Art Gallery/Blog: I Asked AI to Generate Art.

One of the many things that AI is being used for nowadays is to generate art, be it for book covers, presentations, fun, etc. Personally, I have used AI for this because while I can make watercolor paintings and know how to use graphite to draw, I suck at drawing people and animals unless I have some sort of aid to help me. However, I’ve always been very specific about what I wanted AI to create and have never given it free reign before, so let’s see what it can come up with on its own.

#1: Oil Painting

Compared to actual oil paintings, this isn’t that bad. I was hoping the AI would give me something that looked more reminiscent of a particular time period or movement (such as Impressionism, Romanticism, Rocco, etc.) but it’s still pretty to look at. You can also see some of the brush strokes in the sky, which I thought was a nice touch to make it look more like a realistic painting.

#2: Watercolor Painting

The AI did a really good job with making the background look like it was done with a wet-on-wet technique and the leaves of the trees and plants and the reflections on the water definitely look like they were done with a brush, which is common to see with watercolor paintings. However, my main problem with this painting is that while it looks like watercolor, it looks too perfect. Maybe it’s just me, but the lines look too crisp, unlike what you would see in a painting done by a human.

#3: Graphite Drawing

Having worked with graphite before (though I’m not super good at it) and seen what other people have done with it, this looks like it could be a hyper-realistic drawing of some sort. Either that or it’s a picture that someone took in black and white.

#4: Gouache Painting

Like with watercolor and graphite, I’ve worked with gouache paint before, though I’ve never done a full painting with it. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, think of gouache as being the child of acrylic and watercolor paint, a happy middle ground between two vastly different mediums. It has the opacity of acrylic paint and much the same texture if you use it straight out of the bottle and the reusability of watercolor paint. It can be thinned out with water to make it more transparent and can also be spread out with the wet-on-wet technique. What the AI created here looks like something that a beginner using watercolor or gouache could easily paint in a few minutes (maybe I should try to recreate this painting for one of my next art gallery posts that I haven’t done in forever).

Overall, it’s scary how well the AI was able to generate these images and make them look like something that someone could actually paint if they wanted to. However, one thing that I’ve noticed with some of these images is that the AI makes them look a bit too perfect in my opinion. While yes, there were some places where you could see the brush strokes and stuff and some people are as good as the AI at creating paintings like these, I still think there should be some minor flaws at least somewhere in the painting to make it look more realistic.

Until next time,

M.J.