How I use AI in my art
Recently I've become addicted to using AI in my illustration work. I love starting an image with an AI generated piece and seeing what I can make of it. My newest favorite procedure is this:
I start a session in Artbreeder. Artbreeder is great for jump-starting the creative process for me. I can quickly generate some unique, inspiring imagery and then easily produce variations of that image. The variations can be subtle shifts, or completely new imagery.
Once i have a few pieces that I like from my Artbreeder session, I'll bring those into Looking Glass AI. Looking Glass is a Google Colab notebook that is free to play around with. I pay for Colab Pro so that I can have access to faster machines, but the procedure works just fine on the free plan.
I feed my Artbreeder images into looking glass one at a time. Then I generate some wild variations. I slowly add more of the Artbreeder imagery to the ingesting folder and let Looking Glass play around some more.
Usually while this stuff is cooking, I'll hop over to Prosepainter, which is by the creator of Artbreeder. Prosepainter lets you upload an image and then choose a section of the image, or the whole image, to be affected by a text prompt. The AI will slowly morph the input image towards its translation of the text. You can get some pretty wild surreal stuff this way.
I've been using it mostly to nudge the imagery more towards classic artists that i love, like Mucha or Klimt, or even Bosch. Or sometimes I'll start to see new things emerge in the imagery, and I'll tailor the text prompt to push more towards that.
I find adding "a painting of" in front of the text gives me more interesting results than the photo-realistic stuff that normally comes out.
Once I've done this whole process, I'm left with a folder full of really cool unique imagery for the day. I'll comb through that stuff and set aside some pieces to work on. Those get imported into Procreate on my iPad, and then I start painting.
My most recent adventure started as usual in Artbreeder, and moved into Looking Glass and Prosepainter, as I normally do. As i pushed the image further, it started to look like a Medusa head. so I asked Prosepainter to give me an image of Medusa. I loved what it produced, so I took that into Procreate to refine it.
While on my iPad, I started using some of my image manipulation apps and ended up with some fun abstract imagery. I wanted to do some simple white line character in the resulting image. Then I saw a sort of fire shape in the dark areas. So I played with that illustration a bit, and brought it back into one of the apps for this final look.
Quite a weird journey to end up with this illustration, but I really love the final piece. And I especially love this way of working. It continues to surprise and delight me.
Let me know if you use this process to create anything fun!
Mr B coloring pages
A while ago, I made a set of Mr B postcards. 10 little postcard prints of a little Mr B flying around with his flower friends. Soon after, I turned that postcard set into a tiny Mr B video game. Just a silly little interactive toy, really. You fly around with Mr B and play drums, or make music on a tiny flower sequencer. Silly Stuff.
The first Mr B postcard set
Mr B plays the drums in his first video game.
Then I started working on an update to the game, and it meant more art. So I started working on what is starting to become a second Mr B postcard set.
As the second postcard started to unfold, I realized I had enough art to do a cute little Mr B coloring book, and maybe an activity book, with mazes and word searches. You know, like those old school fun pads we had as kids.
So as I assemble that book, I wanted to give some pages away here for free. I’m hoping that you color some of these pages and share what you come up with, with me! You can certainly tag me in anything that you post. I’d love to see a bunch of creative Mr B pages!
Just right-click/save the images below! You can actually get these, and five more free coloring pages if you sign up to my email list.
Zombie bundle giveaway
This month, I'm giving away a bundle of zombie goodies, including a 10" x 10" zombie print, a zombie t-shirt, and this super cool little zombie plush keychain thingy..
Girl in the Sea
Girl in the sea is one of my favorite songs from our first album. There’s something slightly magical about Neil’s acoustic guitar playing, mixed with that really cool accordion and violin. It has a sound that’s completely different from anything else on the album.
When we were recording the song in the studio, we had a blast making all the percussive sounds, and group vocals. We were trying to make it feel like a sea shanty, or pirate song.
