AI Isn't The Worst Threat To Artists - Something Else Is

foreign welcome when I was about six or seven years old, I was in elementary school and I remember clearly, very clearly, working on an art project for my art class that my French teacher was teaching at the time and I remember exactly what this was art. The project was that I had made a sculpture of this kind of two-legged humanoid body using blue Play-Doh or blue clay or

something

like that blue Play-Doh and I created a face using a paper plate and I remember painting the paper. yellow plate and then I created these big cartoon eyes using red and black paint and glued it to this much smaller body, so imagine this little blue body with no hands or feet, just the arms and legs connected to this huge cartoon head. paper plate and I was very proud of this and my teacher looked at my sculpture and said, "You shouldn't paint your face like that," she says to my five-year-old and six-year-old self and she took some paint and repainted it for me and I started to cry because this was mine, this was my art, but being a little kid and having never attended any formal art school, I didn't realize that that's kind of black, that's kind of blasphemous in an artistic context, art is a way of personal life. expression a form of self expression it's your voice it's your vision it's your priorities and she basically ruined my drawing she said this is how it should be done correctly and she changed her face I can't even remember what she did to it but I remember she altered it and it really made me annoying.

I came home later that day and told the story to my mother, who immediately became very upset and shared with me the cardinal rule in art school and art teaching, which is that you never touch your students' work. unless you're offering some kind of academic criticism, you're offering some kind of advice, you're learning how to draw

something

and you need help, you need a demonstration of how to do it, in that case, that's perfectly fine, but otherwise, if someone is creating an original work, keep your damn hands off her and she ended up going to the school and bringing it up to my mother, who had been an art teacher for many years and basically said it very clearly as an art teacher, she was never allowed to touch a student's work, now of course my teacher can't be completely blamed because she was neither an art teacher nor an artist by profession, she was just a French teacher who was assigned the task of teaching a class of art. which is very common in the public school system, that bothers me, but I digress.

I even found myself in the same situation being in a position to teach classes that I wasn't fully qualified to teach and not only was it frustrating but it was incredibly humiliating um but yeah so my mom came in and made a complaint and talked about them and they said We understand perfectly, you are absolutely right and they gave me the opportunity to repaint it how I wanted it to look. and all of those works were presented to the school board the school board building that wasn't too far away to be displayed at the school board all of our little art projects and things like that and I was very proud of that piece for about a week longer.

Later, my family and I got together and we went to the school board building and we walked in and we were looking for my project and lo and behold, Catherine changed my sculpture again, she repainted my thing and I got really mad. My mother, of course, was furious and was furious about it, but yeah, she should have known better at the time, but she did it anyway because she was just spiteful and controlling and a teacher, and that was the end result, especially when dealing with young children, if you did this to an adult or if you did this to someone in high school, even then the reaction would have been very different, that student would have been old enough and had the confidence to be able to protest and argue . and complain about that action, but as a six and seven year old I couldn't speak for myself, I couldn't speak for myself and she obviously didn't care how I felt now, that's a terrible story.

To hear within the limits that this was not a tragedy by any means, but it was definitely something disturbing and something that was not fair and was an indication of a teacher who lacked professionalism and lacked respect for her students. and she lacked respect for artistic expression, obviously, she did not respect the child's form of self-expression. Now why do I mention this? It's because I'm trying to tell you how I was traumatized as a child and growing up with you. Be dark, a feeling of impending doom for the rest of my artistic career, no, I forgot it soon after, but it was good, at least I got over it very quickly, but the lesson didn't escape me and it was a valuable lesson. a lesson in respecting the voice of the individual, especially when it comes to artistic expression, because the essence of artistic expression is this is you, this is you and the greatest lesson an artist can learn, a lesson I repeat in almost every talk about art and in every The only lesson that I learn or teach myself and that I keep reviewing in the journey of my own life is self-knowledge to learn the value of simply being yourself and realizing that you are yourself at your calmest when you're not wearing your makeup. and your hair doesn't look all down and you just wake up in the morning and you haven't brushed your teeth yet, you don't feel very strong or anything, being in that most basic state of who you are is extraordinary.

It's amazing, it's fascinating, you as a human being are absolutely incredible and we tend to take this for granted because well, we're always bombarded with what we might be right, we're bombarded with how we might look, how we might sound, the weight of our body. . should be the medical and health condition our bodies should be in, etc., they always talk to us, always show us and ask us how we can improve ourselves and most of the time there is a substantial price attached to that. Self-improvement, if you will, in that lesson I learned that day taught me that no one should try to speak for you when it comes to art.

Now this is a lesson that has not only seeped into my artistic journey, but it has also seeped into my journey as a teacher, it has seeped deeply into my journey as a teacher, it has seeped deeply into what I learned every time. more as I get older, as one of the most valuable qualities that a human being can possess for themselves and for others and that is empathy and I say this directly quoting something I heard Meryl Streep say in a speech. A woman I greatly respect said that one of the most important qualities a human being can possess is empathy.

