Fragile Handle with Care

Art process and AI

Here’s this week’s free artwork, “Fragile Handle with Care”. This link goes to a high resolution file that you can download and print. If you like it please share it!

It started out with the phrase rolling around in my mind. This past week I was feeling fragile. There were a bunch of events colliding making me feel extra sensitive, and it made me want to illustrate this phrase. When I was in art school one of my favorite exercises we did was called, “design anchors” you would look at a piece of design and find something you liked, something that anchored the piece, and steal it and use it in a new way. The pieces below are what I lifted from for this drawing.

This process got me thinking about the AI debate happening now in the art world. The ethics of stealing, and where art comes from. I didn’t ask these artists for permission to use their work as inspiration, and nothing happens in a vacuum. I think this process is different from what a computer does, but I’m not sure I can articulate all the reasons why.

Another thing that got me thinking about this debate was this week’s episode of the Life Kit podcast on Looking at Art. If you see a computer generated piece of art and it makes you feel something, does that legitimize it as art? Seeing all the portraits folks posted from the Lensa app I was really blown away that a lot of the portraits really, “captured their subject”. They were beautiful. It’s one of the things that made so many artists so scared.

I make digital art, and the piece I made this week I worked hard to make look like a risograph print with very deliberate imperfections. I used computer generated brushes to add texture, and the brush pack even includes a bunch of “print errors” that you can add to the piece to make it feel like a real print.

I found the images on pinterest which is a platform that takes art and takes it out of its original context and compiles it for a visual feast which I then sift through and curate into little folders of images that I like the most.

I make illustrations that look like paintings and I sell them for a lot less than if they were oil paintings. How does the medium you use change the percieved value of a piece of art? Will the medium you use be the distinguishing factor between you and a computer?

I’m giving this art away so that you can print it and in hopes that you’ll share it so that I can grow an audience that I will be able to monetize someday. I’m exchanging this work for eyeballs, for hope that someday you’ll buy something from me. I am asking that you share it, but if someone took it and tried to sell it I would be angry. The line that I have for this art is someone else monetizing it. Why? I don’t know.

All I have is questions so far, zero answers. Are you thinking about this ethical debate at all? I think we can agree that pandoras box has been opened, and this is going to be a very strange journey to watch unfold.

These are the references shown above that I stole from:

I loved the type going up the sides from this Aley Wild piece.

The purple pink and red from this East End Press print.

And the design of this vase from the V&A museum archive.