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.