JR portrait in progress 2 - Using AI to create art

AI is a very controversial subject among artists. It evokes strong reactions.

My position as a professional artist with more than 40 years experience is that AI is a tool, like any other tool, that can be used - deliberately and mindfully - in the creation of original art.

1

I'm working on a colored pencil portrait of a Doberman named “JR”.

Finding the right reference photo(s) to use for a portrait is a journey. That, and designing the composition for the piece, can take as long and require as much time and effort as drawing the portrait itself.

Diane sent me 60 photos of JR. I gave recommendations of the best ones, and we discussed several, but this was the clear favorite.

(Photo by Diane Schurman)

2

Diane had seen my portrait of Jake on my website and loved it. She wanted JR's portrait to look like that. Here are the two side-by-side. (It’s amazing how similar these two dogs look! They look like they could be brothers.) So the decision about the portrait type and background color was easy. It would be a head and shoulders portrait, on the same grey paper as Jake's portrait, a favorite paper color of mine for Doberman portraits.

3

Here's the problem though. Diane's photo of JR was taken from across a yard as he stood next to the corner of their garage. With a phone, not a high-end camera with a telephone lens. Although it's a beautiful shot of JR, here's what you see when you zoom in.

4

My work is known for its fine detail… Every hair and whisker showing. Every detail of the eyelids and even the reflections in the eyeball. (Those who follow my work have seen that many times in my portraits.)

closeup: left ear and eye

5

I am a professional with many years of experience, and an excellent knowledge of Doberman features, but even for me this was going to be a heavy lift. To try to pull out some kind of accurate detail out of this reference.

Not just accurate detail, but accurate detail that LOOKS LIKE JR.

In a portrait, even a slight change in the curve of an eyelid can change the look of the individual.

closeup: right eye

6

I have not played around with AI myself but I knew there are AI tools that will sharpen a blurry photo. So I gave it a try. My initial ignorant attempts did not even remotely resemble the photo of JR.

Diane was a fantastic collaborator to work with and in the meantime she was trying also. With much better results than I got.

This is Diane's result. It doesn't look precisely like JR. In tiny ways his face, his likeness, was beginning to change. If you're not a portrait artist you might not be able to see it. (Wrinkles on the forehead, lighter eyes, not quite the same expression.)

But the detail looked very good.

Until…

7

… you zoom in.

The AI doesn't actually understand what Doberman hair looks like. It created a bunch of AI weirdness. This is less useful to me than working from the blurry photo and using my own knowledge of hair patterns, from years of portraying Dobermans.

left side of muzzle

8

And look what it did to the nose leather.

9

Now look at the right eye. That is not an eyeball. The AI is interpreting the shapes and colors it "saw" in the blurry photo. But it doesn't actually understand what an eye is. Not like an artist would understand it.

(first AI attempt by Diane)

10

Luckily for me that was not the end of the story.

While Diane and I had been working on that, I saw an AI creation in a comment on the “Free Photoshop Edits" Facebook group, where someone named Andrew O'Brien had turned an extremely blurry old photo someone posted into a beautifully sharp and detailed version. I see a lot of those things in the free Photoshop edits groups, but as soon as I saw Andrew's work, I was impressed. I contacted him.

Andrew owns a landscaping company, "plays around with AI", and likes to help people. I asked him to see what he could do with JR's blurry photo.

Andrew's result was better than anything I could have dreamed of.

Andrew’s enhanced version

11

Here's a close-up. This is comparable detail to a professional photo of a Doberman taken in a photography studio.

closeup: left ear and eye

12

Here's the right eye, below JR's original (blurry) eye.

And Andrew’s version looks exactly like JR.

13

Now I had my reference image, good enough to do a highly detailed portrait. But I wasn't done yet. There are still things an artist can do that AI can't.

The AI, guided by Andrew, gave me fantastic material to work with. But it takes a human artist with the ability to understand a client's heart to give them the best portrait of their loved one. Diane wanted to capture JR's strength and personality, his Doberman heart.

Using the AI image and Diane’s photos as the raw materials, I, the artist, designed the composition. I took the head from Andrew's image, the neck from Jake's portrait, and the chest and shoulders from one of Diane's other photos, I put those pieces together in Photoshop to create this composition, a more visually striking portrayal of JR than the original photo.

14

With that Photoshop composite as my reference image, I start creating the actual artwork.

Colored pencil outlines drawn on "Felt Grey" Canson paper:

Now it’s up to the artist's hand, and heart, to capture who JR is.

I see AI as a tool, in the hands of a skilled artist who can use it to their advantage in creating art. AI is a step on the road to creating the artwork, not the artwork itself.

🎨 Prismacolor pencil on “Felt Grey” Canson Mi-Teintes paper, 12 x 18 inches.

From a reference photo by Diane Schurman, enhanced with AI by Andrew O’Brien.

❤️  Commissioned by Diane and Michael Schurman