Schools are mere replication machines, creating more teachers at best. — A while ago, while researching language-learning techniques, I came across a youtube comment from a woman who described her husband’s experience with Spanish. The couple was from Texas, and her husband was an electrician working with Mexican coworkers. During his work, he spontaneously picked up most of the language he…

While synthetic, it is still human art. — The era of generative AI has arrived, as evidenced by the impressive presentations at Google I/O and Microsoft’s recent showcase. Many of us have been playing with tools like ChatGPT and MidJourney to create impressive works that, while not yet true art, are certainly on their way there. Some are…

And these are my first impressions — About twelve years ago, I watched the movie Baraka, which featured the Shah Cheragh mosque, and since then, I have been longing to visit Iran. Although I had heard many great things about the country, nothing could prepare me for the cultural shock I experienced. The…

How AI echoes 19th-century painting and Impressionist movements — By now, you have probably all heard the news of a photographer refusing a photography prize because of entering an AI-generated image. It is a confusing time, to say the least. But it is not the first time we’ve been in a situation like this. The history of art has…

And it is a good thing for the rest of the field — This fear that generative AI models like MidJourney will take our jobs away is spreading like wildfire among illustrators, graphic designers, and even photographers . A lot of this fear is based on solid grounds. These models are getting incredibly powerful and WILL replace many of our current commissions. But…

Part 2: Illustration and design — With the story ready, we can now move to the second part, drawing all the necessary plates and placing them on pages. This is much more like my home territory. I am not a professional book designer per se, but I designed about 70–100 books in my life as a…

Part 1: Writing the story with ChatGPT — I’ve had a passion for children’s books since I can remember. Books and stories for children have to boil down the essence of good storytelling, morality, character development, and visual art to the absolute core and present them in a way that is understandable even to toddlers. As a child…

I tried to revive some of my old ideas. — When I’m working on a serious “fine-art” photo shoot, I usually do a lot of sketching in advance. I want to try out these ideas as much as possible to filter out garbage and save time on set. Therefore my sketchbooks are filled with ideas that, for some reason, I…

It is harder than you think. — I really don’t like to be addicted. It creates all sorts of problems, and it makes you dependent on a particular substance or a thing (or a person?) and thus enslaved. So about a month ago, I decided to stop caffeine which was much more than guilty pleasure for most…