All of this may or may not cheapen our existence and degrade artists, or it may be the reality we are all in this together and no “idea” can be owned by an individual — just endless variations of the same thing and that . I’m not sure.

I have been doing image searches on more unique images I have created, to see if copyright issues are going on, and so far I have not found it. I have seen in search results a lot of similiar paintings but by many artists in fact! E.g. artists using the same approach and technique that is aethetically pleasing. This is very common for artists to mimic existing styles — not to mirror exactly but creating a new take. That’s what midjourney does– there is an aspect to it that is very unpredictable and not controllable which is part of what makes it exciting. Most of the art I created in midjourney is pretty normal to find lots of people doing it in that style. Some of it was unique by putting in 3D realistic elements — the polar bears in a sanctuary for instance took my breath away. (photo below)

Example of image search using AI generated image I created.

An image created where I used the polar bears above into a new rendering using prompts of sanctuary:

Polar bear in Zen sanctuary.

The bear image at the top of this blog post, I created using Midjourney, a visual creator using artificial intelligence to generate images based on words inputted by a user. The words put into Midjourney are called prompts, and the more experience and sophisticated approach you use, the more interesting the results. For the image above I put in something along the lines of “cosmic polar bears at night in a field of poppies and spring flowers in watercolor style bright and illuminated from within”. I was then shown four renderings, one of which was the one above. I LOVE some of what is coming out of this, and I also am wildly aware of the different experience it is from actually creating art either digitally or in the physical world using physical pigments and brushes. 

So I am approaching this with curiousity. It is intensely fast. One can re-iterate hundreds of options in a matter of an hour in a large gamut of styles. See below for wide variety of bee renderings I did using different prompts. As an artist seeking to generate money, I have been experimenting with different approaches and this is a phenomenal tool to quickly make images for garden flags “No Mow May. Pardon the weeds, we are feeding the bees.”  This was fantastic way to try out different styles on etsy. Interestingly, the only ones that sell well, is the digital one I created myself using my computer in photoshop. 🙂 Midjourney does create a bit of soulless art. But that doesn’t mean to me it doesn’t have a place.