As Above, So Beside

Diatoms Are Forever

O.K. no, they are not forever. But the artwork? It could last forever. Back in Victorian times, there were a number of artists competing for the best arrangement & because of this, the “secrets” of their art were taken to the grave. A current artist named Klaus Kemp is currently doing diatom art & had to be self-taught because of this. Victorians were wild.

The reason I did this is a play a game set in Victorian times & recently got an NPC companion that is a diatomist. So, I wanted to find out what it was (this is second place to my favourite weird Victorian thing... the first place is still spirit signatures) & what kinds of patterns you could pull off. Are these accurate? Not entirely, but a couple look similar to what diatomist’s actually make. 

Also, being that the game I play has... specific weirdness that allows for some breaking of physics, I have a diatom window in my suites. Millions of diatoms & like the people who repaint the Golden Gate Bridge over & over, my diatomist is giddy to continually make a living piece of art that people HAVE to look at to get in my home.

Once Upon A Dream

Made with version 3, these were me trying to create a friends book character. The ones that got close are elsewhere, these are mistakes. But three of them lead to another friend creating two new OC’s for her DnD game. I’d share her illustrations made using the imagery from some of these, but the illustrations are hers to share on her blog.

Florence by The Machine

A Small Murmuration Outside

Delicate Books with Floral Spines

I saw someone post a beautiful photo of old books. They said something along the lines of “Acquired a collection of beautiful vintage books. Delicate books with floral spines.” It made me delighted. So, I tried to recreate the idea & the feeling with books I’d love to find one day but, as far as I know, do not exist. I was giddy when I finally got them lined up like proper books (though I still have a few very MC Escher looking outputs that are breaking some laws of physics & new could get the books turned or compacted).

The Brightling Beetles Do Halloween

Walter dressed as a homicidal maniac. They look just like everyone else. (Except Walter looks like a homicidal maniac, but shhh, don’t tell him).

I do not remember if I posted the original “fuzzy bugs” where I accidentally set the style at 60k. One of the originals, named Walter, now appears in a forthcoming book by Eliza MacArthur. Walter is very excited about this.

Mistakes were made, but not corrected.

Sink Their Bones, Davy Jones

Because it’s not spooky season if there aren’t any eldritch horrors or phobias. 

(The words, “Sink Their Bones, Davy Jones” used to be on a very very old t-shirt I had from an old dive shop. It was made to look like a flash tattoo with an anchor. I loved that shirt. These are more towards drowning at sea, creepy deepsea stuff, & the colour verdigris because what a neat word.)

BONUS tiles:

Spooky season ladies!

I made these by accident trying to make something else. I have never been able to recreate the effect because the prompt is.... well the only thing that makes them that way is the word “halloween” in the prompt. Otherwise, I was asking it to make a romance novel book cover, so...

But also, one spooky lil raven because I DID do that on purpose & I love him. His name is Frank.

Welcome Home Persephone!

Recently, MidJourney made the ability to create seamless tiles. So, of course, I made Halloween ones IMMEDIATELY. But, today I made a couple pomegranates & flowers. For our Queen of the Dead & Goddess of Spring. Flowers to tide us over until she brings more. 

Happy Mabon!

Part 2! Halloween Boo-gah-BOO!

What was I going to do? Not post more when someone asked? I’m not that mean.

BONUS!

The fools. They have allowed us to make seamless background tiles. 

Am I good at it? No. Did I make like 700 spooky Halloween tiles? Possibly. Feel free to use any of these for your Halloween weirdness (they all seem to be seamless from what I can see, if they aren’t... well, they are free for you to use so shush).

Bonus:

You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here.

Desiderata by Max Ehrmann

I asked the AI what it thought part of one of my (& many others) favourite poems looked like. Each one allowed the bot more & more freedom with style.

Top (green) is with a lot of style freedom, but no creative tag (so it tried to be slightly more literal. The two trees are the same, with slightly less style freedoms. The rainbow light one is with creative on & a quite high style. 

The last two? One is as high as the style can go (meaning it really didn’t care what most of my input was. It chose what it liked & made an image.) & the second? Same everything, but a lower style, though still higher than default.

I know a lot of people have opinions on AI art, which is fine. Mine is mostly that it allows me to MAKE art I don’t viciously judge myself on. That I don’t feel like a failure at. But mostly, it lets me make things I find beautiful for myself. A few things I’ve made, someone said I should make as prints to sell, & perhaps, one day I will do that. It will be with the full information of how it was made & the basic prompts (go forth & create, I say). 

I’ve just passed 10,000 images made. So, no. They are not all on my profile at MidJourney. Some being horrible failures, others violating the TOS (it’s O.K. as long as you remove them the minute you notice; as in you were not trying to produce gore or nudity, but accidentally did [some examples it has seen of classical art are nudes, so it gets confused]. Granted, I once made a really amazing ass on accident... art, that was. But I X’ed out when I noticed.), & a few being grids of blobby colours. No sense in keeping those. :(

A Geode That Holds a Universe, created by MidJourney & me… but I’m gonna be really clear, this was one of my first tries, so it is “my creation” in so much as wanting a specific thing & rerolling till it looked like a vague start to what I wanted!

“Oh, you wanted a KLIMT? I thought you said, “cha cha real smooth.” Was that... is that not what we wanted here?”

AI, I see you & I know what the fuck you’re doing... put it back.

Also, I am sure you are thinking, “If you hate why do you have so many?” Because I was dying of laughter just talking to the AI like “Sir, what do you think WAS happening in the original image? It was a ‘portrait of a victorian couple, dancing’ & I am sorry but is... is that one biting the other? Do you think they are vampires?!?”

It just kept getting weirder so I kept letting it “remaster” the original AI art I made. I was dying by the time I made myself stop.