Even now, I find myself returning to this character in my art.
A.I., Machine Learning, and zombies
Ever since I got my first Commodore Vic20 (and then later the Commodore 64), I’ve been addicted to using the computer to make art. And while my college years were spent studying traditional painting and drawing, as soon as I graduated and moved to Los Angeles, I dove headfirst into using the computer to animate and paint.
Recently, the field of A.I and Machine Learning has made leaps and bounds, making these tools finally available to artists. I first started playing around with a web-based app called Pix2Pix, which let you sketch something, and the computer would “flesh” it out.
My initial results were pure nightmare fuel.
Not too long after, I discovered a site called Artbreeder, which gave access to a pre-trained set of models. Mostly you could make your photos look like Van Gogh, or any other artist whose work the A.I. had been trained on. But I wanted to be able to train my own model. I wanted the computer to make new work based on my entire body of digital paintings.
That’s when I found RunwayML.
RunwayML’s aim was to make the training of new A.I. models accessible to artists, which is exactly what I was wishing for. And their site made the whole process super painless to hop into. Soon I was training models on my amoeba characters, some digital faces, and now, zombies.
My first experiment in the land of the A.I. undead, was to grab all the photos of zombies I could find from The Walking Dead. I trained a model on them, and it started giving me some pretty creepy, but awesome output. Soon, I realized that I would have to fix some of its attempts, and re-train it to include the newly altered imagery.
This idea turned to work extremely well.
Then I decided to start re-painting the images to be a little sillier, more in my style. Those results were just as weird.
But a few days ago, I realized I had enough imagery of my silly, squiggly zombies to try training a model on those. And boy am I glad I did! Right away the computer started making things that approximated my wide-eyed, confused zombies. I just had to keep training it.
But then something went wrong. In Machine Learning, there is a measurement used to describe how confident the computer is in its attempts to recreate the source imagery. This is called the FID score, or Frechet Inception Distance. It’s basically a measure of how far off the pixels of the generated image are from the original images in the training data-set.
And somewhere in my over-excitement, I had over-trained my zombie model.
So my current goal, is to take the output from the stuff that worked, and clean it up. Re-paint it all and feed it back to the computer. Like I did with the Walking Dead zombies. My hope is that with a little time and care, I can train a little robot Petey to make very good silly squiggly zombies. Just like his dad.
NMK III
NMK III is the third studio album No More Kings released. As always, it was produced by Neil DeGraide, but this time Neil and I sought a more 70s funk-soul vibe. What we ended up with was a pretty eclectic mix of sounds and stories. As much nostalgia as I have for our first album, this one may be my favorite.
NMK III is the third studio album No More Kings released. As always, it was produced by Neil DeGraide, but this time Neil and I sought a more 70s funk-soul vibe. What we ended up with was a pretty eclectic mix of sounds and stories. As much nostalgia as I have for our first album, this one may be my favorite.
But what if I make an art and music shop on my own website?
A finally decided to set up a web shop, here, on my site.
I’ve been using Bandcamp for years to sell my music online. And for even longer, I’ve been using Etsy to sell my artwork. And both places have worked fairly well for me. It took a lot of the hassle out of setting up any kind of online commerce. And for me, with that kind of stuff, any hassle is too much hassle.
But today I started thinking about what if I made my art and music also available on my own site, here? And the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. This way I could control the look of the pages better. I could include videos if I wanted. I could better control my categories and layouts. So yeah, it seemed like a good idea.
So a little while ago I took some photos of my newest CD, In Measured Hundredweight, and made a listing for it. Very simple, no frills. But it’s up. And it works. So the ball is rolling. Soon I’ll be able to add my other albums, as well as the No More Kings ones. And then one by one, I’ll start bringing over some of my artwork, starting with prints.
In Measured Hundredweight Bundle Giveaway
For a while now I’ve wanted do a giveaway for my newest album, In Measured Hundredweight.
