You can’t remove the process from art-making
I once was asked what the hardest part about making a comic was.
And I answered ‘making the actual comics.’
It takes research, reading, character design, environment design, thumbnails, rough sketches, the line art, the coloring, and the layout.
In short, it takes time.
And while it is a meticulous and lengthy process, it is fun!
Recently, I got to finish writing my first novel. It took me nine days to write, churning out 1,655 words per day. However, this doesn’t include the times I watched documentaries and poured over books, PDFs, and blogs for research.
The nine days of writing had me sleeping around midnight and past midnight; the latest was until 4AM.
I enjoyed the whole journey, and if ever that novel sees the light of day someday, it makes all that effort worth it.
I can’t imagine working on it with AI tools.
On AI-generated images
Speed, instantaneous ‘art,’ demanding results without the work—we’re always in a hurry in this day and age, aren’t we?
The system always pushes us to work, work, work, hustle, hustle, hustle. Yes, because we do need money to live. In this economy right now, I acknowledge that. Sadly, this is the kind of world we live in. As a freelance artist who’s barely making ends meet and would work every day whenever I can and when my body lets me, I wish I could slow down.
Even if I do desire this, I wouldn’t resort to using AI to ‘save time.’
Brainstorming, conceptualization, making sketches and studies, collaboration with other people—these things are part of the process wherein we use our minds to imagine, to be curious, to ask questions, and to go on a journey of discovery.
Digital, Procreate
I want to get to an answer or to an idea on my own or with the help of a community I’m working with. It makes the finished work more worth it.
AI, if used ethically, if used for other life-saving purposes, if used for actually useful things in production like removing backgrounds, is all good, but when it comes to art, advertising, writing, I can’t get behind it at all. There’s the issue too of actual jobs being given to AI rather than hiring people who actually create for a living.
It doesn’t speed up the process, because there is NO process in AI-generated images! It removes it entirely, and that destroys the very essence of art-making. There is no true art without the process, and the process includes practicing, learning, drawing, molding, hatching, shading, resting, crying, picking up the pencil again, and then drawing, painting, folding, making!
What would our minds that are capable of learning be for then?
Digital, Procreate
What would we be teaching kids if they see us being dependent on it and even justifying it when it steals from other artists’ styles and hard work? Will they also take shortcuts, not play, not experiment, and just wait for the image to be presented on a silver platter?
To create is to play. To draw is to be human. To make art is to be involved and engaged in a long arduous but fulfilling journey.
What you make with your own hands, feet, fingers, brushes, pastels—everything!—and effort is so much better than an image generated unethically, artificially. I’ve witnessed friends who poured so much in learning, practicing, and working to be able to come up with amazing portraits, landscapes, paintings, comics, and books. And if we could ever them what the process was like, perhaps we would be met with laughter and even a tear. And then they would recount the journey with that glimmer in their eyes. (I haven’t even shared about how loooong animated movies take! How much love and time are put into them. And manga and webtoons, too!)
Digital, Procreate
Because it is hard work. To create is hard work. And it is part of the human experience!
Art is living, because it has our hearts, thoughts, feelings, energy, passion, and even our fears and frustrations.
Anyone can draw. Anyone can make art. Anyone can learn. This is what I always try to say when someone tells me that they can’t draw or they can only draw stickmen.
When I was a child, I drew stickmen a lot. I loved art so much and I wanted to keep making art even as a career, so I did what I can to draw more. (Also, stickmen drawings, ‘simple’ drawings—these are all good!).
Anatomy is a weakness for me, so I would practice and get frustrated for not being able to draw some muscle groups right, but after some time, I get the hang of it.
Because even if it is hard sometimes, I try to believe in my own capabilities. Not just in drawing, but in learning.
Digital, Adobe Fresco
They say that we must trust the process—yes to this, and we must also trust ourselves that we are so much better than we give ourselves credit for.
Like what I once wrote as part of my The Artist’s Calendar illustration, the process is both the journey and the destination. The result without the process isn’t really art, and art without the process has no heart in it at all.
On art being alive
“Yaguchi-kun, do you know any theories of the origin of art? There are several, but one of them is to serve as a prayer. Whenever I draw, I pray for the person who’s to receive my art to get to a better place.” — Mori-senpai, Blue Period by Tsubasa Yamaguchi
Sometimes, it can get discouraging—the thoughts in my head about me doing art. Can it be utilized? Is it functional? All those questions that somehow a utilization-centered society quickly poses.
Even at bleak times, what can art do to help, right? It’s just something people look momentarily and then forget. What purpose does it serve in light of the country’s and world problems?
But then, I encounter those lines above from a manga/anime I love, Blue Period, about Yaguchi Yatora who discovers his love for art because of Mori-senpai’s oil painting that idly sat in the art classroom.
I utter the same prayer as Mori-senpai’s. Art may not be ‘functional’ but it’s transcendental. It can move that which is intangible and unseen, like a person’s soul, into lightness, calmness, respite, or a pleasant reverie. It can inspire one to move, to act, to harness courage to face something that makes one’s knees shake, stomach turn, and head hurt. Because when done with a process and by an actual human being, art is alive, too.
Watercolor and pencil
It can lift one to a higher place at the same time it can make you see the world around you clearer and more alive than ever.
Suddenly, in your eyes, the weeds swaying in the field dance as if van Gogh had painted them.
So let’s keep making art, no matter how ‘bad’ we think it is, so kids are also encouraged to learn, to enjoy, I firmly believe there is no bad art that is made with much love, time, and good will.