— As mind-blowing and exciting as it is to be able to use AI to generate amazing models and content for your artwork … I feel I need to reiterate my one great caution:

Do not confuse “I typed these words” with “I made this art.”

Phil Steele generated the four amazing images you see here in this post … by simply typing in the one-word prompt “woman.”

Clearly he made no artistic decisions of his own and exhibited no artistic talent here. The program did it all.

And this can lead to what I think of as the ‘Poisoned Apple.’

It’s where you get SO excited by what the AI produces that you throw in the towel on actually being an artist yourself.

I’ve said it so many times now I feel silly repeating it again, but here it is:

Generating models, animals, backgrounds, elements this way can be a miraculous addition to your creative resources and will make possible all sorts of amazing compositions that were impossible for you to create until now.

That is truly awesome.

But you still have to DO something of your own with it if you actually want to be an artist.

Generate material … but then take it into Photoshop and craft your own original canvas. Layer in other photos, other material, other artistic effects, whatever else you need. Make your own artistic decisions. Apply painterly effects or spend some hours on it with the Mixer Brush laying down each stroke by hand.

In short, use your own Photoshop skills to bring material together and then carry it further.

Then finish it out in your own style and make it look amazing.

Don’t just give up your artistic life to an AI.

Instead, USE the AI and put it to work for you in crafting cool material to use in your work, same as you’d use stock photos, kit content, course material.

The important thing is to use that material as a STARTING POINT and build out your own work of art from there. That’s where you achieve real satisfaction and fulfillment as an artist.

And if you think about it, just as you wouldn’t download a finished work of art from ShutterStock and post it online pretending you made it … in the same way it doesn’t make any sense to post a finished work by MidJourney and try to claim it as your own.

What would there be to feel proud of in that?

Treat AI as a tool — as one piece of a larger creative process — and it will serve you very well.

But don’t ever give up on your own creativity and artistic talent.

~ Sebastian

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Postscript:

Another thing. If you ever find yourself seeing AI-generated work and want to throw in the towel — please don’t.

What does what anyone else is doing have to do with what YOU want to do?

There are artists here in Asheville who look at our Photoshop Artistry stuff and to them it’s almost the equivalent of AI. Because they’re working with physical mixed media, actual paints on actual canvases.

But they don’t just throw in the towel. They’re artists. They love creating art in their own way.

They’re not in it for a competition.

They’re not comparing. They’re creating.

So keep doing your thing. Each artist is on his or her own journey. It’s about that journey … and about finding your own joy along that journey!

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If you haven’t yet checked out Phil Steele’s wildly popular new course on generating AI images (which enables you to create your own models, animals, backgrounds, special effects, anything really that you’d normally look for on a stock photo site or in a kit on Etsy but would rather simply create yourself), click here to give it a look… Just remember my advice and use the method he lays out ideally to create material you then take into Photoshop and DO something with yourself to make the finished canvas truly your own!