Teacher
Richard is a talented full time artist, who loves painting and teaching.
"The River Bend" 10x14" Oil on Board by Richard Robinson
Resource photo of Rangiteiki River in New Zealand.
Is it ok to use Ai to generate images to paint from?
Ai image generators like Midjourney.com are a great tool for artists. You can use this tool as little or as much as you like. In this lesson I take a photograph, design a painting in greyscale based on that, and then give both images to the Ai to flesh out my design. Alternatively I could have skipped Ai and painted a colour study, then worked up the larger finished painting from that. I would have gained some experience but lost some time. Do what brings you joy.
The copyright issue
Some artists decry Ai companies for breaching artists copyright by using artists work to train their Ai without permission or benefit to the artists. Fair enough. But, it's done now, the genie is out of the bottle. I hope those artists pursuing legal recourse will succeed. Meanwhile, I sometimes choose to use Ai in my design process. Perhaps some of the money I spend on that will make its way back to those artists.
This demo is in oils but it's fine for acrylics too.
I'll take you step by step through this whole process. Just a couple of hours and you'll have a beautiful painting of a tree on the river bend.
Just 5 steps
I’ll guide you all the way.
Designing for Clarity
In every scene you'll find things you'll want to change. With this one, I could have painted it just as it was, but I wanted to focus in on those parts that I loved the most. In order to do that some actors must be cut from the play. Other actors may simply step out of the spotlight so that the stars can do their thing. I loved the tree and the dappled light, so those things took centre stage, and the limelight. Be very clear about what it is you love the most and then focus on showing that off to its best effect.
Using Ai
Again, you can use this as much as you like. In this instance I gave the Midjourney.com Ai my grayscale design and the photo of the scene, cropped to better match my design. Then I typed in what I wanted to see, simply, "In the shade of a tree on a river bank". Leaving all the other multitude of settings at default levels I clicked the go button. It came up with 4 similar images and I chose the one I liked the most, ready to take to the easel.
The background
Painting in oils on a relatively small canvas like this it's fun to get it all done in one session - alla prima! In this case I painted the background first and, while still wet, wiped out parts that the foreground tree would cover, so that I didn't have to struggle painting over thick paint later. Wiping sections of your painting can give you a wonderful sense of freedom from the preciousness we so often develop over parts that we have spent time on.
To dab or not to dab
Whilst I normally avoid lots of detail in my work, sometimes it's nice to change things up and spend considerable time on detailed sections. I start the foliage with large shapes, working darkest to lightest, and the paint gets thicker as I apply the lights with a smaller brush. Note that the foliage gets lighter and warmer the closer it gets to the sun on the right.
Finishing Touches
The dappled light in the foreground is painted thickest of all and the rigger brush is employed for the last few branches, providing some more crisp calligraphic detail.
I'll take you step by step through this whole rich process and you can choose which parts you'd like to try out in your own work.
“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”
—Walt Disney
Enjoy!
