#more practice trying to make imperfect art instead of worrying over too many details

[shapeshiftinterest]

redd painting tom nook

can be at any point in their relationship

[entropieogchaos]

In regards to the AI-Art debacle, I'd like to ask how could AI-art be used? You mentioned a friend recreating the art, is there anything else? I just feel that most AI-art generators are not advanced enough to produce consistent ( in detail, color, theme, etc. ) images. They're fun but I don't see much practical use.

I think many people have the wrong expectations for AI generated images. They will point to a messed up hand or extra limb and say that's a defect that proves the AI's image is inferior. But I think all these strange glitches should be viewed more as a feature than a defect. And what makes it important to me is that the glitches are often so strange and unexpected that it's not anything I think I would have imagined on my own. And these glitches are aesthetically distinctive and different than previous styles of so-called glitch art. I think the "perfect" "beautiful" AI images are by far the most boring and least original.

I'm very attracted to chance aesthetic; the sort of images that arise from processes where I have only a limited amount of control. I have experimented with this alot in my photography, especially in long exposure images. I find many experiences with a camera to feel very similar to using an AI image generator. A camera isn't a machine that faithfully replicates reality. It is very imperfect, with numerous elements distorting the image from what it is in the real world. With experience, we can learn how to "speak" with the camera and its associated elements in a way to consistently get the sort of images we want - including images which bear little resemblance to the "real life" things it is supposedly capturing. The same thing happens with the AI generators; you're forced to learn a different language and how to speak with the thing, but you still a large element of chance in what it does, and doing things such as changing the seed or its model can have dramatically different results. At it's most creative, an AI image generator is a way for me to play with language to experiment with how this complex machine creates images from words. Sometimes I just put in strings of random numbers and get all kinds of strange things. This is analogous to holding the camera shutter open and swinging the camera around to see what happens.

There are some AI generators out there that much too "easy" to use. They are using models that are trained in such a way that they generate this very limited palette of "beautiful" images with similar composition and in a stereotypical "digital art" style. These seem to be the ones that offend artists the most because they're making beautiful images that cop their style with very little effort from the user. But if you use these enough, you notice pretty quickly that the images all essentially look the same and it gets bland and boring real quick. These generators offend me too, because it neuters and homogenizes everything that can make AI images unique and interesting. And I find the harsh censoring on some platforms to be very anti-art and anti-creative. But AI generators exist outside of that wannabe scene and it's possible to get deep into AI art without ever wasting time with those lame platforms who are just trying to make a quick buck off a fad instead of contributing anything culturally valuable.

I also think that AI image generators are an ideal ironic way to criticize AI and the Tech Industry generally. I think AI is a danger to Humanity. Not because I worry a thinking machine will take over and try to exterminate all of us, but because I worry too many people will become confident that a machine can make better decisions than us, and so offload all our thinking and difficult decisions to machines that are dangerously imperfect and prone to errors that could result in people killing people because a machine told them it was the right thing to do and people forgot how to question and think for themselves. I intentionally make grotesque and ugly AI images because I think our worship of technology is grotesque and ugly.

[magicalgirlfumiko]

📜

Sword of Embera: Medus Tenpenny

GENERAL CHARACTER STATISTICS

“Everyone says they love a thief, until they meet a professional one.”

“Pirates are the only ones that understand freedom, unlike those that live in the coastal kingdoms.”

“Freedom? Hahaha. There is no freedom in the seas, only lashings and death. I fight for my men, so they will be free by retiring alive.”

Character Name: 

Medus Tenpenny

Name Meaning: “The Cunning One"

Alias: Pirate King

Gender: Male

Species/Race: Water Tribe, Human

Age: 24

B-Day: 9/22

Zodiac Sign: Virgo

Place of Birth: Chenoa City, The Kingdom of Chenoa

Current Residence: Destruction Reef, Azar

Occupation: Head of the Yellow Brothers Syndicate

School/Grade: Finished college.Family: He considers the Gailsons to be the closest thing he has to a family.Gemstone: Sardonyx

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

Height: 6’1”

Hair: Like most of his ocean dwelling tribe; Medus’ hair tone is very dark grey blue color. It is generally kept messy though the bangs rarely go past the base of his neck.

Eyes: Blue

Distinguishing Marks: Only thing that truly stands out about him is that his uniform is tailored differently from the rest of the deck officers.

General Appearance: Medus looks professional and uniformed. Medus is tall with a straight, upright posture. He has a straight, wedge-shaped nose and an extremely large forehead with a high hairline. He displays a lot of emotion in his face and doesn’t attempt hide it when he’s upset or mad.

