More Fur & I Hate AI

 Doug gave me an old huge wonderful tempered glass palette because he made new ones and we have an "overabundance" of palettes for class.

(Actually he gave me two, one is smaller)

So I decided to use this nice huge palette as my main oils palette, and wow is it a nice space to work on.

Last night I did another fur study.

I took the reference from Adobe stock, which I have a license to use as part of my creative cloud subscription.

I'm also still working with linseed oil only and getting used to that, and I brought out a bunch of Williamsburgs and Vasaris to play with because after all, why not use them?

Oh they are soooooo so nice.

So here is a cat fur study that took me exactly three hours.

That's just how long it took; I didn't have a set time or anything.

I painted it straight through and when I was done, I was done.

9x12 oil on arches paper

Here is the drawing, it's not too complicated:

I also pulled out the Vasari set of earth color tints I got in Jan 2020.

I'm going to start using them more and might even take them plein airing.

My nice comfy palette:

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Yesterday I got stuff done, including getting my hair chopped off.

I already knew I was overdue (I am always overdue) but those pictures from the ASL show on Monday had me saying oh my god... I look awful.

So my hair is all short now and it feels much better.

It's so easy to get lazy about stuff like this when mostly working from home.

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I got a comment on Facebook on the cat fur study:

"So AI."

From someone who owns three of my paintings and is my friend and I'm so upset someone would say that about my work.

I do not and have never used AI in any part of my artistic process, and I never will.

My reference is from Adobe, and I have a licensing right as part of my creative cloud subscription.

Adobe requires AI content to be labeled as such, and my reference is NOT AI.

I HATE AI.

It steals from artists, and humanity is losing the belief in it's own imagination and ability.

It's horrendous and heartbreaking to see.

Also, for as long as I can remember and still to this day, when someone who has never seen my work sees it for the first time, the reaction is always "YOU did that?"

Yeah, I just fucking told you I paint and you asked to see a painting.

Is it so unbelievable that I did something skilled?

So now I guess when I use my real actual imagination (Topiary Cats for example) which I have been doing my whole life and making up shit in my head and painting it is just a thing I can do, everyone is just going to think it's AI.

Well, fuck everyone.

I'm just going to keep painting even if it all just amounts to a big nothing because what else can I do?

It's AWFUL.