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400 Days of Joy and Pain - Art, AI, and Futurism
Posted a year agoHello again!
With regard to FA's future, I am adopting a guarded "wait and see" approach before I upload anything more. I'd like to see how Dragoneer's estate handles the LLC that FA is a part of, and what the new owners, if any, decide to do. I'll probably be uploading more of my own art to Blue Sky, if you're at all interested in watching my progress on that front.
On Art:
I'm still toiling away in front of the drawing board - once a day at least; 400 days straight. Objectively, I know I've made good progress, and I maintain that the skill of art is probably the hardest thing I've undertaken - ever. I have slowly wrapped my arms around the very basics, and while the movement forwards feels plodding at times, I can look back at what I did a year ago and see progression, see the steps forwards that I have made, even if I can perceive a drag in my gait.
I'm learning so much about art, and about the dedication those have gone before me have; however the majority of what I have learned is about myself...not about how to draw. The habits I have around resistance to work, the need and deep desire I have for constant dopamine hits from any source, and my own natural rhythms of mental capability.
If you think you can't do art, if you think you're creatively empty, I challenge you to pick it up and give it a real, earnest try. Find a medium that works for you; try them all if you need to. Push yourself to make it a habit, despite your brain's best attempts at resistance; resistance is the brains way of trying to cop out, to tell you the thing is hard, and that it's easier to go doomscroll for an hour instead. Don't listen. Your brain is an incredible liar.
Even if you're ultimately not the best at it, you're going to learn so much along the way. This I can guarantee you.
On AI:
I've been reading Frank Herbert's Dune, which deals with a society that has dealt with and ultimately abandoned AI. What the book does a good job of showing, that the movies make into mysticism or even magic, is that the humans in that world and time have realized their bodies and minds are incredibly capable and flexible machines. There's a lot scenery dedicated towards characters listening to themselves, clearing their head and observing the world about them, and then using those facts and knowledge to bend themselves or their surroundings to their will. I can clearly see where Herbert was going with it - humanity would never reach that point when instead they could just lean on a computer to do everything for them. That way leads stagnation, as much as the current system of their world is leading them to stagnation.
My relationship towards AI continues to get more complex as I learn the actual skill of drawing. While I will still poke at it now and again, I more readily see the lack of dynamism, energy, and the human touch. I have conversations with people where they insist that AI is getting better and better, and my anger level just increases as the conversation goes on. I think I see that stagnation coming. I can feel the stagnation when I dabble.
If you'd have asked me in the 90s, when I was just entering the world as an adult, I'd have said that technology and the Internet were going to be a great leveler - a way for humanity to understand, communicate, and relate to each other.
What a rube I was. What an absolute naive little child.
Everything seems to have been co-opted by culturally and ethically bankrupt MBAs and their cronies; chasing money, influence, and consolidation of power. Some of us are willing worker drones that follow that path, and enable these parasites. Never in a million years would I have thought that we would replace creatives with AI before we used it for removing the tedium from our lives, or used it for doing statistical work on enormous data sets that are a key to discovery, but a human cannot do in their lifetime. Never would I have thought that we, as a culture, would rather spend our times face-down in a little screen when the larger world is going on outside, should we just look up.
Maybe Frank was on to something.
Fight that feeling of resistance, and fight that coming stagnation.
With regard to FA's future, I am adopting a guarded "wait and see" approach before I upload anything more. I'd like to see how Dragoneer's estate handles the LLC that FA is a part of, and what the new owners, if any, decide to do. I'll probably be uploading more of my own art to Blue Sky, if you're at all interested in watching my progress on that front.
On Art:
I'm still toiling away in front of the drawing board - once a day at least; 400 days straight. Objectively, I know I've made good progress, and I maintain that the skill of art is probably the hardest thing I've undertaken - ever. I have slowly wrapped my arms around the very basics, and while the movement forwards feels plodding at times, I can look back at what I did a year ago and see progression, see the steps forwards that I have made, even if I can perceive a drag in my gait.
I'm learning so much about art, and about the dedication those have gone before me have; however the majority of what I have learned is about myself...not about how to draw. The habits I have around resistance to work, the need and deep desire I have for constant dopamine hits from any source, and my own natural rhythms of mental capability.
If you think you can't do art, if you think you're creatively empty, I challenge you to pick it up and give it a real, earnest try. Find a medium that works for you; try them all if you need to. Push yourself to make it a habit, despite your brain's best attempts at resistance; resistance is the brains way of trying to cop out, to tell you the thing is hard, and that it's easier to go doomscroll for an hour instead. Don't listen. Your brain is an incredible liar.