That means that not only do you have the ability to care and feel for other people, but I would say it goes beyond that and it's a lesson that I've learned very deeply so far, some things that I've learned. a new level of empathy that I have recently learned is the ability to listen the ability to listen the ability to be silent and respect the words of the person you hear stop and when I am with you when it is you and me and we are sitting together in this space. I'm not sitting there waiting for a way to clarify the words that come out of your mouth or to give you the vocabulary to better express what you're trying to express.

I'm just there to close my eyes to look at you very carefully to listen to you very carefully and pay attention to your words that come out of your mouth and one of the things that you start to learn from other people when you do this is that people are used to not being hurt at all people are used to not being heard because they are almost almost looking at you they will explain to you someone will tell me what they are going through someone will tell me what they are going through tell me what is happening you are experiencing they almost look at me with a look of need permission, like I know that's not the best way to say it, but you know that's how I feel and everything, and there's this kind of awkwardness associated with it. trying my best to explain it to myself in a way that shows appreciation and I have to remind that person that no, I'm listening to you, I'm listening to your words, I'm listening to your vocabulary and I want the only way I can truly understand you and feel you as a person.

It's turning off my brain and completely tuning into yours, and I feel that as an individual, as a parent, and as a partner to someone in my life who we've been together for over 20 years and as a teacher and as an artist and as someone who's speaking. with you right now on YouTube, this is one of the most important lessons that I'm learning in my life: the art of listening carefully, listening with care and respect, and this was something that teacher when I was in elementary school my date arts teacher um I didn't know what she didn't care to do she didn't see that she was lacking that empathy, she said she thought to herself, this is how it should be expressed and this is how you're going to express it, I was basically trying to become her.

I guess there's something

else

I'd be trying to do now. Why do I continue with this? Because I see something in modern art, a new trend in modern art and I would say that it is something that has been around for some time, but it has mainly existed in the last 10 to 15 years, or so, since I have been working in studio, Large group projects, video game production, film production, large artistic productions, have begun to become increasingly common. What I'm saying here relates to my last article that I just published right before this one, where I was talking about how the advice you get from people can be very one-sided, while a person can tell if you want to work as a professional. in quotes, then you should do it this way and I went on to explain how that can be very, very misleading and very damaging advice that impacts many people's careers, but I'm not going to continue with that, you can go and check it out. that video if you want it for yourself, but I want to elaborate on that and I want to explain why it's a problem and the solution that I'm not necessarily giving wholeheartedly today, but I definitely want to open up the conversation so you can discuss this because I feel like It's a problem and I think it's a problem that should be handled with more care and more caution than even this conversation about the art of AI right now because I think this is something that's been around for a long time.

It's been a long time and I see that this objectively affects the quality of

artists

and the quality of artistic travel. The integrity of the

artists

. The confidence that artists have and what they do. I see this affecting your lives today and has been for some time. we'll see that's to come we're just we're just we're very new to that whole thing but when you approach someone if you approach a professional if you approach a teacher if you approach a well-intentioned fellow artist it's starting to become more and more common for other professionals who have found success in this dating industry and yes, I am using quotes because I am trying not to literally speak, I am speaking. figuratively here they will say well if you want to do it then this is how it should be done you have to do this you have to know that skill you have to do it this way this is the material of the topic that we are looking for and what and what interests us yada yada and that If you think about it it really goes against artistic expression, doesn't it?

He's basically saying that if you want to be a Creator, if you want to be one. original if you want to be if you want to be celebrated for your vision then you have to share the same vision as everyone

else

working in the studio everyone else working in this industry everyone else working on this project that doesn't sound good to me It's like art, it sounds like factory work, it feels like industry, so when people say do you want to work in this industry, I think that's what they really mean. I think the operative word is the word industry, it's factory work, here are the tools. here's the conveyor belt, there's your colors, do it and it has to look like this and you're expected to have this carbon copy approach like every other artist out there now before I get to the side in this conversation, there are certain professions.

