Revd. HUW JANUS

There was once a time (before Photoshop and long before AI) when to create a painting one actually needed a real brush, paint, surface….and artist….

So it was, in the late 80s, having decided I didn’t want to spend my life drawing birds and medical procedures, I found myself working as a ‘Pastiche Artist’: pictures of Oliver Cromwell holding a bar of soap (something to do with ‘warts and all’ I think), bottles of Martell cognac in a Manet-style vineyard and Artois adverts mimicking 20s graphic posters. 

All of it done by hand (and brush), of course, and at speed: in the advertising world 90% of the time is consumed by procrastination and client wrangling – the execution of the darned artwork always being left to the last moment…something of a problem if one has a ‘Rembrandt’ to paint over a weekend. A couple of times I burned holes in the middle of painting as I tried to hasten the oil-paint-drying-process a little too enthusiastically.

This painting is an early sample piece I did for my portfolio.

Of course now this sort of thing can be done quickly, seamlessly and for nearly nowt by AI. 

And what WONDERS AI brings! - and so beautiful....

But it is the DEATH of creativity.

A friend recently suggested I tried it out: he is a writer and said that it helped him come up with ideas and a different way of looking at things. 

But the very idea fills me with horror: the whole fun of the thing is coming up with the concept, the idea - the juxtaposition of colours, shapes and stories in one’s mind. And the satisfaction comes from the craftsmanship and graft of painting and drawing and the execution. 

So often the final piece doesn’t match up to the original vision - but then that’s part of the journey.

The idea that there would be some enjoyment in watching AI come up with a dozen better ideas than I could, all beautifully rendered and successfully finished and all in a moment…

Well what’s the bloody point of that?

That’s not art.

Relic and Luddite I am - sinking into the rear view mirror.

I’m living in the past - and I guess I’ll have to be happy with that.

But I was lucky to have raised the children and paid off the mortgage long before AI arrived and feel greatly for those illustrators who now have had the financial ground taken from beneath their feet. Progress? Another sideways step…