Even if you're ultimately not the best at it, you're going to learn so much along the way. This I can guarantee you.
On AI:
I've been reading Frank Herbert's Dune, which deals with a society that has dealt with and ultimately abandoned AI. What the book does a good job of showing, that the movies make into mysticism or even magic, is that the humans in that world and time have realized their bodies and minds are incredibly capable and flexible machines. There's a lot scenery dedicated towards characters listening to themselves, clearing their head and observing the world about them, and then using those facts and knowledge to bend themselves or their surroundings to their will. I can clearly see where Herbert was going with it - humanity would never reach that point when instead they could just lean on a computer to do everything for them. That way leads stagnation, as much as the current system of their world is leading them to stagnation.
My relationship towards AI continues to get more complex as I learn the actual skill of drawing. While I will still poke at it now and again, I more readily see the lack of dynamism, energy, and the human touch. I have conversations with people where they insist that AI is getting better and better, and my anger level just increases as the conversation goes on. I think I see that stagnation coming. I can feel the stagnation when I dabble.
If you'd have asked me in the 90s, when I was just entering the world as an adult, I'd have said that technology and the Internet were going to be a great leveler - a way for humanity to understand, communicate, and relate to each other.
What a rube I was. What an absolute naive little child.
Everything seems to have been co-opted by culturally and ethically bankrupt MBAs and their cronies; chasing money, influence, and consolidation of power. Some of us are willing worker drones that follow that path, and enable these parasites. Never in a million years would I have thought that we would replace creatives with AI before we used it for removing the tedium from our lives, or used it for doing statistical work on enormous data sets that are a key to discovery, but a human cannot do in their lifetime. Never would I have thought that we, as a culture, would rather spend our times face-down in a little screen when the larger world is going on outside, should we just look up.
Maybe Frank was on to something.
Fight that feeling of resistance, and fight that coming stagnation.
Art Flood!
Posted a year agoSooooo you might have noticed I have been posting a lot of art lately, almost all of it not mine.
This is a result of wanting to share/make public all the art I've had done over the last 30 years in the fandom. It's going to be a LOT of uploads, and I'm trying to stagger them out some.
I am uploading some of my own art as it's drawn.
Sorry for the flood!
This is a result of wanting to share/make public all the art I've had done over the last 30 years in the fandom. It's going to be a LOT of uploads, and I'm trying to stagger them out some.
I am uploading some of my own art as it's drawn.
Sorry for the flood!
Here we go...
Posted a year agoI joined the fandom in 1993.
Ever since joining, despite all the other things I'd dabbled in creatively, all the other things I've done both within and without the fandom, I always wanted to learn to draw.
I can remember being a kid and asking a classmate how he did it. I can remember all the false starts and heartache around never quite catching on as I went through the years.
Here we are, 31 years later. I've spent most of the last year working on myself as a project.
I started to poke around with AI - started to get the hang of Stable Diffusion, figured out how to optimize things...however there was this nagging feeling that I was cheating myself of the time I could have spent actually learning.
A friend told me to pick up an artistic pursuit as a way to deal with and control my ADHD. So I did. I took up learning to draw.
208 days later, I can safely say that it's become a hobby, and drawing once a day is a habit.
I may be a graymuzzle, and I may be a pretty rank amateur - as amateurs go - but I hope I can share what I do with those that would look, and you can come along with me.
I will also be posting some art from my friends and other artists that I have worked with over the years. There's a good bit of that, as we're talking 31 years of fandom....
Ever since joining, despite all the other things I'd dabbled in creatively, all the other things I've done both within and without the fandom, I always wanted to learn to draw.
I can remember being a kid and asking a classmate how he did it. I can remember all the false starts and heartache around never quite catching on as I went through the years.
Here we are, 31 years later. I've spent most of the last year working on myself as a project.
I started to poke around with AI - started to get the hang of Stable Diffusion, figured out how to optimize things...however there was this nagging feeling that I was cheating myself of the time I could have spent actually learning.
A friend told me to pick up an artistic pursuit as a way to deal with and control my ADHD. So I did. I took up learning to draw.
208 days later, I can safely say that it's become a hobby, and drawing once a day is a habit.
I may be a graymuzzle, and I may be a pretty rank amateur - as amateurs go - but I hope I can share what I do with those that would look, and you can come along with me.
I will also be posting some art from my friends and other artists that I have worked with over the years. There's a good bit of that, as we're talking 31 years of fandom....
