Planet Earth Arts

Hi, it's me! Your artist friend. Well, one of your artist friends, as I imagine you have a number of artists in your life. And if you know these people well enough, you'll have watched their careers grow from humble art school beginnings to whatever awesome stuff they're doing in the present. Those careers are now under real threat of being replaced, and I'm here to tell you why.

Artwork-generating apps operate on a vast library filled with thousands upon thousands of art pieces that have been ripped from the internet. You can enter a few prompts, and the app will churn out a fully finished piece that took all of an afternoon to make. Yes, they often look really fake and are full of mistakes (eg: the hands), but these apps are getting smarter and more intuitive every day. Eventually, you won't be able to tell the difference between the above illustration and something that came out of one of these apps. And there are even app users who are now branding themselves as artists, and taking commissions from clients. Selling illustrations cobbled together from stolen art.

These days, I'm seeing endless AI images on my feed, and they're often followed by likes, shares and ooh-ing and ahh-ing in the comments. And a lot of these app users/fans don't understand that the art they're seeing was made possible by countless artists whose work was taken from them without consent, without credit and without pay. We have to compete against the algorithms of social media as it is. AI apps have made our fight exponentially harder.

I made this illustration over the course of the last two weeks, in between my shifts as a professional designer. It shows tired eyes, greying hair and the ever-present wrist braces that alleviate work-related pain. It's full of flaws, but they're MY flaws, not glitches caused by artificial generation. It took hours to make from scratch, and from my own creative mind. And if someone asked me to make one for them, you can bet your b***y I'd charge a good chunk of change for it. Artists charge for this stuff because it's how we survive. And it's worth the money. It's worth it because a real, living, breathing person created something like this from the depths of their soul. From years of painstaking education. From late hours and sore hands. And it's a glorious original piece that you can cherish forever (or you can like, re-gift it if you hate it, whatever. As long as we get paid.)

I've been told by my lovely friends (who I'm lucky to have) that AI will never replace me. Sadly, that just isn't the case, as my services have indeed been replaced by AI apps on more than one occasion. I have lost clients because of this. If you can't afford to pay someone to make artwork for you, save your money until you can. If you're not going to hire me to draw for you, that's totally cool. But PLEASE hire another artist. Don't replace me with any of these plagiarizing apps. It doesn't just hurt me. It hurts all artists.

Or hey, learn a few tricks yourself. Making art is really challenging, but it's also fulfilling, and dare I say (GASP) fun.

HOW DO WE ALL GET WHAT WE NEED (NOT WANT) IN A WORLD OF LIMITED RESOURCES?

First we must realize that what we need is not limited - it is infinite - at least to our limited perspective. What we need is not expensive - it is free - that is if you don't count the cost of what is our only meaningful currency, and only true possession, our time.

This started as my attempt to help Manifest Drawing Center and their steadfast and earnest founders Jason Franz and Brigid O'Kane. They are in the exciting but precarious position of a capital campaign to fund and support the expansion of latest love child (please see the great success stories for Manifest with the gallery, their publications, their online ventures, and the original iterations of the drawing center).

First I want to explicitly state - this is a cause, a project, and a passion I share with all those who are actively spending their resources to provide a world class facility for visual artists to learn and practice in. I am invested and committed. Do I have $8 million dollars, sadly no. But just as the little drummer boy presented his "gift" so shall I. My gift is my intellect, my passion, and sharing my joy from drawing in person, live, among people and while sharing giving those around me the sense of the love I feel and possibly project while doing what I love most - short of life and those of my loved ones. This tiny action can start a spark - maybe they will realize they love to draw, maybe not. Maybe just the buzz of energy would fill them with the curiosity to question their own existence? What is it that I would do even if I didn't get paid to do it and would seek to fill my free time with? Some might label it a calling or a purpose?

Support the arts, join the arts, celebrate the arts, share the arts, protect the arts and those who go where many fear to tread. IF not for you then for your CHILDREN.