I am delighted and honoured to have been interviewed by Aaron S (@aaronsehmar on Instagram) for his Flying Fruit Bowl podcast. If you haven’t come across his podcast and website check it out – he’s a thoughtful and insightful interviewer who is a very talented photographer in his own right. He’s interviewed a diverse range of talented artists. There is a lots to discover. It’s like a breath of fresh air.
Here is the painting that finished me off. Now I look at it after a month, I am not sure why. I just felt like I had run into the sand and needed a change. I had been doing a lot of reading about composition but I suspect it had more to do with taking too long to paint. Acrylic paint often requires several layers to achieve the opacity of oil paint. I was getting bored and tired and I wanted to try something new. A change is a good as a rest.
Toralaydan Island, West Donegal
So I took a month off posting new work on facebook & instagram, to give myself head space. Some artists love being filmed live and showing their “process” – I am not like that. I get very self conscious and often will immediately screw up a painting if I take photos too early in its development. It’s one of the reasons I cannot bear to paint outside “en plein air” – people understandably want to see what you are painting and that makes me feel very self-conscious. I really dont know how people go on TV shows like “Landscape Artist of the Year” and produce really good paintings, or half-way decent paintings at all, in fact. They must have nerves of steel. I don’t. In fact, I know that many of my paintings can go through stages of looking quite rubbish before they (almost always) emerge butterfly-like from the murk and layers. It’s a lovely (and sadly rare) experience when a painting look interesting/beautiful all they way through the process of coming into being.
I had bought some tubes of Acrylic Gouache in the spring but had not got around to trying them out. Now I opened that box of paints and gave them my full attention. I had been looking for a water-based paint, to reduce the risk to my pets, especially my young inqusitive cats. I had had oil paint/white-spirit incidents with pets in the past when we had a lot more space and I did not want to take that risk now. I also wanted opaque paint. I had discovered that some American artists, whose work I liked, used Nova acrylics which is pretty opaque but they did not have a UK stockist. I was cautious about importing paints from the US as I once ordered a load of paint from a sale from JerrysArtsarama only to get stung by customs and VAT charges. So any saving I had made in the sale were wiped out! I also considered Golden SO FLAT matte acrylic paint but I am not a great fan of Golden colours. Dont get me wrong, some of their acrylic colours are great (light ultramarine for example) and I know many artists rave about them, but I don’t LOVE them. They were also sold in a jar rather than a tube, and I could just see me absent-mindedly sticking my dirty paint brush in a jar and mucking up the colour. I prefer tubes that I can squeeze a tiny bit of paint out onto my wet palette and keep my colours clean.
Not the set I bought – I wish!
I saw that Jacksons Art stocked Turner Acryl from Japan. I watched a couple of videos comparing different makes of Acrylic Gouache and liked the vibrancy of Turner’s paint. There is not a lot of information about acrylic gouache, unlike regular acrylic (I have several books on the technical aspects of using this acrylic). I keep reading the same thing – its a cross between gouache and acrylic. Gouache is a water-based paint which can be opaque (unlike water colours which are usually transculent) and it can be reactivated with water. Acrylic gouache, however, once dry, sets like acrylic and cannot be reactivated with water. It dries pretty quickly too. It dries to a smooth velvety matt finish too. It is used by illustrators, especially anime.
An example of anime art from Instagram from @happy.artistry
Look at the lovely rich colours!
The colours are lovely but I have a lot to learn. There are so many wonderful rich colours and I can see why these [paints are popular with illustrators. Unlike acrylics or gouache, there is little to no colour shift. It is non-toxic. It does not dry lighter or darker. I am finding this hard to get used too. I am overcautious about laying down darker colours. I have to learn this again and again. I often dont make my paintings dark enough as I am afraid the strong colour of the tarmac road will overwelm the painting. I have to repaint the shadows.
I feel out of control with it at times. Sometimes that is exciting, others just scary.
Winter Morning on Academy Road, Derry – Acrylic Gouache on wood Panel 2024 – An early effort
I painted a load of duff pieces before I started to feel I was getting somewhere with “Ardara”.
Ardara – Acrylic Gouache on Wood Panel 2024 – Another early effort
I felt that a new medium required new subject matter to set it apart from the rural scenes I had focused on since moving to Ireland in 2021. My work had previously described by Niall McMonagle in the Irish Independent as a “Clear bright glimpse of a vanishing Ireland”. I wanted to mix things up and paint a more contemporary version of everyday Irish life.
