Even Bad Art is Better than AI

[badartisbetterthanai]

Finally got back to my art prompt book

[badartisbetterthanai]

I am perfectly mature adult, tyvm.

Continuous contour hand exercise from Lauren Horn's "This is not a sketchbook it's an art class"

[badartisbetterthanai]

So, these are the first three warm up exercises from The 30 Day Sketchbook Project by Minnie Small. I did them as recommended with the shapes, but I didn't have water colors so I did them with alcohol markers instead. I also changed up the colors. I like the first one the most, the second one a middling amount, and the triangle one I feel meh about. The actual prompt is to "unblank" 4 pages in the sketchbook. I've finished my first which is a riff on the blue one above and I'm working on the second. It's certainly taking me more than a prompt a day but I think that's ok. I'm really enjoying this process. Are they fine art? No. Could AI do them? Maybe. But it didn't. I learned something and it brought a bit more joy and curiosity to the world, and no AI prompt could do that

[badartisbetterthanai]

So, I'm not an artist

And what I mean by that is that I've not been *trained* in art. It's not been a huge part of my life beyond "oh, that looks nice" and moving on. But I've always been interested in art. I've always doodled and hidden away what I've colored or painted or drawn because my parents and eventually my spouse were extremely critical.

Now, before I move on, I want to say a word in defense of my spouse: art school makes harsh critique a habit and my spouse is a trained artist. They're quite good. Over the years, they've softened as they have seen the impact critique as taught by fine arts schools has had on the people around them. They've seen the damage it does to people who are just testing the waters of exploring talent or growing skills. They are better and I will stand in their defense. Moving on. I loathe generative AI. My primary medium is writing and you can pry my m-dash and my oxford comma from my cold, dead hands. I fight AI on the writing front every day. But I crave a new weapon: visual art. And I decided that I would take my nascent talent that has been relatively unnurtured for almost 40 years and do something with it. I was going to fight AI by learning how to do visual art. I'm not ready to be attaching my name to it at this point. Will it be good? Probably not. Neither is my shitty tumblr poetry on my main blog. The point is to get it out, to do something a machine can't do, to take a risk and get it wrong or to take a risk and get something right. Mostly, though, it's to learn something. So, no, my name won't be (closely) attached to it but I won't do this in the shadows any more. I have The 30 Day Sketchbook Project by Minne Small, This is Not a Sketchbook, It's an Art Class by Lauren Horn, and an unearned sense of gumption that will likely get me in trouble by purists. And those purists can shove it where the sun doesn't shine. If you're interested, follow along because even if it might not be pretty, bad art is still better than AI.