The recent explosion of websites that create artwork generated by Artificial Intelligence has opened up many new questions from artists about copyright related to AI artwork. One interesting idea that I saw demonstrated was from an artist who used AI pictures from Midjourney to inspire a painting that she created in Procreate. I decided to do my own experiment using some AI generated pictures to create my own painting of a fox. Above you can see the two AI images I used for inspiration (on the right) and my finished Procreate illustration (on the left).
I began by generating MANY pictures of a scene using the prompt "Painting of a fox in a winter night scene with mountains and pine trees." I used the website Stable Diffusion and an app called Dream. Both worked well, but I would not suggest Dream for students because it featured the work of various artists and some images might not be appropriate for school. I did like that Dream could let you pick artistic styles to try, and you could also upload a reference photo that it would use to help it generate the art.
https://stablediffusionweb.com/#demo
https://apps.apple.com/in/app/dream-by-wombo-ai-art-tool/id1586366816
I saved some of the best images to my iPad photo album, then selected a few that had a good composition/arrangement of items to use for my painting. Since I usually can't generate an idea for a drawing from my head, I found that using AI to make a uniquely created image was a huge advantage to help me get started!
In the screenshot above from Procreate, you can see how I inserted my AI drawing into Layer 1. I traced it on Layer 2. I traced the reference image loosely, moved the moon to a different location, and added a tail to the fox. Underneath Layer 2, I added additional layers where I colored in the picture. Once my "painting" was done, I turned off layers 1 and 2.
I also used a second image as a reference photo in Procreate (above). I used this picture to select the colors for my digital painting. I also modeled my pine trees after the reference photo.
I think you can see how AI generated art can provide a copyright free image that can inspire drawings and paintings. Instead of tracing from a picture that is downloaded from the internet, you can create a work of art that is uniquely your own and created by you. It will be interesting to see if students and other artists can use AI art as a starting point to create their own works. I can imagine this might be a perfect way to help students get started who say "I don't know what to draw."
Call to Action: Do you have any ideas of projects in your classroom where students could use AI generated art for tracing?
One Best Thing:
This post is a part of my One Best Thing Project "AI Art for Inspiration, Creativity, and Learning." I am collecting my AI Art project ideas and resources at this website:
https://sites.google.com/view/creativeapptitude/ai-art
January 21, 2023
I found this post so interesting, Karen! This past fall semester, one of my students, an art education major, created a lesson plan where she asked students to generate AI art based on a haiku that they wrote during class. She also included in the lesson discussion about the role of AI in the evolution of art making. I thought it was such an engaging and timely lesson plan for a high school art classroom. Taking the next step and having her students recreate their AI-generated art in Procreate would be a great extension! Thanks for sharing your experience here.
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