a lot of each one ,and just used my subjective opinion to decide what looked good and what didn't. The Paris Scene (which fooled the most people) had this prompt: "Impressionist painting of a bustling Parisian street under the soft rain, 1881" The Riverside Cafe (which people liked the most) had this prompt: "Impressionist painting of a countryside café terrace during twilight, 1883"

It seems that specifying a year in particular was what helped Midjourney hone in on these historical styles in a convincing way. Jack's method obviously involved a huge amount of cherry-picking—which I would argue is another huge element of human intervention, if only in a sense of curation. A version of this test I would like to see would be one where both different AI models and a range of talented artists were given the same prompt. What if it was one-shot, with just a single generation, no cherry-picking? Except of course an AI can generate thousands of paintings in the time it takes a human to do just one, so what would that even prove?

This test reminded me of a piece I saw on deviantART a long time ago, of this ruined fantasy castle in a cave. Pretty cool! But then you look at it a bit longer, and it's like- hang on, why is that human skull the size of the collapsed turret lying next to it? It's exactly the kind of nonsensical composition you see in AI, except no, it's just a digital artist using photoshop and they fucked it. I kind of feel like this is where the state-of-the-art of AI image generation is right now; about as good as a guy bashing together stock assets in photoshop, which is to say maybe good enough to get an idea across, even if it can't actually stand on its own two legs as a piece of art.

So yeah, from a cynical perspective, I'd find it hard to argue that Jack's generations aren't "good enough" for many applications. I don't know that I'd hang any of them in a gallery. The longer I look at them, the less I like them. But they've got the right vibes.

So a more accurate headline for that BOING BOING article might be, "AI art haters unknowingly prefer AI-generated works by Jack Galler, according to test".

If there's one thing I'll be taking away from this post, that's helped me better understand my own feelings on AI art, it's this analogy from digital artist Ilzo, quoted in the results analysis:

Imagine if everyone got the ability to create mostly nutritional adequate meals for like five cents, but they all were mediocre rehydrated powder with way too much sucralose or artificial grape flavor or such. And your friends start inviting you over to dinner parties way more often because it's so easy to deal with food now, but practically every time, they serve you sucralose protein shake. (Maybe they do so because they were used to almost never eating food? This isn't a perfect analogy.) Furthermore, imagine people calling this the future of food and saying chefs are obsolete. You'd probably be like "wow, I'm happy that you have easy access to food you enjoy, and it is convenient for me to use sometimes, but this is kind of driving me crazy".

Last month, over 11,000 people took Astral Codex Ten's survey to see if they could they tell the difference between 50 human-made art and AI-generated images. The results were humbling for humans, especially ones who professed a loathing for AI art.

Most participants stumbled through the test, scoring just 60% — barely better than flipping a coin. What tripped them up? Our preconceptions about art styles, it turns out, are deeply ingrained. When people saw classic Impressionist paintings, they confidently declared them human-made (and were often wrong). When they encountered digital art, they quickly labeled it as AI (and were frequently mistaken).

Perhaps the most ironic finding was about people who claimed to despise AI art. When these AI critics picked their favorite pieces without knowing their origin, they consistently chose AI-generated works. Even among those who rated their hatred of AI art at maximum levels, their top two favorite pieces were created by machines.

[clairedaring]

Has Wut ever told you… that the old Joe's house was intruded?

MY STAND-IN (2024) | 1.08

[cryptocism]

"just as I did, in 1983."

you'd never know my favourite parts of the show are the fucked up insane bits when my first instinct is to draw the cheesiest thing imaginable

[crystal-lillies]

hello hi critical role who do i call for compensation regarding emotional damages, asking for a friend

[evanostic]

nori as that 'mary magdalene in a cave' painting by hugues merle (below the cut)

[hadeljoshi]

i loooooove his hands :(

[ellicler]

the way that daniel is like 'i'm sooooo normal unlike you insane freaks' and you can plainly see he's also a total freak

[shineelightss]

does he not know i am!! so close!! to losing my mind!!

[dimonds456-but-only-hlvrai]

OKAY HERE WE GO.

3rd times the charm gdhjsdsfjhdjak

Also I FINALLY learned how to draw Gman! He looks so much better now omg.

Old refs below the cut for comparison's sake

what was i even doing omg. It becomes more obvious when you flip back and forth between them but. yeah.

[gender-euphowrya]

still baffles me how so many turves have this weird combination 1950s/catholicism aesthetics going on like. yup both things were notoriously amazing for women

[arsenicflame]

i love you round faces i love you soft jaws i love you chubby cheeks i love you double chins i love you softness i love you i love you i love you

[angelacostumery]

i'm so glad you guys like this costume! it is one of my favorites. but I put my absurd pumpkin pants on one leg at a time just like everyone else.

...literally

anyway, here are some construction/project notes/wip photos in case you don't have 50 minutes to spare for the full video about making it!

inspo wise, The First Book of Fashion: The Book of Clothes of Matthaeus and Veit Konrad Schwarz of Augsburg [this is an affiliate link] served as the major influence for this. the book is basically documentation of what this man and his son wore to major events in his life over a period of decades. he was getting ootd painted before it was cool.

the base pattern for the pantlegs came from another pair of ridiculous pants I made a few months earlier.

the paned portion is made from homemade piping sewn to strips of jacquard that are backed with twill tape to prevent fraying.