I’ve wanted to do a giveaway for my new album, In Measured Hundredweight, for a while now. I finally decided that it would be a bundle, including a poster print, a keychain, and my three newest albums, all in a beautiful canvas tote bag.
To enter, click below!
To check out what the album sounds like, or to buy a copy, head over to my BandCamp page:
Burned by the Sun (acoustic)
A look at the making of the acoustic version of Burned by the Sun.
This version was meant to bookend the album. I wanted it to feel like a reprise in an opera. Or the ending credits of a movie.
Overcome by Silence
A walk-through of the song, Overcome by Silence.
Overcome by Silence started with a beat, and then became fleshed out with resonance and harmonics generated from that beat.
Shade from the Light
A look at the making of Shade from the Light.
Shade from the Light started with a simple recording of me playing an old, out of tune piano. I loved the crackle and warble of the thing. I brought that into the computer and effected it further, bringing out more of its imperfect characteristics.
Nothing So Strange
A walk-through of the song Nothing So Strange.
Like so much of this album, Nothing So Strange started with an interesting percussion part. Then I added a filtered out acoustic guitar part to give it a little bounce. Then some synth bass for some substance.
Also like so many songs on this album, it soon became about creating an atmosphere. A mood. I wanted each of these songs to paint a picture; to create a space.
The Wreckage
A look at the making of The Wreckage.
The Wreckage started out with a big 80s beat. Then some fuzzy synth bass. It grew into a mildly epic action film soundtrack.
Too Far Gone
A look at the making of the song Too Far Gone.
After opening the album with the relatively high energy of Burned by the Sun, and then calming it way down with Out of Here, the next track, Too Far Gone, sits somewhere in the middle. It has a spooky, mellow start, but then grows into a pretty big chorus.
Once all the songs are finished for an album, you get to start thinking about how they fit together. Which song will start the album, which will end it. How the energy of the songs flow from one to another. This was a tricky one to place, but it felt right nestled between the more mellow Out of Here, and the big 80’s anthem The Wreckage.
Out of Here
A behind the scenes look at the second song on the album In Measured Hundredweight, Out of Here.
Out of Here started as a simple acoustic guitar riff. Something simple and flawed. Then slowly I built up the mood with some atmosphere and a little bass.
There are a few songs on the album that deal with the theme of letting someone down. This is one of them.
“Don’t want to wait for death; I hear it coming. Maybe I’ll catch my breath; as soon as we get out of here.”
Burned by the Sun
A behind the scenes look at the song Burned by the Sun.
The first song that I wrote for the album, incidentally is the track that starts the album. Burned by the Sun came out of playing with bits of my own sample pack. The sample pack was created from recording my cover of the Johnny Cash song, The Man Comes Around. During that process I had accumulated a bunch of low guitar hits and swells, weird atmospheric vocal harmonies turned into pads, and random bits of percussion. So I brought everything into Logic and started messing around with it all.
Then it came time to make the music video. I knew I wanted a Mad Max style lone survivor in the apocalypse vibe to the video. I had been growing out my apocalypse beard for a while! So it was time to put it to use. Luckily here in Las Vegas, we have tons of mountains and desert areas to film such a thing. So after a stop at a thrift store for apocalypse clothing, I set out to film the video.
New limited edition print of the month
I’ve started doing a print of the month where two images battle for votes to see which one gets to be printed. This month’s image is the Seated Guardian from my Lightbearer series.
For a while now, I’ve wanted to hold myself accountable to making a print each month available in my shop. But up until now, I could never seem to make it a habit. So for fun I thought I would let it be a battle, and let people vote on which image wins the honor of being printed.
This month, I chose two candidates from an ongoing project of mine called Lightbearer. It’s a project based loosely on Mayan and Aztec art, and it’s something I’ve slowly been picking at for years.
The two candidates battled it out.
These are the two images who battled it out this month, and the Seated Guardian on the left arose as the victor.
