Welcome to my digital art portfolio!
About Michael
I grew up with the desire to create. I’ve spent most of my life drawing pictures, folding origami, learning to cook, sewing, taking pictures, sculpting, writing, or doing anything else that would let me explore my creativity. It’s rare for me to discover a new medium and not wonder how I could use it to make my own thing. I’ve been doing digital art since I was in high school in 2007.
I’m excited to bring my ideas to the world and I would love to talk to you about bringing your ideas out as well. Art is vital to our lives and I think that the more unique ideas we can bring out the more enriched all of our lives will be.
In this portfolio I want to show my proficiency in using GIMP and Stable Diffusion and have collected my best work to show off.
For those unfamiliar, Stable Diffusion is an AI program that allows you to use a text prompt to generate images. Please see below for a more in-depth description of AI art.
Reach me at michael@ducimus.digital
What is AI art?
In the year of 2022 AI art made its first significant emergence. It had existed before but this is the year when Midjourney, Dalle, and Stable Diffusion all came out. These were the first publicly available programs to allow artists to create high-quality images with a text prompt that would result in recognizable images.
As AI generation came to the attention of more people worldwide there arose an unfortunate, but common, misconception that the AI creates the artwork. Because of this many people are concerned about a future where AI will replace artists and they claim that there is no passion or care put into the work created with AI tools.
This shows a sad misunderstanding both of how these tools work and of what art is in the first place. Of course, the definition of art is subjective but even so, an important component of art is the ability to share your thoughts and feelings with others.
When seen like this AI is not replacing anything, it is instead an accessibility tool that breaks down a few of the barriers that stop people from expressing themselves. Those who lack time, ability, or merely the interest to create with other tools now have a new option that may open up their ability to express themselves.
I would like for you, as you browse my portfolio, to remember that AI did not come up with these ideas. It did not decide on how to compose the scene. It did not choose what aesthetics to use or what colors it wanted.
AI does not decide. AI does not want. AI does not dream.
It’s merely a tool to be used, and like any tool, it will be used differently in the hands of each artist. What is shown here is truly my own work. It is inspired by the work of others, just like their work was inspired by others in turn, but the concepts are my original ideas that I have put time and effort into creating. AI has given me a new outlet to bring the hidden thoughts within my mind into reality so that they can be shared with any who would wish to see them and so that, hopefully, I can connect with others in a creative and evocative way.
Don’t mourn the death of the artist, it is not yet that time.
Instead let’s celebrate that so many new artists will be bringing their ideas into the world.