That requires the ability to adapt correctly, something I referred to last week, something I talked about last week as well, certain careers require the ability to be able to adapt and adopt a style that imitates your direct companion as closely as possible. , its colic, like animation, right, if I'm watching an animated movie, a classic animated movie, let's draw a cartoon that means classic cartoon instead of 3D or a bigger budget animation budget, that kind of thing, um, no You can, your animated movie can't look like it was animated by 15 different ones. people, which is usually the case, if not more, there are a lot of people, there are a lot of people working on this same scene, so the entire working animation workflow usually has one or maybe a small group of animators key that establish the appearance that establishes what the bad poses are and the intermediate artists are, so the breakdown artists or any of the more Junior artists take that information and tryRepeat it in sequence to create an animated movie and it should feel like all of these frames were drawn. by the same person, they were all drawn with the same hand, so Vision needs to be consistent, that's why we have things like model shots, character rotations and pose sheets etc, in that particular case, yes, the work of an animator.is being able to imitate the style guide religiously close but illustration conceptual art that type of thing in that particular case the opposite applies your vision becomes sacrosanct your vision is the product you what you are providing to your audience it's you it's your style it's your vision, that's why you look at artists like Brahm or you look at artists like loish or you look at artists like Cynthia Shepard or matina fakova or any of these artists and you say: I immediately recognize that it's their art, I You recognize it because their signatures are everywhere, their personal form of expression is everywhere and even if we have a collection of artists like Carla Ortiz or Martina Fakova who are working in Magic, for example in Magic Cards, you can still distinguish an artist from the other.

Both are within the same genre of art. They are both fantasy illustrators, but they have their own style. They themselves chose the career they chose. They chose a medium. They chose an art language that resonated with them personally but adapted it. and they evolved it into their personal form of self-expression so that you can appreciate the same genre of art using slightly different artistic instruments, and this is something we appreciate. It's the same as being a country artist, a country musician or being a rock musician, classical musician or jazz musician, they all follow the same general fundamental model of that musical genre, but they have their own unique recipe of expression so that you can identify what they do if you're watching jazz music.

In the music collection you will get a selection of different jazz musicians and you can choose your favorites, but you don't expect every jazz musician to make a copy of the music. You like that sense of variety within that genre, when? The line is crossed when it has gone too far, when it has gone from a style or genre guide to being an environment that damages the integrity of artistic expression or when it is a thought process, it is a structure, an artistic industrial structure, a work of art that begins to undermine the integrity of the artist and this is something I think about a lot.

I think about this a lot being a teacher who celebrates the fact that every artist I have the pleasure of sitting with is an identity waiting to be discovered or an identity that has already been covered, but an identity that wants to wear out, grow and become a bigger, better, more robust version of your existing self as an artist who was raised by a good artist whose art is completely unique from everyone else's art. I've ever seen whose form of self-expression of her personal philosophy, how she thinks, how she sees, how she believes her whole life is wrapped up in every brushstroke she makes, it's very, very personal for her to be someone who ended up working. in the video game industry, where she was expected to follow certain style guides or work on certain projects.

I have worked on projects that respected my individuality in a studio of course where I was asked for my personal opinion and I worked in certain environments where people looked at my artwork and laughed at it because it didn't measure up to the rest of the elites because I was doing something different than what everyone else was doing or because I was following and learning from the wrong resources and just as I mentioned in my last art talk, you hear this all the time, you see this all the time and I'll be honest with you. I hear that I see people who have achieved a certain artistic status, whether it's YouTubers or you know. public artists or famous artists and they have a very aggressive approach in their opinions and I look at that and I think to myself that you're not an artist, you're just a very, very efficient factory worker, but I don't think that qualifies. you as an artist because if you were an artist then your unique form of expression and your respect for the unique expressions of everyone around you would be priority number one; would have a deep empathy and respect for the person who could look at, review and listen to someone else's form of artistic expression and instead of looking at it and trying to pick it apart and compare it to your own and say well, you know, I know so-and-so maybe can do this better, you should probably work on that. more um with respect to, of course, their skill level because you always do it in relation to the right skill level and instead look at them and pay close attention to say what is this person trying to express what is this person saying?

Where is that person's mind, what is that person thinking? What is that person experiencing? and instead of sitting there and just speaking your opinion about how it can be improved, instead just listen to that artist, unfortunately and frustratingly, being in the position of a teacher being someone who has been seen. A lot of other types of teachers have very strong opinions about teaching in general, and while you know, I don't want this to sound like a hot take or anything, bad teachers trigger me a lot, and there are a lot of bad things. teachers, and I know it may sound a little contradictory to say that you know that one should not settle, but in my opinion, in my artistic opinion, in my professional opinion, the number one quality that a teacher should be able to have is number one, the ability of listening deeply to someone, really making an effort to understand that person, regardless of whether they are professionals or not, they have been doing it for 70 years or their beginners who have been doing it for a month, people look at them. and pay a lot of attention and be able to go ah that's what you're saying I understand it I see it and you listen very carefully you listen with your eyes you listen with your ears to that artist you ask him to explain to you what is happening to you and you, you pay a lot of attention and with your many years of wonderful experience as a professional, people to go to, I see where you are trying to go with that, I see what you are saying, I understand you and I swear to God when you understand. an artist, if you can show that understanding and you can really show that understanding in an artist, regardless of their age, you start to develop a friendship with them, you start to develop a relationship with them on a very personal level and most of all, you start to Develop the ability to help them to be able to immediately offer them growth in an impactful and meaningful way.