I made so much fucking piping for this oh my god. each of these strips was 20"+ long, both sides have piping, and these are the panes for ONE LEG. there were also sleeves. we're talking like 60+ yards of piping.

perhaps unsurprisingly, these strips were too thick to gather. so instead I had to overlap them to create the shaping over the leg. it looks OK but isn't ideal.

after this was done, velvet ribbon was sewn over the marked point to hold them in place.

oh! I also sewed a layer of mesh over the orange base fabric to dull it somewhat and provide contrast before sewing on the bands.

the upper portion of the pants was made from even strips of velvet and jacquard seamed together and fitted over a cotton base. the appliques were added to cover the fact the stripes meet at an angle at the side seam, and I sewed on orange sequins because I like sequins.

the happiness I felt when this fit was immense, I must say.

the bodice is two pieces, one for the front, one for the back. it laces up the sides with hand sewn eyelets. it wasn't very flattering as just an expanse of orange of the chest, so I added appliques to the front and back, too.

the black detailing around the top edge is made from varying widths of velvet ribbon.

the sleeves have similar elements of everything shown above--a paned upper portion, velvet ribbon trim, and a bit of lace at the cuffs.

unlike most of my projects the sleeves have no lining forcing the shaping, what you see beneath/between the panes is the chemise worn beneath this. it's made from the mesh used as an overlay on the pants with a jacquard/velvet ribbon collar which you can see peaking out above the neckline of the bodice.

oh! and then there is the pumpkin hat! there is a video on patreon about making this somewhere, I think.

and it's just that easy to live out your renaissance pumpkin prince/ess dreams!

[marzipanandminutiae]

could the beach painting not be intended as a somewhat ~racy~ depiction (see: the topless woman), hence the short/tight clothes?

oh it 1000% is

that is his Fantasy Version of Combinations, I'm convinced

it's like that one artist nobody now realizes loved to depict women half-dressed, because corset-covers look like tank tops to us and petticoats look like normal (even old-fashioned and concealing!) skirts. what was that guy's name? with all the blue silk?

...TOULMOUCHE

this woman is showing her underwear. a glimpse of petticoat might be fine, but Skirt Hiking To Reveal A Huge Amount? nope. that is a sexy painting.

Lounging About With My Bodice Inexplicably Open is a popular Toulmouche theme. the white "tank top" is also underwear. note the half-up hair- that is also sexy!

damnit, Toulmouche why is this lady sexy? there's a kid in the painting! have some decency! but no, Mama is praying with her child while inexplicably having removed specifically her bodice but not her skirt. nor has she just changed into nightclothes before putting the kiddo to bed like a normal person. also that is clearly her chemise and her skirt would not close over it without her corset on; the fat distribution would be all different.

this one is just gay. Mlle. Red is clearly into Mlle. Nightwear/Lingerie and her sexy 1880s pixie cut (I think? either that or her hair is blending REALLY well with the shadows). I'm here for it

"this letter is so distressing that I had to stop midway through getting dressed and put on my Bolero of Sadness. and lounge seductively against the screen. sad-ductively, I mean"

Get dressed to the point of putting bodice on

do not put bodice on

don Tiny Vest

pin roses to corset cover that would 100% negate purpose of corset cover if actually attached to it

???

Toulmouche(TM)

Once again, that's not even her corset-cover. It's the top part of her combinations. how is her skirt fitting without the corset it was fitted on top of? Seamstresses Hate Local Painter Of Specific Fetish For This One Weird Fitting Trick!

(also, "you wanted to paint a woman in this one very particular unlikely undress state you find hot, but you painted her making out with a mirror and called it Vanity etc." there's actually a version of this called Vanity, and she's fully dressed. this one is The Mirror.)

I've got nothing. Extremely obvious late Victorian undergarment on top normal late Victorian skirt on bottom, fucking Renaissance Revival pearl-encrusted sleeves. Why not. Why, indeed, the fuck not.

WHAT IS WITH THE LITTLE VEST

[sanguinaryrot]

primavera (the painting from Hannibal) is also the cover art for the vampire Armand. Quite curious indeed

[cathymee]

THE USE OF LACRIMOSA IN EP 52 !!!!!!!!!!!!!11!!!1!!111!1

[sylvies-chen]

I’ve been seeing that couples paint each other challenge where couples will spend a night in with a canvas and some cheap paints and give each other 30 minutes to try and paint each other, and now I can’t stop thinking about armandaniel doing that one night and armand’s is yeah it’s good okay like it’s not great because of the whole vampire art struggles but he was around renaissance painters for a long time so he does a pretty good job of getting daniel’s minute features and shading and whatnot but daniel’s is just. lord it’s so bad. it’s like the most primal kindergarten painting you’ve ever seen but dammit all the right ingredients are there!! he got the orange eyes and the curls and he very proudly points out that he gave armand a little ipad in his painting like his fake rashid era which he cracks himself up with but he looks over and armand is in tears because not only is he looking at the first painting of himself in over 400 years but he’s also looking at the most non sexual artistic interpretation of him he’s ever seen. like it’s just. him. he’s just existing. he’s there. on the canvas. with literally no background. not a meadow or even a grassline or anything. all this blank white liminal space around his (horrendously drawn) likeness as if nothing else is needed. no body contortions, eyes too one dimensional to even hold all his pain. daniel is just kind of chuckling and bashfully being all “ah fuck it’s pretty bad isn’t it I mean there’s a reason I stick to words, I drew your nose all lopsided on that one side and—” cut to armand literally welling up and whispering like “no. it’s beautiful.” daniel doesn’t get it. this is a liberation.