Why I do AI Art

Recently, I made this image:

For me personally, this body is close to perfection. I am all about curves. While I do like big boobs a lot, it can make the body sort of unbalance in look. I think this is a very good size for this body. And this sort of reddish dark brown skin tone is very beautiful in my view.

But this is more the kind of image I make for my own interest and the subgroup of people here on DA who like these kinds of girls. I could not make images here if I only chased what was popular. In that case I would have only made Anime girls with massive melon boobs or something.

I try to sell these images and get subscribers, of course, to allow me to continue this combination of hobby and work. But if it was only about making money I would never have done this, and I doubt few other AI artists would have done it. Some people have the confused idea that this kind of stuff is big business and profitable. No, man, you probably make more at McDonald's and spend fewer hours working. The only reason I do this is that I like doing it.

It reminds me of a discussion with some AI Art haters. Many of them are under the confused assumption that those of us making nude girls are doing it to get rich. Somehow, they have gotten into their heads that nude AI girls are a big moneymaker. I told them it was more profitable to work at McDonald's. That confused them profoundly because AI Art haters have such a deeply cynical view of why anyone does AI Art. They could not fathom why I was making AI Art if I wasn't raking in cash. What other reason could there be to spend time doing it?

I had to point out that I have been here on DA for close to 10 years, and I have mainly looked at exactly the kind of images I am making myself now. Artists like SMZ-69 and db-spencer kept me coming back. Actually, far more than I can mention here. Just look at my favorites and who I follow to get a idea of what artists I like and have followed over the years. What haters don't get is that those of us who make AI Art do it for much the same reason as anyone who makes any kind of art. It is a passion. Nobody gets into art to get rich. It is because they are passionate about it.

Snobs will say naked girls aren't "interesting" artistically or isn't proper art or whatever. But it doesn't really matter what label you put on it. Few people who do art care what people in the Ivor tower think. What I care about is that it means something to me, and to the people who follow me, subscribe or buy images.

I was very eager to draw in the 1980s when I grew up. I was known as the best in my class at drawing, and it was something I thought a lot about pursuing professionally. I would go to the local art store and get books about drawing. I loved drawing portraits. But in addition to portraits, I was really in love with the human body. In particular, the female form. Surprise, surprise, who would have guessed. In other words, if I had pursued traditional drawing and painting, I would have been creating naked girls anyway. AI Art didn't change my interest. I wasn't trying to exploit some kind of trend or fad.

Some of the first AI Art I made was based on sketches of girls I made. The wonderful thing with AI tools is that they can take your sketch, color it, add light, shading, and everything.

There is a lot of judgement against those doing AI Art. That we have no clue about doing actual art. No, I can actually draw faces better than the average person, and I know how to shade in ways that fit how light falls on objects. I know about stuff like indirect lighting. Hell, I even programmed my own ray tracer simulating how light bounces around a room to create an image on the computer. I knew a lot of mathematics of how light hits objects and bounce around to before it gets into our eyes to produce an image. I have illustrated articles with my own vector illustrations for years.

But I am a perfectionist, and I could never get good enough to manage to draw as good as I wanted. The chief problem is: I grew up on an island in a fjord in Norway in the 1980s. I had no internet or YouTube to help me figure out how I could take my art to the next level. Nor was there any community, guides, or anything who could really help me. So it was a passion I eventually abandoned, and I pursued computer science with focus on computer graphics.

Thus, for me the rise of AI Art was a chance for me to pick up again an old passion. I could finally do a lot of the things I could never achieve back in the 1980s, stuck on an island in a fjord.

And for me this has meant a lot. I have had the best decade. Trauma of nearly losing a child and depression for a decade. When I began AI Art I had had the worst year of my life, probably. In an out of hospital because would lose my cognitive ability. Could not think properly, remember things, keep stuff straight or even words or sentences out of my mouth. They did countless scans and examinations of my head without figuring it out. Thankfully, I got slowly better, but I felt like a vegetable for two months doing little besides watching Netflix TV shows.

It is a frustrating and frightening experience when you have spent most of your life using your head extensively. In this period, I was authoring a book on software development. My chapters were written, but I was going through and doing rewrites and modifications based on feedback from the publisher. It was impossible for me to do the work with the bad state my head was in. I had to tell the publisher I wasn't confident if I could finish the book. Thankfully, I got better and managed to publish. Today I have a big box of printed books at home with my name on it.

It was a personal victory for me having managed to get through that despite all my troubles. Sure, I was significantly delayed, but I did it in the end.

What does this have to do with AI Art you might ask? I have been burned out with programming many times. It happens when you have spent 30 years doing something. All the effort the book required made me really hate the thing. I just could not deal with programming or tech writing. I was burned out. AI Art was a relief. Finally, something very different.

The thing is that I still have so many bad days that the good thing about AI Art is that I can actually do something even when my brain isn't totally working, and I feel like shit. It feels better than watching TV. I love creating stuff, whether that is writing, programming, electronics projects, or just building IKEA furniture or Lego with my kids. Ok, they have gotten too old for that, so that is out.

A lot of what makes this worthwhile is the feedback I get from you guys. I think for most of us create something, we want others to somehow enjoy it. It is the same if I write articles or a book. I want others to enjoy it. And often even bad feedback is better than no feedback. At least you got some engagement.

In other words, making girls in skimpy clothing may not seem like the most highbrow thing, but it has mattered a lot in my life. And anyway, isn't the idea that naked women cannot be art kind of strange? Isn't art history full of statues of naked men and women? Same goes for countless oil paintings.

To me, the female body is kind of like a work of art. Art doesn't need to have an important message. I don't see anything wrong with making something that looks beautiful or sexually attractive.

So I want to thank my support for helping me continue this passion and hobby. And to those who are getting into AI Art, don't let the naysayer tell you what you can or cannot make. You are not creating for the ivory tower but for yourself and for those who enjoy what you make.