A Renaissance painting of a woman wearing a VR headset: Juxtaposing the modern everyday with the pre-modern painting eras, a developing trend in the world of AI-generated images
DALL·E 2022-06-29 10.18.34 - Prompt: Renaissance painting of an Asian woman with green hair using a VR headset
Disclaimer: I am not an expert on any of the topics I shall discuss below, I am just curious and I like to experiment + learn. I’m using this platform to log my thoughts, ideas and whatever else comes to mind. Please take what I write with a pinch of salt, and always do your own research. I am not a very good writer either, so be prepared to be reading a lot of fluff.
Anything I write that might be wrong, please do correct me but be polite about it, thank you!
PS / FYI: If you arrived here from the front page, you must be a bit confused as this isn’t finalised artwork but still in my portfolio, this is actually a hybrid blog post / portfolio outcome so I wasn’t sure where to put it
Date: Saturday 02/07/22
Press: check out my contribution to the AI x Design Community guide on AI images!
Go back to the blog: Maria tries to understand
The fabulous thing about DALL-E 2 is that it removed the barriers of technicality for people like me, who can’t paint for shit.
DALL-E 2 is what all of our tutors at university warned us about: ‘what if a machine can replicate your work? Be more original, it can’t steal ideas.’
They were so right, the time has come for creatives to fallback on the most important of skills which defines us: our ability to come up with interesting visual thoughts and original designs.
When you know that an AI can churn any artwork in any style (even with imperfections), you push its limits to see if it can create things you’ve never seen before, just like magic! And one of the ‘trends’ I have seen develop in the world of digital art is the juxtaposition of modern acts within unexpected pre-modern art styles, such as a Renaissance woman wearing a VR headset.
The trends within digital art are strongly aligned with the trends within AI art, since they’re both in the digital realm. In fact, a huge chunk of artists who were onboarding with DALL-E were digital artists, and if you look at the #hashtag, you will notice a lot of ‘artstation, unreal engine, digital art, vaporwave’ aesthetic AI art, which is awesome of course.
Although the modern/classic juxtaposition already existed prior to DALL-E, I believe it will soon be pushed into the foreground of trending art styles and generations due to the loss of this technical barrier, now everyone can generate a realistic Renaissance painting! With this development, I have taken upon myself to deep dive into this style, it is hands down one of my favourite type of AI generated work. This is something I’ve always wanted to create but knew I would never have the time, patience and rigor to develop the skill. Apologies to all the actual oil painters out there, your work is fantastic, and this is an ode to you all!
Below I will post my series of old vs new, which I aptly fantastically named with the most original nomenclature: AI Renaissance. 😬️
Seriously though, I will come back for a better name.
Prompt: Renaissance painting of an Asian woman with green hair using a VR headset
- A Renaissance painting of an Asian woman recording a TikTok dance on her smartphone by Michelangelo
- A Renaissance painting of an Asian woman recording a TikTok dance on her smartphone
Note from the author: I love the multiple arms, this series is not a perfect rendition, but definitely a favourite
An oil painting of an Asian woman recording an apology video on her laptop, Renaissance in the style of Raphael
Again, imperfect series, especially the depiction of the eyes. Some of these photos were then re-edited through DALL-E using their AI brush tool. Another point is when writing ‘Renaissance’ as a style, you will either get characters wearing Renaissance clothing or the style of painting will be Renaissance and they will retain their clothes. Interesting. It nailed the overall expression and the ‘hoodie-wearing’ fashion when apologising.
Prompt: A Renaissance painting of an Asian woman recording an apology video
A absolute curveball thrown at me, this happens often where my grammar isn’t correct and the Renaissance bit ends up being a canvas painting behind the actor/character. Still funny.
Another imperfect series, mainly in its emotional depiction. The Woman doesn’t look too angry, but is definely worried, sad or burdened when typing on her phone. Love the first image as the clair-obscur really shines through, and the use of a stick to write on the phone is a nice touch.
Another imperfect series. The emotion is well depicted, I see frustration, anger and despair. But the laptop isn’t thrown, more like punched or hit. However there is a lot of strewn paper across the room. I guess paper and laptop is the same ‘principle’, if the laptop was purely used for Word doc lol.
Definetely not the strongest emotion, the only breakage I see is them breaking into the mainframe. Or their minds breaking in front of difficult bugs and code. Maybe. Still gorgeous, the Caravaggio style really shines through with the use of light and shadows.
More imperfection, i’m loving the extra limbs and the amount of movement and dynamism. I love the first image, where the character resembles Awkwafina and shows the result / aftermath of breaking a computer.