General Clothing: He wears a red tunic and slacks when off duty. This tunic has gold trim in the center and on the cuffs. When he is on ship and for formal wear, Medus wears a fireman’s style red cap with a brass skull on the brim, a deep red frock that reaches his knees, and a waistcoat that is trimmed in gold. He wears a large ammo belt that allows for him to carry many 120 rounds of ammunition and a place to keep his whip. Medus almost always wears tall boots as a part of his outfits.

Strengths: Medus is capable of breathing underwater since he’s a water faye. He can also turn into a water form for several minutes which means that he can escape many tight jams. Medus is fast, as well. Most of his powers focused on his skills over magic.

Weaknesses: His worrisome nature makes his inclined to worry and this makes Medus is vulnerable to stomach and bowel troubles. He has an esoteric cuisine and as his delicate stomach requires him to be careful about his diet. It is essential that he treat his fascination with exotic food with extreme care. He also likes to smoke to deal with stress.

MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS

Allies: Medus prefers his own personal freedom than he cares about the overall balance between good and evil. This is not to say that he doesn’t care about the Category, but he feels that it is too rigid in laws. His closest ally is named Naomi Gailson whom is a no-nonsense female first mate and swordsmen. They’re comrades and close friends. Naomi is the person he trusts the most. And one of the few, if not the only one, he’d give his life for. Medus’ First Mate is named Joel Gailson.

Enemies: Anyone that dares to oppose his freedom of the seas.

Current Goal/Purpose: He is currently trying to seek out the remains of Rane’s Sword of Embera in order to help Rose Gailson create more state of the art airships for his fleet. While he has little love for the Category, they are currently trying to sway them to fight against the invasion of Chenoa by providing him with much needed money.

Aspirations: Stay hidden and be left alone from the outside world. He has no interest in becoming a member of Unit Zero or the Category.

Hobbies: Reading, writing, flower gardening, planning out his meals (though he’s not a very good cook).

Likes: Health foods, Lists, Hygiene, Order, Wholesomeness

Dislikes: Medus dislikes anything that can be hazardous to his health, such as certain foods or being unclean. He also highly dislikes anything he considers sordid; this includes sloppy workers and squalor. The least obvious dislike of his is being uncertain about himself.

Talents: Medus is good with accounting and controlling revenues. This is how he became the overall leader of the Syndicate powers. He worked his way through the system and out moved his rivals. Medus is a skill tactician as well, making his a very dangerous foe when it comes to dealing with battles. In terms of leadership he is an arch perfectionist and conservative. However, all this responsibility irks him. Medus is essentially a tactician, admirable in the attainment of limited objectives.

Inabilities: Medus is extremely fussy and is a worrier. He conceals too much of his emotions, to which he is afraid of giving way because he does not trust others, nor does he have confidence in himself and his judgments when it comes to his personal life. This is because he is conscious of certain shortcomings in himself of worldliness, of practicality, of sophistication and of outgoingness. Medus is overcritical and harsh when it comes to dealing with people he dislikes.

Fears: Facing the reality of his imperfections, being useless and unneeded.

General Personality: Can be viewed as an old maid at times. He is intellectually enquiring, methodical and logical, studious and teachable. He is often defensive about his overall personality and is only open when he chooses to be. Medus has a love for the fine arts and is known to be a member of the University crowds in Chenoa City.

Inner Personality: Medus can be sensible, discreet, well spoken, wise and witty, with a good understanding of other people’s problems which he can tackle with a practicality not always evident in his own personal relationships. He is intellectually enquiring, methodical and logical, studious and teachable. He combines mental ingenuity with the ability to produce a clear analysis of the most complicated problems. He has an excellent eye for detail.

Fondest Memory: Taking Naomi out for dinner.

Biggest Regret: None.

Secret: Medus likes to read trashy novels.

SPECIALTY CHARACTERISTICS

Special Items: Medus is armed with the fastest airship called the Calypso’s Fall in the Category’s entire zone of influence. It is a destroyer-class naval ship that features a solid, smooth, boat-like hull. Its prow is dominated by a large ramming horn. Resting beneath this is the secondary hull, which contains the lift Embera Unit. Extending behind the primary hull is a single thrust vector Embera Unit, looking exactly like an enormous version of Rose’s speed ship main engine. Unlike most of the Category’s engines on their airships, the Embera Units onboard the Calypso-class are powered by exclusively by Embera thrust and not a combination of steam and aether magic. This can be seen with the large “aether ball” towards the front of the ship.

The destroyer’s primary weapons consist of two anti-ship torpedo launches. The short-range weaponry is two trios of small turrets machine guns.

Length: 321ft’ Height: 150’ Maximum Speed: 151.1kt (171 mph) Maximum Armor: 356mm (on broadsides).

