The other day on Facebook, every septuagenarian’s favorite social media platform, I posted this confession:

“I’ve just come to the terrible realization that I’m a professional dilettante!”

I meant the quip, of course, to be humorous given the oxymoronic pairing of professional, denoting lucrative compensation for someone who can claim to be an expert, and dilettante, which describes a poser, an amateur who dabbles in the arts.^[1]

A few kind responders begged to differ, claiming that I was the real deal, which I appreciate, but don’t buy, especially when it comes to what I have come to call my “fake paintings,” which are essentially photocollages filtered to look like paintings and printed on canvases. Not that they’re not eye-catching in a good way. My friend the painter and filmmaker David Boatwright ­ — the antithesis of a dilletante — finds them amusing.^[2] So even though I call them “fake,” I do think they qualify as “art,” but it’s amateur art. When in a groove, I can crank one out in a couple of hours.^[3] David, on the other hand, toils over his canvases and murals for months, not ceasing until every last miniscule detail is right.

Which brings me to the central subject of these ramblings — AI generated illustrations. 

A while back a Facebook friend lamented that AI-generated “art” was going to put people like me out of business, but I begged to differ. “AI hasn’t listened to Tom Waits while smoking Thai sticks,” I responded. It can’t, by its very essence, be original. It ain’t got soul. 

Last night my wife Caroline and I were looking at my two latest canvases, and I said, “There’s no way AI could come up with either one of these.”

“Let’s do a little experiment and see what AI comes up with,” she said. 

So we did, prompting the software to create something similar. 

Before we begin the comparison, I’ll explain briefly how I go about making a fake painting. 

I start with a high resolution photograph. In my latest (see below) TGIF Chico Feo, I took a photo of the bar area when I was the only customer in the establishment. 

I upload the photograph to Photoshop and add an artistic filter, in this case, the “Dry Brush” filter.

Almost always, I have no preconceived notions about what I’m looking to create. In this case, I googled “pulp cover paperbacks bar scenes” and scored the couple kissing from a novel entitled Divorce. Of course, the man wasn’t leaning over a bar to kiss his lover, but I determined I might be able to cut the couple out and paste them into the photo, and, damn, it worked. Next, I found the woman sitting to the couple’s left and did likewise, and once again, I was successful.

I thought it might be amusing to have an organ grinder in the foreground, but I couldn’t find any illustrations that suited; however, I did find the begging monkey with the cup and tried him in various locations until I hit upon placing him on the bar, interrupting the passionate kiss. 

I decided to place a large figure in the foreground and went Screaming-Jay-Hawkins hunting. I experimented with various Hawkins iterations, but the vibe wasn’t right, and then the proverbial cartoon light bulb went off above my fedora. Louis Armstrong, Satchmo!

And boom!^[4]

So here are my TGIF Chico Feo and AI’s response to the prompt “create a picture of Louis Armstrong playing at a beach bar.”

See what I mean.

One more example. 

Two of my favorite artists are Bruegel the Elder and Hironimus Bosch. 

I took a photo of our living room, which struck me as sort of Flemish-looking so I peopled it with Bosch figures, being in a mocking post-election funk. 

Here’s the final product.

And here’s what AI came up with when prompted “Boschian style weird people and one Boschian monster in a regular modern beach house living room.”

Of course, AI is likely to put some illustrators out of business. In fact, because Caroline subscribes to AI software, I might ask her to provide me images to illustrate some of my blog posts. However, for book covers, I always prefer scruffy over slick. 

Which cover would you guess Caroline and I chose?

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^[1] The awkwardly phrased sentence this footnote references is proof in and of itself of my dilettantism. A professional, a true wordsmith, would devote time to express these ideas in a more cogent fashion, spending perhaps an hour or so insuring that every word was in its proper place and that the clauses melded in pleasant fluidity. but [cue Bob Dylan]. “[That] ain’t me, babe. 

^[2] BTW, David has written a screenplay for a 15-minute film based on the poolroom chapter of my novel Today, Oh Boy and is just 50K short of having the funds to start production, so if you happen to be wealthy and want to be an art patron and contribute to making a really cool indie film, contact me, and I’ll forward your info to David. 

^[3] I have had a one-man show at Studio Open and have sold a couple of dozen, two of which went for $500, so there’s that.

^[4] I also Hitchcock like, try to make a cameo appearance in the “paintings.” In this case, it’s the cover photo of my next book Long Ago Last Summer. Can you find it?