This meant scenes with cars. The Irish love their cars. I have painted cars in the past but not for a very long time. It was usually at night or in the rain (at night) so you could not really see them properly.
My Pop Art – The Driving Rain (SOLD) Oil on Linen Canvas, 2015
Coming out of Shell, Oil on Linen canvas (SOLD) 2020
It was in 2017 that I decided to pursue “Urban Minimalism” for my “Hollowed community” project for the MadeinRoath festival in Cardiff. For a long time, I have sought out empty scenes with no cars or people. It found it cleansing. The Morris Minor (below) was one of few exception to this. This vintage car was parked around the corner from our home in Brynmill. I used to hear the owner drive past our house on the way to the paper shop every morning.
Urban Minimal style – Morris Minor 2018 Oil on Linen Canvas (SOLD)
Now I decided on a volte face and to seek out street scenes with cars to challenge myself. Car are difficult to paint. I know some people will disagree with me, but in themsleves, they are not intrinsically beautiful, although the light reflected on their surfaces can be. I am more a fan of vintage cars like the Morris Minor and old-style minis (genuinely small cars) and enjoy the colours used by Italian manufacturers such as Fiat 500s. Too many cars in Ireland are black or grey. They don’t make for interesting compositions. Surprisingly, Lorries do. In the right place.
Deliveries on Queen Street, Derry – Acrylic Gouache on wood panel 2024
I wanted to paint with speed. I was bored of spending days or even weeks on a large painting. I wanted to work fast keep things fresh. I tried hard to resist overpainting. I left wobbly lines where possible so as to convey some of the energy of the urban areas.
Derry is a very lively city. I also wanted to explore town/city life on both sides of the border in Donegal and Derry, in Northern Ireland. The building stock is very different depending on which side of the border you are. The number plates maybe different but the cars are pretty similar.
Bogside, Derry – Acrylic Gouache on wood panel 2024
Light and shadows continue to be a theme in my work.
Carn (Donegal) – Acrylic Gouache on wood panel 2024
I have found this both challenging and exciting. I have produced quite a few paintings that didn’t work, especially at the start but I just pushed on. I knew that there would be a lot of wastage at the start. The only way I would get the hang of this medium was by painting a lot. I learn through my hands, mixing the paint and then placing the paint on the board. I have not yet achieved the consistency in my work I am used to with oils and acrylics.
I also had to deal with the fear that people might not like this style of paintings or the subject matter. That’s why I had to stay off social media until I felt like I knew what I was doing (sort of). I have shifted styles and subject matter before. There are themes I have focused on before and I am revisiting them. Others are constant – shadow and light. Strong dynamic compositions are also important.
I used to alternate larger landscapes with smaller people/animal paintings. This way I kept my interest in what I was painting. But I seem to get stuck painting landscapes when I came to Ireland. I am not sure it was good for me as an artist. I need to mix things up to keep them fresh. I don’t know where I am going with this but I feel I need to persue this trail for a while longer. I just have to keep going to see where I end up.
Three Cliffs Bay never disappointed. It did not matter how many times I saw it. The sight of it always caused me to catch my breath; when I saw it from the road, from the slopes of Cefn Bryn or from Pennard Cliffs.
It is one of the things I miss about living in South Wales. I imagine it in sunshine, although I am pretty sure the Summer in Wales this years has been as poor as it has been in Ireland. It may well improve. Septembers were often best for sunshine. Just as the schools had gone back!
Here’s me posing with the painting! – Sunny Morning Haze on Three Cliffs Bay (Gower)
I used to get up early in the morning and drive down to Pennard to walk along the edge of the golf course, past the dog walkers, to see the sea and take photos. This is a new painting (see above).
Once I found an excellent parking spot opposite the corner shop in Pennard, only to find I had forgotten to put the battery in my camera. I wasn’t carrying a spare. So, I had to drive all the way back to Swansea to fetch the battery. The journey seemed to take forever (as I cursed my stupidity all the waythere and back) but when I got back the conditions were still lovely.
It was low tide and you could see the river, the Pennard Pill, at its meandering best. When you first come to Three Cliffs you assume you can easily cross the Pill in your bare feet. You can at the shoreline but it get deeper quite quickly. There are stepping stones further up stream. In boot-wearing weather, its a short walk inland to cross at the stones. My painting (see below) Two Rock, Three Cliffs is near to the stepping stones.