Weapons: Medus always carries a short naval cutlass and several pistols in normal pirate fashion. Like the rest of his crew, they rarely rely on using their elemental magic and instead use hybrid technologies in order to overwhelm their foes.

Magic: Ice Blast: Medus can convert the water in the air into ice, therefore allowing his to freeze opponents with blasts of cold air.

HISTORIC BACKGROUND

General History: Medus originally lived like a thug in the capital. He was eventually captured by the police force in the city. He was spared by veteran of the Rothnan War. His name was Joel Gailson. Joel saw much potential in the young Medus and was gave him the offer to stay a minor thief or learn a trade. Medus chose to learn a trade, knowing that the veteran was offering him a chance to escape the slums.

After graduating from the Chenoan Engineering School, Medus decided to get into the world of port trading. Medus spent some time living with Joel and his adopted daughters, Naomi and Rose. This trio became close as family and have been associated ever since. He got bored with port trade and decided to join Joel in the world of piracy. Since then he has gained a vast underworld paramilitary force. This was done through rather obscure means and mostly because of the fact that he’s good at striking fear into the hearts of even the bravest sailors…

Since running the Yellow Brothers, Medus is considered a high ranking member of the Syndicate; which is an international underground mafia. With these two factors, Medus can rest assured that there are very few that can mess with his and his empire. However, Unit Zero has been trying to get his attention of fighting against the invasion of Chenoa. He ponders if this will help him find the remains of the wreck of the Sword of Embera. Whoever controls that machine would be able to retain total control over the heavens.

[mysticsparklewings]

