Sunday Tour Through the Past

Fir Castle was another early production of mine, made special at the time by using map colors to shade it in. Next is The Old Fountain, an early exercise in layering. Before that, most of my efforts were straight line-ups along the red margins of the notebook paper. Inkraven looks pretty good, until you realize he has three claws, a feature not in the original sketch. I'd probably make the potion red next time. Monastary expresses the rain better than I ever could and elaborates the tiny stick figure I had climbing the hill into a real character. Morg City was an early expression of the capital of Forlan; the original was drawn in ink without a smudge. I now have a more complex idea of it in my head. It features what appears to be the King Vez Memorial Rollercoaster. Lastly is another shot at Elf & Bear, from an admittedly rather sketchy sketch. A lesson on giving explicit notes in your prompt; Bear was strangely (though perhaps not inexplicably) interpreted as a polar bear, perhaps taking a hint from his muffler. The Elf should be wearing all blue, and is oddly proportioned.

Maybe I should upgrade my account to $20 a month. That would make corrections a more affordable endeavor in terms of time; as it is, I’m lucky if I can do 6 or 7 images a night. 

 

I Fascinate Me

"I know! Let's bring him back using Science!" Three views of me through the years, mediated through art. The first was from a sketch I made of myself using a mirror; the hair and beard, though grizzled at the time, should be blacker. The second of course is the parody Oz cover I made, and the third is from the birthday card my brother John made me. Put in the proper order it is a fine record in which you can see me wither and die.

They Live! They Move! They Babble Inanely!

Dreaming in Color

Here is another batch of AI ‘embellishments’ that I did last night, elaborating some of my old drawings, as one does. How much the pictures thus produced may be called mine is a strange question; of course, I produce the general design and provide notes to elaborate on them, while the AI does all the fiddly bits that I have neither the expertise nor patience to apply. I have to say the vision is all mine and is something no algorithm can generate.

Case in point, Bryan Babel in Oz. The drawing dates back to 1984 or 1985. Del Rey was in the process of reprinting all the old Oz books, and now were getting into the Ruth Plumley Thompson sequels, ‘Founded on and Continuing the Famous Oz Books.’ I did this parody of a cover, a caricature of me with cross on a chain and bamboo ‘staff,’ ramping through Oz to the horror of the Scarecrow and Tin Woodsman.

The Devil and His Followers Cross the Dee tries to reproduce an illustration that I saw in a dream. A drawing of an illustration that I saw in a dream. The weird thing is that years later I ran into a painting that bore a more than passing resemblance to it. Had I seen it before somewhere, and forgotten it with my waking mind?

Dreamsky is not from a dream. Or was it? Maybe just dreamlike. Hm. It shows a figure invoking a spell to part the clouds and reveal the moon.

The Book Grim is an imaginary spirit I made up, a gnome that haunts and protects libraries. The original Grim does not look so ‘grim’ but rather wistful and melancholy. The background is provided by AI from my prompt.

Bronze Dragon is perhaps the most AI and least Brer of the pictures in this batch. Not only did AI elaborate many of the details (though I had drawn many elements of the fiddly parts), it also rearranged the composition quite a bit.

Lady Willow supplies an illustration for a short story of the same name published on this blog. But I drew the original picture back in high school.

The original Samuel had a more wistful look as he mourned over the loss of a tree. He was based at first on Samwise Gamgee as he restored the Shire after the War of the Ring; the boots and lack of hairy feet made me later reconsider the title (not quite accurate, I felt) as a sort of backhanded reference to its inception.

A Spirit of the Air shows a strange elemental treading through the heavens, his scepter a moving point of light like a falling star. Who? Why? Your guess is as good as mine. Looking back, I might have provided him with a smaller nose. The final production looks very Hildebrandtish, especially the Greg Hildebrandt of A Christmas Carol.

Our Engineer in Action

I wonder if ChatGPT would consider this a p*rn* flick?

Friday Fiction: Worth a Thousand Words

Last night was unusually productive; I find it helps not only to have a picture, but also an explanation about the details. Some are retries: these two versions of She's Walking Through the Clouds are much closer to the original sketch; Patrick is more like a pirate than a leprechaun (all I suggested was to change the hat to a tricorne); I tried to refine Ogre, but the program seems to insist the head is a skull, and stubbornly resists giving him lips or a nose. I've drawn many castles and dragons in my time. The Dark Window and Demon  evoke the darker side of my imagintion; Demon in particular was drawn at the same time I was making illustrations for The Inferno in Mrs. Hardcastle's World Literature class in my Junior year. The first picture, Duel with Death, is one of my newer pictures. Still pretty old, though. 'These same crosses spoil me' now.

And Selected Shorts