We all want to be seen. I want people to see my work. I also want people to see the process behind that work (have you listened to my recent radio interview yet?) I also want to maybe inspire and/or encourage people to undertake their own creative journey. There are bumps in the road, however. Making a living in the creative industries is difficult and uncertain at the best of times.
I recently wrote about how Generative AI was scraping/stealing artists’ copyrighted without permission or recompense. Its not clear how the rise of AI will change things. It has already been disruptive for many of those in the media industry. The protective tools such as “Glaze” are only short-term fixes, if you can get them to work. But that disruption may also create opportunities for some – its hard to tell.
Many people aren’t very interested in AI but wonder why they can’t get speak to a human in customer services but only an online bot.
As an artist who sells much of their work directly, I am reliant on the internet to get my work “out there” to as many people as possible. For many years I have used social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter/X, Pinterest in addition to my own website (with blog) as well as a mailing list. I have posted my work on a handful of online Galleries, Artfinder,in particular. To be honest, I don’t know what works.
I used to assume that everything did a bit of something. Lately its become apparent that some are doing very little indeed. A couple of years ago my instagram posts used to regularly get over a thousand likes, these days I am lucky to get over two hundred. I have pretty much given up on Twitter/X now from lack of engagement. I am wondering whether Facebook is worth the effort too. Since the arrival of TikTok in 2026, the short form video has been given priority by “the algoritim”. Not great news for camera-shy artists, like me.
What is apparent, is that social media sites are like walled gardens, where leaving is discouraged. Posts with external links are downgraded by the site and search algorithims. Facebook and Instagram are both owned by Meta. These walled gardens can and do change their rules for who get seen and who doesn’t.
A rather dated illustration of “Walled gardens”
“Enshitification” (Or – Its all going to Hell in a hardcart)
This is something that what Cory Doctorow calls the “Enshitification” of the internet. He points out that “Once upon a time, Facebook and Twitter showed you stuff from your friends and followers; now you get a torrent of things that the platform’s algorithms think might increase your “engagement”. Doctorow says “First,” he writes, “they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves.” You do this by offering “free” services (Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram), or loss-making reduced prices (Amazon). Then once you’ve got them locked in, you turn them into a captive market for your real customers – advertisers and vendors. And once you’ve got them locked in then you’re in a seller’s market – and have a licence to print money.
Twitter/X and Facebook have made it harder and hard to post and see external links to websites and publications. Many users have left the site. Opinions and comments used to be reinforced by reptutable publications. Partly as a result of this policy many online publications that people used to link to in their twitter posts have seen a big drop in traffic.
The Death of Google
The rise of AI is another threat to the stablility of online ecosystem. The death of Google has been predicted for many years now (at least since 2018). Google dominates internet search results so much that for many people it is the internet. These days, however, your Google search is likely to be swamped in link-farms, clickbait, long-form articles with thousands of words that ultimately say nothing, those weird ads about cars/fridges/hots tubs being “practically given away”. In fact, tons and tons of ads.
AI Overviews
In order to try and weed out some of the spammy stuff, Google recently introduced something called AI Overviews. maybe you have noticed it. Maybe not. The tech company unleashed a makeover of its search engine in mid-May that frequently provides AI-generated summaries on top of search results – it used to use Wikipedia for its summary with a list of links below. That was uncontroversial.
Google’s new AI Overviews saves you the effort of clicking on links by using generative AI to provide summaries of the search results. So if you want to know how to make cheese stick on your pizza – it will save you the bother of clicking on a receipe site. Google want to be the search and answer engine. However, when someone asked Google to suggest what to do if cheese is not sticking to pizza, it claimed that its AI suggested adding non-toxic glue to it! This was based on an 11-year-old comment from a forum site called Reddit that has recently done a deal to allow AI to train on content.
AI can’t tell fact from fiction, or from jokes or sarcasm. This is causing big problems for AI – a response to a advise on depression included “Jump of the Golden Gate Bridge”!
AI’s Advice on identifying edible wild mushooms was worryingly vague, emphasising looking for those with solid white flesh — which many potentially deadly puffball mimics also have. It has been said that “pharmaceutical companies aren’t allowed to release drugs that are harmful. Nor are car companies. But so far, tech companies have largely been allowed to do what they like Google is now making “more than a dozen technical improvements” to its artificial intelligence systems! It is important that Google maintains user trust. Other browsers are available. I have started to use one called Brave, there is also DuckDuckGo, Firefox and Microsoft Edge.