This lesson is not just for private tutoring like mine because I only work one-on-one with students who I only insist on working one-on-one with students, but in classrooms, in online classrooms or in physical schools. I want this message to start peer-to-peer meetings across the industry because I'm starting to see that big corporations like Electronic Arts and you I know big video game companies with a lot of money and a lot of budgets and CEOs and executive producers that walk around in suits and ties and They drive their 16 Teslas and Rolls Royces, whether they are starting out or not, they have been doing it for some time.

They have been dictating the direction our artists are going, they are industrializing the artistic mind, they are crossing that line, they have been crossing that line for some time and that is one of the key reasons why when I sit down with an artist, especially the professionals who have been doing this for a while, we sit down in a first class and they sit down and I say, how are you? and they're doing well, so tell me a little about your background. That's usually how we start getting to know each other and stuff and they're like oh, you know, while I worked in the industry and I worked at this video game company.

I am also working for that company. I worked as a graphic designer for many years and you know I've been doing this. and doing that and I worked on this big project and that big project and I made you know a lot of names and I met this person oh wow, you know a lot about flex Flex Flex Flex and then they end up with it for a long time. Awesome explanation of his career history, but I'm just not satisfied with what I do. I lost my voice. I lost the drive to draw and I'm sitting there saying, yeah, but you did it, right? you're there you've reached the gold bar you've worked for these big companies you're the Hot Shot you're the star everyone wants to be you how could you be dissatisfied and they said just no?

I don't feel hurt. I just don't feel like I've lost that much touch. I have strayed so far from my core expressive artistic self. I don't even know how to recover anymore. and very often one of the biggest challenges that I have with artists like that, the welcome challenges that I have is teaching them how to let go, teaching them how to trust themselves again, teaching them how very often, an experienced professional artist that I'm working with , it's right. now, who has exceptional artistic talent, but she is really struggling, we are working together to find her again and men, when she needed my permission just to say: find your own rhythm, find your own rhythm, this is how you can search for it , this is what you can explore these are tools that you can use to begin to find yourself as an artist and that thought is crazy that thought that the permission stressed her scared her if she didn't she wasn't, she had gotten so used to being in such adaptation to such a strict working method to such a strict ecosystem of thought such a strict structure that breaking that structure made her feel like she was falling off the edge of a cliff and I don't blame her, I mean reaching the level of success he has achieved is remarkable.

I mean, she's one of many who really managed to reach that level, and yet, that came at a cost and for her, what I'm doing with her right now, what we're doing together week to week. The week is breaking down that big brick wall that she has built around herself and teaching her how to find the mental freedom to be able to simply express herself and have faith in herself, those foundations are there, they are not going anywhere except that. now she has to discover that she has to find herself again and she is, and my goodness, what an exciting experience we are having together, just going on this adventure together as fellow artists and that's what I want for you too, that's what What I want for you. you too now I'm not giving you this advice because I'm not saying this because I'm saying you know I ignore the professionals and and and I just do your thing and you know smoke weed and hang out in the woods and live in a shack and do your yeah That's what you want to do, great, you do it, baby.

I'm not judging you, but I am saying that it is very important as artists to be able to filter the difference between adaptation and conformity. a norm in a studio where two are an artist finding his own unique voice his own unique expression because throughout the centuries artists were celebrated for their unique vision and then suddenly in the last not even half a mallet, half century, not even half a century in the last 15 years that voice of ours is being crushed that voice of ours is being taken away from us and it is and it is that one day we are going to appear in a suit and tie and doing the corporate thing and that for me is much more tragic than any artificial intelligence because it would be us being micromanaged and controlled in a supposed creative environment which basically means the death of creativity IMHO, so what's the big takeaway? of the story, what is the conclusion of this?

I think the bottom line of this is I just want to give a sense of our careers moving forward in our world moving forward I want this to be a I want to create a ripple in the water of our future that will hopefully grow so that as things change as these ripples get bigger in this industry as the industry gets bigger, our ripples will get bigger and we will become so why am I sharing this with you today? Why am I sharing these thoughts? What is the great moral? from today's art talk I think it's to create a ripple I want to create a ripple in this conversation a ripple that grows the more the industrial influence of the studios grows, so the bigger the industry the more influence the industry will have , the more sensitive we become to what exactly is being taken away from us as artists this is not a fight against the evil conversation it is us adapting to our artistic future in a way that allows us to continue contributing to the world in a creative or artistic way because if it weren't for We artists, innovation would not exist, growth would cease to exist, vision would cease to exist, it is thanks to people like us, visionaries like us, that the world grows, evolves and matures and becomes an increasingly beautiful place and I think that if that If it were to be taken for something industrial then by the time A.I puts its claws in our necks and strangles us we will no longer give any more and that for me would be the most tragic of all and having said that I love you with all my heart and happy painting take care thank you foreigners foreigners foreigners