Image by Brigitte Werner from Pixabay
I heard what I think is the most encouraging pep talk for artists in this dawning on the generative AI era poised to kill both jobs and humanity of illustrators. And aspiring illustrators. I heard it on a recent episode of the excellent 3 Point Perspective Podcast where artist, Joe Sutphin was interviewed.
Joe explained how the allure of AI tools is creating a risk of the emergence of artists without character. He explains that the root cause is living in a culture where people avoid discomfort and are afraid of failing at creating a piece of art. Fear of a blank page and fear of judgement of whatever we draw on that blank page.
“There’s a lot of dishonest incentive”, Joe explains. “There are machines and voices that are saying it would be safer for you to use this plugin. It would be safer for you to ask for this thing to be made for you. It would be safer for you to allow this function to be automated. You’ll be quicker. You’ll be faster. You’ll be efficient. And what I see that leading to is artists who are not what we’ve ever known before – artists without character.” [emphasis my own]
These will be artists who have not developed scabs, calluses, and muscle memory, and avoided getting good at something they were never good at. Joe shares a story from his early days as an illustrator. “I was frightened of drawing a landscape with the point of a pen. By the time I got halfway through Watership Down, I couldn’t wait to get to those spreads. I wanted to draw those landscapes so bad.”
I like how Joe used the example of a common fear illustrators have. “We’re afraid to draw hands. We’re afraid to draw feet in perspective. And you’re afraid to draw trees. I don’t want to have to figure out where all those tendrils go and then what they lead to and how in the world am I going to put leaves over top of that and still imply structure.”
Grow as an artist by doing hard things
“But when you do it enough and then you suddenly do one right, you become so encouraged and empowered that I want to do it again. I want to draw the coolest tree now.” This is so true! I’ve experienced this myself many times. Drawing something difficult can be very daunting and intimidating at first (and even discouraging when things don’t go right – hence the illustrators avoiding drawing hands meme). However, once you draw it and it looks good, you feel good and grow as an artist. And you want to draw some more of it.
“And I’m afraid that more and more creative people will begin avoiding those hard paths”, shares Joe, “and that means that fewer people are going to go down them.”
He mentions another human aspect that is at risk is being inspired by people who have done hard things.
“I’m hoping that people will view their work as a gift that they’re giving the world and that some piece of them, an important piece of them was spent on it and that you don’t necessarily get it back. That you get to give it away. And sure, we’re making a living on it, but I’m not going to shame somebody for earning money bagging groceries.”
He hopes that people keep taking risks and experiencing the growth that “builds character in you as an artist, as a person. That you’re able to do hard things and be proud of of whatever comes out.”
Joe’s tip is as soon as you feel resistance, to take it as a good sign that you are moving in the right direction. For example, if you think drawing hands is hard, it only means you’ll need to “draw five more hands. Draw 100 more hands.”
Something goes wrong? Just do it again.
He ends with a story from a project he was working on and it wasn’t working right. Distraught, he showed his work to his wife. The first thing she said to him was to do it again. Joe wasn’t hated the idea but he followed through and ended up loving the result.
This life lesson stuck with him for 20 years. “There are many times where something goes wrong and I just say do it again.” He adds that nobody else is going to see your drafts nor even care. So just keep going.
You can listen to or watch the episode on the SVS Learn website, home of the 3 Point Perspective Podcast.