Google Zero – what does it mean for the artist blogger?
Google’s summaries are designed to get people authoritative answers to the information they’re looking for as quickly as possible without having to click through a ranked list of website links. This desire for Google to become a search and answer engine is called “Google Zero” by Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of the Verge Magazine.; when Google Search simply stops sending traffic outside of its search engine to third-party websites. That possibly means my website, or your blog. Independent review sites have been feeling the effects of the changes.
There’s a review website called House Fresh, who review air purifiers that they have personally tested (instead of recycling PR puff from the manufacturers). Since 2023, they have seen their reviews ripped off by bigger websites and web traffic to their own site decimated. The teething problems of Google Overview may see it being ditched by Google. They have a track record of ditching apps that were’t immediately successful – you can read a long list of them here. Remember Google Street View? Gone. Google Hangout? Not Really. Google My Business? Yes. That’s gone too.
What to do?
So whilst Google Overview maybe gone very soon, AI wont be going anywhere soon. Too much money has been spent on it. The big tech companies are desperate to keep ahead in the innovation race. They are also desperate for web-domination, regardless of the collateral damage. Yes, that maybe your amazing following on Youtube, Facebook, TikTok that gradually loses traction.
Artists may follow the latest advice to make reels, or stories (how many daft videos on Instagram reels have I seen of an artist turning around to “reveal” their latest work) and it may work for a while. All these innovations are designed to please the “algorithim”. Not the audience. Certainly not the artist. The goal posts keep moving. Once it was stories we had to make, then reels. What next? It’s exhausting. It’s a bottomless pit that sucks in a lot of your creative energy. I am an artist and I want to paint. Not perform.
The moral of the story is don’t build your house on someone else’s land. I have known this for sometime. Several years ago, Facebook unexpectedly deleted my Emma Cownie Artist page without warning. I set up a new one (two actually, one also to link to my Instagram account) but the follower numbers have never come close to the numbers or engagement of the original page. The waters closed in pretty easily.
I redoubled my efforts with my own website (with this blog) and a mailing list and my website numbers and views have steadily grown. You have to build an audience.
I looked at a blog I wrote in 2019 when I first started my mailing list and most of the suggestions I included (but not necessarily followed) still look good to me. There is a lot of cross over with my blog on this website but its not identical.
I write high-quality, carefully researched content. I write about my new work, sales and the inspiration behind my paintings i.e. the local history of the the places I paint and the process of painting – including technical stuff to do with colour, composition.
I write about the process of creativity.
I also write about the inspiration provided by other artists. I know its a cliche but I am on a “journey” but I am keen to explain what is informing that journey. Why I paint in a certain way and not another? It’s vital to keep supporters/fans engaged to maintain their relationship with you and your business. It’s all about adding value to their lives.
Apocalypse Now?
Not necessarily. So it seems that the best advice is don’t panic. Keep on keeping on and build those ladders over the walls in the walled gardens into your own garden!
The Sperrins or Sperrin Mountains (Irish: Sliabh Speirín) are a mountain range in Northern Ireland. The name Sperrin derives from “Na Speiríní ” meaning “Spurs of Rock” and it is the rocks of the Sperrins and the rolling geography of the area that form the foundation of this distinct landscape. The mountain range, stretching 40 miles along the border of counties Tyrone and Derry, is the largest in Ireland. There are 10 summits above 500 metres with the highest of the range, Sawel Mountain, peaking at 678m (2,224ft).
The landscape is mostly moorland and blanket bog. The Sperrins were designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in 1968. It’s a sparse rolling landscape. These peaks have been smoothed out by glaciers thousands of years ago. Populated by sheep, bog grass (Eriophorum angustifolium) and farmhouse, old and new.
Some old farm buildings have long-been abandoned by people but are still used for farm equipment and shelter for sheep. So long as there is a tin roof, the walls will last years and years.
I love the sharp oranges of those tin roofs and I will return to them again and again for inspiration. Broadly speaking, in terms of composition I am looking for three dominant colours; green grass/sky and orange tin roofs. You can see how I simplify these main colours in the painting below.
Drone photography has become widespread in our lives. I remember clearly first seeing drone shots of different American cities in episodes of CSI. They were tracking shots of skyscrapper from directly above. As if you were a bird, flying directly above. They were fascinating. Funny, I cant find a clip to illustrate online now. These days they are used in local and national news and documentaries so frequently I dont think we even register that they are drone shots. They have become part of everyday our visual language.