Terrarium Nova

Would you guys believe this started out as me trying to practice trees & use up some leftover paints sitting in/on my palettes from other projects?   The tree practicing is for a different project I'll be doing later, and I'll share the specifics of then   But yeah, I have a good amount of leftover watercolor dried onto a couple of cheap palettes, as well as some acrylics paints in a palette meant to keep them fresh (but unless you monitor it and spritz them with water every couple of days, they will still eventually dry up) and I really hate to waste any of it if I can help it, especially when it's my slightly nicer stuff. (Some of it was, some of it wasn't) So I figured I'd try to kill two birds with one stone, and the end result ended up looking pretty cool, although I do still have some more paint that didn't get used here, so this may not be the last random-ish painting you see from me. Oh, and I was also recycling a little bit since I used the back of a giant piece of watercolor paper I had previously used as a protective mat for my desk. I started with the tree shapes, mostly inspired by Bonsai trunks, and that actually did use up pretty much all of the dark brownish paint I was using, so I was off to a strong start. Then I went in with some metallic watercolor that was leftover from my Butterfly Babe piece, which dried with more of the black and silver I had mixed into it on top for reason unbeknownst to me, so the first little hill/mound I made naturally came out darker and more silvery than the additional hills I added later than came out decidedly more gold. I think after that I added in the orange sun/planet (in my head it's the sun but a lot of the details here are very ambiguous in what they could potentially be) and an accompanying orange horizon line. Originally, I thought I was going to be making a very sunset-ish background with possibly a very red sky and mixing the yellows in more, but that obviously didn't end up happening. I was kinda just going with what I felt like and where the paint wanted to take me. So I ended up going in with the yellows (and later red and magenta) leftover from my $50 vs $4 Watercolors piece (these ones being the $50 ones, the $4 ones were put on a separate palette while I was using them so I wouldn't get the two mixed up) and ended up making many yellow hills to fill out the background some more, though admittedly the ones on the left kinda got away from me a little. And I'll pause here to say that I was using water brushes throughout this entire piece as opposed to actual paintbrushes, and every time I use those (at least when I'm getting proper water flow) I find that I tend to have a somewhat easier time getting certain watercolor effects, mostly when it comes to blending out hard edges. It's funny to me, as a lot of artists would say water brushes have a higher learning curve than regular brushes, and I'm sure some have a harder time with them. I think the main reason I have an easier time might be because back at the beginning of the year when I started re-discovering watercolor, the first set of paints that got (the Viviva watercolor sheets, for anyone who's curious) came with a water brush, and at the time I had never used one and was really excited to try it, as well as I just didn't have a ton of brushes at my disposal. Likewise, I spent a lot of my time learning watercolors on a water brush, whereas, naturally, most artists learn primarily on regular brushes. To be fair, I would like to one day invest in a slightly nicer set than the cheaper set of different size water brushes that I currently have, as these don't always flow correctly and at least one has a very slow leak where the top screws on, which hasn't caused any painting problems but is just kind of annoying because it very slowly gets my hand wet while I'm using it. Anyway. I then decided I hadn't used enough of that metallic paint and went in and added some dots of various sizes in the sky, since I didn't really feel like trying to make proper stars of any kind, but I wanted more up there and that seemed like a good place for more metallic paint. After that, the plan was to start on my red sky, but I started putting the red down and realized I hadn't cleaned my brush very good, so I got this interesting shimmery darker red color, and since I had already messed up, I liked the color enough I decided to make a moon out of it, which is why that red pot is hanging out over on the left side there. Why this "moon" and the "sun" are out at the same time, I couldn't tell you. Sometimes things just happen in art. That led me to the decision that instead of covering the whole sky in a color, I would just add some clouds, and I decided to got with the expensive magenta on my palette. Things were going fine until I grabbed more paint than water (as I was hoping for kind of pale/blended out soft clouds) and I ended up with some pretty nasty unblended lines one of the clouds and it was notably darker at the top than the others. And so I introduced the technique of "this one cloud got messed up so the rest of you have to suffer!"  And I also kind of had to be okay with none of the blending and layering on them turning out super smooth or nice for consistency's sake. And you know, it's not fine art or anything, but it doesn't look as terrible as I thought it was going to. (Though that could really be said for this entire piece. ) I also ended up adding in the purple-y mountains in the foreground after feeling bad that I'd neglected some of the paints I'd originally been intended to use the most, and I think in the end it adds a nice contrast and kind of ties the magenta clouds into the piece as a whole more. I knew I still wanted to do leaves on my trees, which were still just bare trunks and branches by this point, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to do for them yet, so I did this kind of dome thing for the sky, after acknowledge I did not want to have to try and get a smooth, consistent blue wash around everything else I'd already painted in. (Yes, I once again forgot the principal rule of painting--put the background in first) While that dried, I took a break to ponder my next move. I hadn't used any of the acrylic paints that I had leftover (more than I originally would've had too, as I ended up making a sign for my mom that I haven't decided yet if I want to post or not) and one of the colors was green, which is a very basic choice for leaves, but I already had so many other strange colors going on that the basic blue sky and some simple green leaves didn't seem like asking too much. So then I just had to decide what the leaves were going to look like. In the end, I went with using the back end of a paintbrush to dot on some of the green and some of this pale, yellowy color, and a little of a mixture I made using those two colors together (originally for the sign, not this), and I tried to place the dots in mostly realistic places for leaves. And admittedly I could've done a lot more leaves and really filled out the trees, but I felt like it looked better with more of the trunk and branches showing. I also went with the dot thing partially to carry over the dots in the sky. I'm not really sure what kind of theme that is, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. And then last but not least, I signed it with a purple gelly roll, trying to balance in both color and placement just a wee bit. Funnily enough, the most tedious part of this process was actually what came after it was finished. Because I was working on a giant piece of watercolor paper that was previously a mat for my desk, and I wasn't really sure how this was going to turn out, naturally I wasn't really thinking about what size I was painting at while I was working. And wouldn't you know it, my poor painting here ended up being too long to fit in my scanner all at once.  So I had to cut it out of the giant piece of paper and then scan it twice; once to get one end, and then a second time to get the other end. Then, of course, the two pieces had to be stitched together in Photoshop, which wasn't too bad. I then spent more minutes than I care to admit trying to figure out how/to what extent the best way was to single out the little oval-ish shape of the painting, as I thought that would be much nicer than leaving the ugly bits an pieces of white scanner background. I tried to keep the actual edges smooth, though I nixed the idea of having it be a perfect oval shape right from the get-go, mostly because of how much of the edges would get cut off in one area or another. So the shape itself is very imperfect. Still, I think in the end everything turned out pretty nice. And admittedly after how the later part of last week went for me, it felt really nice to just kind of go in and not really worry about the details or if everything was turning out exactly right or whatever. Sometimes you need to do something that's just loose and has very few rules to it like this. Personally, I think I really needed this at this time in particular, and for as unplanned and simple as it is, I'm really happy with how it turned out. The title is a little random; the shape and what I did with the sky kinda reminded me of a terrarium, and much like a nova is the birth of a star, this was a pretty spontaneous birth of a...planet, I guess.  I almost called it "Terra Nova" (roughly "earth star birth") but upon Googling that because it sounded familiar, I decided I did not want to name it after a movie that came out in 2011 that I know nothing about and have no affiliation with. Anyway, things might be a little slower on the art front this week, as I have a bit of a tall order to-do list, but for the foreseeable future things are going to be somewhat interesting here; I finally ordered a gouache set I've had my eye on, and it should be here by the end of the week, as well as the tree thing I mentioned at the top of the description, and another project I've done some preliminary work for...Jeez, I have an awful lot to try to squeeze in before Inktober starts, don't I?   Perhaps I'd best go and get started on all that. ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble |   Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram