Before I get started, I need to talk about separating my list. Many of you are creatives and follow along to see how things in the studio work, the alchemy and many different experiments I do. This group is interested in learning about creating art. Others are collectors or art lovers who like to look at art and are on my list as someone who has purchased my art or may someday be interested in purchasing my art. I have been lazy and just had one list. So, to make things more targeted to your individual wants I now have two lists. If you are receiving this email and are interested in my art as a collector you can change lists by signing up here. I will take you from this list and put you on the collector list. That collector email goes out once every two weeks. If you wish to be on both sign-up for the collector list but drop me a line and tell me not to take you from this one.
Guinea pig racing 1930's
So much is going on in the yard and studio I am not sure where to begin. First, a short blurb about the wonky guinea pig book project. This week I did some testing to see how I wanted to mount the printed images as well as what paper I thought I might print on. The images will simply be printed, sealed, mounted, and bound. So, no overpainting or enhancement of any kind. I have not really settled on a paper. I love the Hahnemuhle Photo Rag Baryta Paper but...it is really expensive. It might work but I am still exploring and testing. I may try some nice hot press water color paper using Inkaid coating. I also ordered some Kozo from Awagami as well as some washi paper from ONOA. Amazon's previous two-day prime shipping is now over a week to my location so it will be a bit before I can test those.
Guinea pig pilot-color change so it matches the plane
The biggest AI news this week is likely Adobes news of Firefly Enterprise. I am hoping that most digital artist that are Adobe users already have experienced the supercharged content creation tool. If not...you should. During the Adobe Summit they introduced Firefly Enterprise which is designed to make content creation across any organization a breeze. This means everyone in the company can unleash their inner creative side and generate amazing images and copy, irrespective of their artistic capabilities. These visuals and text can then be used in various campaigns, be it for marketing, social media promotions or corporate presentations.
David Wadhwani, the president of digital media business at Adobe, pointed out that content demands are expected to surge by five-fold in the next two years. Firefly for Enterprise aims to ease this pressure by enabling users of any skill level to generate content instantly and deliver standout designs using the power of Express and Creative Cloud. Here is one article that talks about it. https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/8/23753564/adobe-firefly-enterprise-generative-ai-express-commercial
Guinea pig pilot-color change so it matches the plane
Not sure if this is a positive for you? My stock business is already dead so that is not an issue. I think by getting on the right side of the AI advances it can be an advantage. Remember when we transitioned to digital kicking and screaming? I think it prudent to learn as much as I can about using AI in art creation. Further down the road I can settle on how, or if, I will use it. I believe for me it will be much like the digital revolution in terms of adding it to my workflow. Currently I capture almost everything digitally. I print giclees to use either as a base/matrix to paint on, for collage and sometimes for a simple stand-alone print. I print digital negatives for all of my non-silver photographic processes. As an artist who uses several mediums to create, my use of photography has changed. It is not just about the capture, in fact for me capture is the very beginning. Where my skill lies is not is composing, lighting, setting up and capturing the perfect image like many of the Master photographers. My skill lies in imagining a scenario, curating the resources to illustrate that scenario, then putting together all of the curated pieces to create something that vaguely resembles the initial idea plus and minus the rabbit holes explored, dumped or captured along the way. I would guess my use of AI will be much the same....just the first part of the process and one of the elements of curation.
Stay Frosty,
TimO