Recently, I have started to explore the use of drone footage (shot by my husband) to extend the possiblilties of compositions I can paint from. So often, I have thought: “If only I was 20 foot high, I’d get a great shot”. So now I can see from 20 foot above, or round the otherside.
I know that many people think that “real” art is plein air sketching, live and I would need to be in a hot airballon to get these views. I admire people who can do this. I can’t. I am not a plein air painter. I am too much of a control freak. I work slowly in the comfort of my studio with all my paints within arms’ reach, exactly where I want them.
This is the first rainbow I have painted. I was pretty nervous about doing it as rainbows are so beautiful and etheral. They are also fleeting. I am reasonably happy with the result although I would be happier if it was more transulent. If I painted another one I would use more acrylic medium to get a more see through effect.
Rainbow over a Sperrins Farm_Emma Cownie
I can also use drone footage and photography if collectors want a commissioned work with drones offering a novel view of their favourite places! It certainly has helped me become more creative with compositions and has benefitted my work greatly.
The robots are coming for our Art. Artists are losing their ability to make a living and we will all be poorer financially and creatively for it. I have been trying to ignore Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Art. Don’t get me wrong. In its place, AI can be very useful. I am aware that as I mistype this text, my computer is offering up corrections. That’s an example of AI. The human element, however, is vital to decide whether to accept the suggested changes or not.
So What’s the Problem?
The type of AI I am concerned with here is something called Generative AI. It is based on deep-learning models that can generate high-quality text, images, and other content based on data (which can be text, numbers and or images) they were “trained” on. The supposed promise of generative AI is that it will generate the image in your imagination if you can describe it. Although, it may take a few goes to find a version that you like.
The thing is that I don’t like it. It doesn’t matter if they are AI “paintings”, illustrations, cartoons or photographs. I find them a bit unnatural and creepy. Many people describe these images as soulless.
An example of AI Landscape Design
One of the joys of being an artist is creating something from nothing. Well, not nothing exactly but being inspired by an idea, a view or a scene and drawing, painting or photographing to make something that did not exist before. The process is an act of creation, from noticing a particular colour or light, composing the layout of the work to the execution of the piece. The landscapes I paint mean something to me; they capture a place, a feeling or a time. I hope they mean a lot to the people who buy them too.
Process or Work in Progress – something AI doesn’t do.
The problem I have with AI generated Art is that it is automated Art. It has no meaning. Work generated by AI isn’t novel. It’s banal—or worst of all, in the art world—derivative.
I know, someone will say: “Good Artists Copy: Great Artists Steal”. I am not sure who said this first. A lot of people are credited with saying it including Pablo Picasso, Steve Jobs, T.S. Eliot and Igor Stravinsky.The difference is that those artists were inspired by what had gone before and gave it their own interpretation. Picasso’s later work only makes sense in the context of theAfrican sculptures that inspired him. Picasso, however, was a very skilled draughtsman and supremely confident painter and you can see from the images below that he was not merely copying the sculptures but had imbibed, digested and reformulated their essence in his own way.
These AI generated images (above ), however, are pale imitations and are quite “dead” in comparison to Picasso’s work. They come from a site called artvy.ai which specialises in generating art in the style of named artists. They include a disclaimer that their images are meant to “provide inspiration” and not be “replicas of the artists’ work”. This is significant as the AI Art companies say this to avoid being sued for copyright infringement. These images also miss the physicality of real world art – the actual texture of the paint and the surfaces. An AI version of Jackson Pollock or Claude Monet just doesn’t cut it for me; without the texture of the paint they have had their spirit removed.
Some commentators see this use of others’ work as inspiration for new work by humans as broadly analogous to what AI art does. Yes, there are artists who use AI art in their own creations as a means or tool to create meaning. American artistEric Millikin is one such artist, he uses AI in an interesting and genuine creative manner as one of many tools. That’s different. Whether he owns the copyright to this work, however, is a grey area. People who create work using AI do not own the copyright. Most jurisdictions, includingSpain andGermany, state that only works created by a human can be protected bycopyright.
The problem is that AI Art is getting better and they are using living artists’ work to improve. In doing this, they are killing off thousands of jobs, such as illustrators, cartoonists and designers. AI companies are not going to compensate those people. It will also put young people off from going to art school. Artists will have to give up Art as they can’t make a living at it. Why bother spending years honing your skills and unique style if AI can do it better and faster? Why bother taking 10-20 years learning colour theory and anatomy if AI is just going to rip off your work in seconds?
Jon Stewart – a bit sweary but very funny take on AI
This is because AI needs real artwork images to “train” on/with. This is known as scraping. Generative AI has only been around for 2 years and already it has gobbled up most of the internet. Last year alist of 16,000 artists whose work had allegedly been scrapped by AI company Midjourney was leaked by John Lam Art.
Screenshot from X.com
You can read this listhere. It includes artists such as Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, Bridget Riley, Damien Hirst, Rachel Whiteread, Tracey Emin, David Hockney and Anish Kapoor.
Interestingly, Hollywood writers also realised that AI was a profound threat to their livelihoods. Last year they organised a strike that lasted 146 days. They demanded that the studios not use AI to generate “original” scripts. In September, they won. News and Tech companies have also ramped up action against AI scrapping. Last summer, Twitter (now X.com) banned AI from scrapping tweets on its site. Nearly 90 percent of top news outlets like “The New York Times”, “The Guardian” and the BBC also block AI data collection bots from OpenAI and others. Big companies like Getty Images are alsosuing image-generating AI for scraping their data without permission.
Individual visual artists are not doing so well. In Japan the battle is already lost. AI companies can use “whatever they want” for AI training “regardless of whether it is for non-profit or commercial purposes, whether it is an act other than reproduction, or whether it is content obtained from illegal sites or otherwise.” This position led to Japan being called a “machine learning paradise.”
In the USA the artists are fighting back. That list of 16,000 artists that John Lam leaked came to 24 pages when printed out. It forms Exhibit J in a class action brought by10 American artists in California against Midjourney, Stability AI, Runway AI and DeviantArt for copyright infringement.
Unfortunately, the Federal US judge hearing the case, inlate October 2023, sided with the AI companies against the 10 artists. The judge made a distinction between works that are copyrighted and works that are not. This is despite the fact that the U.S. Copyright Office considers a copyright to exist “from the moment the work is created,”. However, the agency notes that copyrights have to beregisteredworks to bring a lawsuit for alleged infringement in the USA.
The fight is not over yet. However, the judge invited the plaintiffs to refile an amended claim,which they did in late November 2023, with some of the original plaintiffs dropping out and new ones taking their place and adding to the class, including other visual artists and photographers. The artists argue that the AI companies, by scraping the artworks and using them to train AI to produce new, highly similar works, is infringing their copyright.
Close up of X.com screenshot
The companies’ new counterargument claim they do not replicate the artists’ original work exactly. The arguments are quite lengthy and you can read about them in more detail here.
It doesn’t have to be this way, some companies such as Adobe, Shutterstock and iStock are using AI Art ethicially without infringing artist’s copyright. As AI generated Art cannot be copyrighted that means that big corporations like MacDonalds, Nike, Disney won’t ever want to use it for logos and merchandising as they will not be able to sue anyone for copyright infringement. So it many end up as regarded as little more than very fancy clip Art. They will have destroyed thousands of creative jobs for what?
These companies wont be using AI Art anytime soon
So how do we fight the Rising Tide of AI?
There are a number practical but steps you can take:- Don’t post your work online. That’s a tough one if you are hoping customers will find your work online. Karla Ortiz, one of the 10 artists in the California lawsuit against AI companies, did that at one point.
If you do publish images of your work you can watermark your works – yes, if you apply heavy watermarking, posting such a picture defies the purpose of the publication itself. Light watermarking will not prevent your work from being used by an AI.
Make sure that your pictures are posted on-line in a lower quality. Again that’s a tough one if you are hoping to sell online. Also you can publish copyright notices on your website
Use incorrect tagging, so robots will not consider your artwork as proper for image generation. For example instead of #modernartpainting you use #happycowsonameadow
Some AI companies provide ways to opt images out of being used in training data. You can visit https://haveibeentrained.com/ and block your website from being crawled by AI bots (go to https://haveibeentrained.com/domains and add your domain) You can also check if your image was trained on by some biggest image-generating AIs.Of course, your work is protected only if people who manage AIs training engines opt-in to respect your opt-out.
