Category: work in progress

No A.I. Images !

14. March 2024

The last two years have been one of the worst in regards of my personal art-journey.
Not that I already had to struggle with an “artist-block”, and mountains of inner doubts,
but also the rise of arteficial generated images pushed me near the boarder of an “art-depression”.

It just feels… not an encouraging time to start a little “art-career” – whatever that means – and connect to
people on a genuine basis.

And thats not to say, that I myself am not impressed by some of the outputs and the possibilities of A.I.
But after testing midjourney for about half a year, my inner landscape and my inner mood started to wither
more and more…

Allthough the output is really amazing and the beauty of A.I. images is undenieable – it just felt “wrong” to me.
Is this what I want ?
Do I want to be a “prompter” – leaving the very creating-process up to a machine, a pre-coded and pre defined
processes ?

What are 50+ beautifull images worth, at the end of the day, if I myself feel empty when I go to bed ?

Its tempting – because with this tool, anybody is able to “let create” images, more consistent in style, more “beautifull” and a myriad times faster then I will be ever able to paint…

It is tempting – to just prompt “a beautifull girl” instead of struggeling day to day with learning anatomy – with facing the very own, personal incompetence in every image…

But… but… is this who I want to be ?
Someone who is frightend about his own inability to draw and paint ? Someone who flees his own imperfection, into a
pre-defined subscription model of midjourney ?

No.

So I say no to A.I. art.
If I have to choos autenticity and personal connection to my art over perfectionism… fuck perfectionism.

A.I. Art is not “bad” – but its not “MY-ART”…

soooo….

! A.I. FREE ZONE DECLARED !
! IMAGE GENERATION PROHIBITED !

Mountain Water Clouds & Moon – Some work in progress pictures

29. November 2015

Finally I did it. This picture was a lot of work, even if it may not look so. There are lots and lots of layers of soft grey washes done here. It may not reach the hundred-mark, but I am sure there are about 60-80 layers.

For those who are interested in, I managed to remind my self of taking some work in progress pictures… so here they are:

Here you can see… almost nothing. But a thing you can notice is how fine chinese rice paper is. It really is nearly about transparent, especially after it´s wet. The dark line in the upper third revers not to the painting, its a stroke on the painting board that is shining through…

First few washes, defining the mountains and the moon in negative space.

And on it goes. The difficulty here is to repaint exactly the same forms, for example of the mountains to not get them fuzzy edges…

By so far, I was quite happy with the overall composition, but realized that something was really missing. Layer-amount at this point: about 30

So I decided to paint in some clouds for getting more live into the painting. I started to softly define them through negative space, always paying attention not to get to sharp edges.

More and more clouds where rising…

And, of course, the golden moon. Hi is done in gold-leaf of fair-trade gold (23 K) from thailand. A really lovely, warm gold-tone… 

You can also see that I darkened the foreground mountains a lot more since I started…

And finally done…

I choose a passage from the Dao-Te-Jing from Lao-Tsu, that I rally like as balance text for the empty space in the right-under corner. 

It is about the water and it´s softness that is superior all hardness.

I also add my artist-name and my seal.

And so it is ready now, to be mounted onto a traditional chinese silk scroll…

Thanks for watching! 

If you liked, please leave a comment !

Waterfall-kami

4. March 2014

No Scetches were done for this one.

I found out that I am not very good at “planning” my works.

It´s more the way of “natural growing”, with all the mistakes that may happen that I like.

So I start with a “wild” layer of traditional japanese Sumi Ink, and then try to “see” the picture.

You don´t know were you are about to going with this method, but if it works you will get some kind of “natural harmony” without too many interruptions of the “artists artistic artificiality” 🙂

Ask me if you want to know something.