I’m also trying something a little different with these prints. Firstly, the edition is limited to 20, so it’s a super limited edition. And the second thing is, they will be signed and numbered on the front, in the white border. Which is something I’ve never done. Usually I sign prints on the back.
The victorious limited edition print.
The print is available to purchase in my online shop here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/775028523/seated-guardian-limited-edition-print
Lunchtime beat-making and Mayan art
Spent the day making beats and making art.
Lately I’ve been playing around a lot with the Pocket Operator PO-33. It’s a fantastic pocket-sized sampler and step-sequencer, which means you can make fun little beats out of almost anything. Which has become one of my favorite things to do.
My new habit is to take it to lunch with me and sample the surroundings, and then turn that into a little looped beat. My most recent lunchtime beat-making adventure was at In-n-Out.
After lunch, I took it to a nearby park, and made some drum sounds by banging on things. I found a metal pole that has some great resonance, like an old bell, so I sampled that. It became the basis for another lunchtime beat.
Then I made some new art inspired by Mayan and Aztec culture as part of my series Lightbearer.
I have always been fascinated by Mayan and Aztec art. There's such an interesting otherworldly feel to the stuff. A while ago I started a project called Lightbearer, which was inspired by the art of those cultures. The idea is that there are keepers of the Light. Guardians who protect it from the Beasts. The Beasts want nothing more than to steal the Light.
This week, I made a bunch of new images for this series, inspired by Mayan and Aztec art. Check them out in my shop.
Visualizers and Loop Sketches
My newest loop sketches set to visualizers.
I’ve been making a bunch of loops lately, and creating visualizers in After Effects for them. It’s been super fun! I’m hoping to pick the best of these and try turning them into full songs, with lyrics and everything. But I need your help choosing which ones to work on.
If you have time, could you listen to the loops below, and leave a comment with which one is your favorite? I’ve compiled them into a single video, with each separate bit numbered.
Thanks so much!!
-pete
Making Meaningful Progress
I'm thinking about how I will continue to work on all the project ideas that I have.
I want to make meaningful progress in each project and i want to find ways to focus so that I'm not spreading myself too thin. If I do, then projects won't ever get done.
I'm thinking about how I will continue to work on all the project ideas that I have.
I want to make meaningful progress in each project and i want to find ways to focus so that I'm not spreading myself too thin. If I do, then projects won't ever get done.
I know that I have a two-fold problem of:
1. Letting a project get so big that I feel overwhelmed by it's magnitude
2. Feeling like there's too much to say to let a project be too small
So if this is true, I can find ways to work around these blocks.
I like the idea of chopping them up, or starting to make progress on a project and then choosing a cut-off. This will be volume 1. Or part 1. Or chapter 1, or some other designation. That way, when I'm ready to come back to the project, I'm starting on part two. I can keep things small and manageable, but still allow myself to fully explore a topic. I can release some piece of it, knowing that I'll come back to add to it.
So as I move forward with my main plans, I can continue to look at my project ideas master list and promote the coolest ones to the top. Those will be the candidates to be the next project I start. This can be a list that I continually sort. And as I make more notes on each project, I may move projects around on the list. As things move out of the abstract and get more clarity and detail, they become better candidates for the top of the list. Then when I have an open slot, I can look at the top three or five projects and choose from there.
I'd like to give things time to marinate. Time for me to peel back layers. Build up layers. Find metaphors. Poetry. Meaning and depth.
I like being exploratory. I like gardening the ideas. I like working fast and loose, but I want to make sure I always push myself to do a second and third draft. I want to stop stopping at the first draft and trying to pass it off as final.
I’ve had the conversation before about quality vs quantity. Raw and honest art vs polished art. I think there's room for both. And I would like to release both always. But, I can always push a little harder. If I'm shooting from the hip on something, I can always take another pass. Part of it is giving myself limitations, and that's good.
But also, I want to remember that every day I’m getting better at this stuff.