Finally you can do what is called “poisoning the well”. Researchers at the University of Chicago have created cloaking tools for artists to add to images they upload to the internet that is intended to poison the AI database. These are called Glaze and Nightshade, they are free to download and can interfere with AI models directly. It is recommended that artists use Glaze first and then Nightshade on their work. These tools mess up training data in ways that could cause serious damage to image-generating AI models but are not obviously visible to human eyes, they are time-consuming though. I downloaded the program but my PC didnt have enough memory/RAM to run it. I am waiting to get an account so I can do it online on their web version.
Or possibly, you do nothing and hope the AI storm passes you by. Afterall people who buy paintings in real life will probably not suddenly put AI art on the wall. It doesn’t have the same kudos. This “Industrialised Art” may well be acessible but it will have little value. AI Art may be cheap, quick and easy to make but it’s ultimately bad for you, like fast food. It’s poor quality as it lacks emotion. Ultimately, it has little long term value, except as one of many tools used by human artists as part as a process. Process is everything.
Fanad is a finger of land that lies between Lough Swilly and Mulroy Bay on the north coast of County Donegal, Ireland. It is not that easy to get to and the the survival of the Irish language is testiment that relative isolation.
Lambing season at Fanad Head (Donegal) SOLD
Fanad Lighhouse (Donegal). Is one of the 12 Great lighthouses of Ireland. It was built in 1886 at Fanad Head (although the station was originally established in 1817). The lighthouse, or more acrrately, the harbour light, marks the entrance into Lough Swilly which forms a natural harbour.
Fanad Lighthouse (Donegal) SOLD
I have painted this isolated structure several times before. I have always enjoyed painting the northernly light on Fanad. I have only have painted it in acrylics. That’s not a delibertae choice, more one of circumstance because at times I have had limited space, and I dont want to use oil paints with kittens close at hand.
Over to Fanad Lighthouse (Donegal) _Emma Cownie SOLD
I think acrylics suit the airiness of the subject matter. After a couple of years working out how to use them, I have settled on a technique of light layers of paint that allow the underlying colour to show through. This can give a transulent quality to the colour. This is in contrast to the relatively flat areas of colous I use for the larger areas of colour such as sky or the sea.
My latest painting was an experiment in composition. We used an image from a drone shot done by my artist husband, Seamas (James Henry Johnson).
In this piece, I wanted to create a sense of space from the mountains of the Inishowen Peninsula in the distance. The distant mountains were layered with bluish white until I got the right impression of distance.
I often find myself looking at the tiny Fanad lighthouse far off in the distance when I am at Lisfannon on the Inishowen Penisula. There is a sign comemorating a famous Atlantic storm that happened in 1748. this storm threatened to sink The Greyhound, the ship of one John Newton, a slave trader. John was so frightened that he called out to God for mercy. This moment marked a profound spiritual conversion, and many years later he wrote the words for the hymn “Amazing Grace” one of my favourite hymns, and to also campaign for the abolition of slavery.
There is some confusion how many storms there were . One website claims the terrible tempset happened far away out in the Atlantic because it took John Newton another four weeks after his conversion to sail into Lough Swilly and arrive at Derry/Londonderry. The Amazing Grace.ie site however, makes it clear a second storm happened in Lough swilly itself as it quotes John’s journal ” We saw the island of Tory and the next day anchored in Lough Swilly in Ireland. This was the 8th day of April, just four weeks after the damage we sustained from the sea. When we came into this port, our very last victuals was boiling in the pot; and before we had been there two hours, the wind began to blow with great violence. If we had continued at sea that night in our shattered condition, we must have gone to the bottom. About this time I began to know that there is a God that hears and answers prayer.” It’s got to be said, that John Newton really took his time putting his evangelical beliefs into action because he went back to being a slave trader for another five years before he eventually retired and became a minister in 1757!
The heaving sea at the foot of the massive lighthouse rock intrigued me. The Atlantic Ocean has such a bulk and stregth, even on a relatively fine day, I am not surprised that John Newton was terrified by its strength far away from the Donegal coast. I wondered about the long and difficult process of building this structure all those years ago in a remote location. Yet, this lighthouse has stood the test of time and proudly marks the entrance to Lough Swilly and can be seen from inland and further along the coast.
While many of you are baking in England and dealing with a hosepipe ban, in Donegal it’s cloudy with occasional showers. I thought I would share you my recent newletter. They have ended up being quarterly. It depends of how much news I have and how busy I have been. I always make it strong on the visuals and light on the words! I also make the typeface large for reading on smart phones!
