AI vs Humans: Surviving as a Freelance Illustrator

When I first discovered AI image generators I thought it was magic. But of course it’s seems like magic when it uses a mash-up of artists stolen work.

I hate the mention of AI, especially when it’s in an image making or design context. Every time I get a glimpse of it on my Linkedin feed or Instagram explore page I quickly mark the “Stop showing me this topic” option on the post. I absolutely cannot stand it getting air time, especially when it’s shared in a positive light. As we now know, these AI generators seem to feed off of real artists work to then create images based on prompts written by users. To me this doesn’t seem like any real effort. If i’m being honest, It seems pretty dumb. And that’s why I don’t want to give it any time.

So when it pops up I remove it from my feed. If somebody posts an AI generated image I unfollow them. Any talk of it being the next ground breaking thing is swiftly scrolled past and mentally removed from my brain. I choose not to acknowledge it.

Well, what about scenarios where I might not have that choice? Blocking it from my feed isn’t going to magically make it disappear for good. What about my job?

For the most part, I’m not worried about losing clients to AI. Firstly, I think people are giving AI generators a lot more credit than they’re due. From a technical stand point, answering client briefs with AI is not as straight forward as it may seem. The problem with writing prompts is you can’t really get into the nitty gritty; for example, if a client wants a slight change to the image and the AI prompter is not an actual artist, they’ll find difficulty in working with small amendments. As I’m aware the files are provided as flattened images too, which is something else that can be off putting to a potential client.

Another thing to remember is that clients are humans. Sometimes they do just want to work with another human that is a professional and highly skilled in what they do. That’s what they’re paying for!

I recently worked with Little Seeds Music for the third time on a new piece of artwork for their upcoming show, Tales of the Lighthouse. The artwork will be used for a range of different promotional material, including a fun teaser trailer which I’ve inserted below.

Initial sketches and colour palette for Tales from the Lighthouse

A teaser trailer for Tales from the Lighthouse featuring my illustrations with animated elements.

It’s always a joy to collaborate with them because not only do they come to me with fun briefs and magic mood boards, they are great at communication with regards to direction, timelines, pay and feedback. I wanted to share this to say: great none-AI seeking clients still exist!

Since I spent the first part of my post shitting on AI, what about the good things? What can AI generated art contribute to our society?

Well, I don’t think it’s all negative. When I first tried an AI generator I thought that it could be a great reference tool. As an artist myself I would never consider the images that were created by AI to be my work— but I liked the wild and fantastical scenes and characters it could create, and I can see how these images could be used as inspiration when creating something new. But when I really think about AI Art, I don’t really see the point. We have enough inspiration, experiences and resources out there in the real world to make art. This image has been doing the rounds on social media recently and shares a great quote from Joanna Maciejewska on the subject of AI:

Can somebody stop wasting their time training the bots with our stolen art and get on this now please!?

“I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.”

When I first discovered AI image generators I thought it was magic. But of course it’s seems like magic when it uses a mash-up of artists stolen work. True magic is turning a blank page into a mess of lines, marks, mess and colour to portray a human thought or feeling. You think the piece is complete but realise maybe it needs an extra brush stroke here, or a bit more shading over there. You keep working on it until you finally step back from the page and realise: this is it! That nuance is something AI will never be able to replicate, and as much as they can try and copy what we make as artists, we will continue to prove them wrong.

I thought I’d end this by sharing a few sketches from a 12 Days of Christmas project I’m working on. Because as much as we train AI, it will never be able to turn a blank sketchbook page into a happy silly mishmash of Christmas doodles— at least not yet, anyway.