I would like to clarify attributions to Ai, and needless to say my own and that of other sources and capabilities involved in creating and enhancing images. There are Ai capabilities for generating an image from a verbal description that I may discuss another time, but that is not what was involved in the image generation process of the image of Lady Godiva I’m discussing here.
I’m going to quote from Christopher Volpe’s ‘Inside Art’ here again, this time from his article of Thursday, January 23rd, 2025: ‘How to Write an Artist Statement’:
“‘Why do I have to explain my art, can’t they just look at it?’
“Of course they can look at it, but if you’re running away from writing an artist statement, you’re missing out on deepening the connection between the viewer and your work. And you should look at that and ask yourself why.”
Okay, so I’m going to explain the artwork image of Lady Godiva above in order to clarify the role Ai played in the creative process. I do this, fully understanding Volpe’s caution:
“We (your eager viewers) want to know what moves you to make art and especially how best to meaningfully understand and appreciate it. That’s all. Note, I did not say, ‘explain it.’ No, you do not have to ‘explain your art.’ What we actually want is to know a little about what makes you tick and how your art reflects that. Here’s the true bottom line about artists’ statements:
“Good art raises questions; good artist statements give just enough context to clarify them.
“In fact, it’s extremely helpful to sit down periodically and write out your own explanation of what you’re doing and why, if only to better understand what you’re spending all those solitary hours toiling away doing.
“A good artist statement answers the question, what’s in it for the viewer without explaining it away.”
Back with you live here: I had been working with ChatGPT on issues of relativity when, on a lark, I asked it to comment on the above image, upon which it gave a recommended style of ‘art statement’ on the image that had involved some Ai help but it obviously didn’t care. Here’s how that went down:
It is an ‘art statement along the lines Volpe suggested, not an explanation of the process of generating the image, that Volpe strongly suggests I should not engage in. But, I am going to do it anyway to clarify the role of Ai in what I do:
In the attached image below, there are six smaller images associated with steps in a creative process that I sometimes follow:
#1 At the upper left is an image of a painting I found somewhere on the internet that had no apparent attribution and might actually have been Ai generated — I don’t know. What I do know is that it brought to my mind a sketch I had done some time ago on the similar theme of Lady Godiva.
#2 At the middle of the top row is an image of that earlier hand-drawn sketch. So with both images on my screen I decided to exploit their commonality by cutting and pasting patches of the painting onto the image of the sketch. Clearly the torso and limbs of the lady had to be reflected horizontally and rotated to fit. The lady’s head has to be set on separately as did her breasts. I also had to cut and paste from my original to cover up the flailing arm. Then I grabbed pieces of the horse like I’ve shown for the rump in the inset, manipulating each piece and placing it on my originally drawn horse.
#3 At top right we have all the pieces of the woman and horse in appropriate locations but there are no legs available for the horse or the Lady’s foot. So we make a foot for the lady out of a patch of her leg. Also, you’ve probably noticed that I swapped the horse’s front leg positions to use what was available in the original painting.
#4 At bottom left is an image I obtained by printing the previous image and sketching in the legs and other details by pen and adding some tone variation with charcoal. Then I Iphoned a photo of the result of my sketching. At every stage using the color variation tool provided with Preview.
#5 At the middle of the bottom row, the image is pretty well completed but the woman’s stomach is deformed and she needs a navel and the foot needs to be attached. Also, I noted after printing the horse in the painted image (unlike the lady) has no chest. Since this was the case in the original painting, apparently no one was looking at the horse anyway. So I cut out the horse’s chest to move it forward quite significantly more along the lines of my original sketch.
#6. The final image is where Ai gets involved — specifically KREA image enhancement. This tool preserves every outline and significant line in the original but smoothes it out to look more ‘real’.
Color enhancement of brightness, saturation, and contrast are nothing new. And the cannibalizing of an image is not new either–I did this without Ai help back in the eighties and nineties with the pallet from Renoir’s wading lady below. I wish I had some of the tools I had then. I’m sure they are available for a price. I thought it was pretty cute. 🙂
Yes, I am going to get back to the explanation of entropy. I’m working on it.
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