kelsey rodriguez

February is right around the corner, which means it’s soon time for Funguary 2023! the drawing event where we draw a bunch of mushroom based characters during the month of feb.

Here’s how it works:

Each week of the month will have a theme with seven different prompts, draw something mushroom related within that theme in order to join. The themes are Weird, Mystical, Malicious and Friendly. You don’t have to complete all the prompts, just one mushroom per theme/week is plenty!

If you’re hardcore you can definitely try and finish all the prompts though ;). The challenge intensity is adjustable to what suits you. This is a chill event where the goal is to just have fun and vibe, and honor the fungi kingdom with some really cool art🍄

I invite you all to come draw mushrooms with me! Use the hashtag #Funguary when posting your creations. I’ll be posting some of the creations here, and I’ll also be hanging out in the hashtag and comment sections! Really hope y’all join and draw fungi with me🥰🍄🌿 See you all on the first of February, LETS GOOOO!!

There’s a protest going on against AI art over on artstation, so I feel like now is the time for me to make a statement on this issue! 

I wholeheartedly support the ongoing protest against AI art. Why? Because my artwork is included in the datasets used to train these image generators without my consent. I get zero compensation for the use of my art, even though these image generators cost money to use, and are a commercial product. 

Musicians are not being treated the same way. Stability has a music generator that only uses royalty free music in their dataset. Their words: “Because diffusion models are prone to memorization and overfitting, releasing a model trained on copyrighted data could potentially result in legal issues.” Why is the work of visual artists being treated differently?

Many have compared image generators to human artists seeking out inspiration. Those two are not the same. My art is literally being fed into these generators through the datasets, and spat back out of a program that has no inherent sense of what is respectful to artists. As long as my art is literally integrated into the system used to create the images, it is commercial use of my art without my consent.

Until there is an ethically sourced database that compensates artists for the use of their images, I am against AI art. I also think platforms should do everything they can to prevent scraping of their content for these databases. 

Alberto Ortega.

Visual nocturnes from Spanish-born, United States-based artist Alberto Ortega which are based on small scale sets built by hand in his studio.

Building his references in studio, Ortega is able to control every element of his work - Resulting in paintings that have a cinematic, pristine quality.

Emile Albert Gruppe (1896-1978) - Winter thaw

Oil on canvas. 30 x 36 inches, 76.2 x 91.4 cm.

Estimate: US$8,000-12,000.

screaming into pillows

oil on canvas

we can’t always be our most productive, but there’s a terrible trend of fandom folks feeling bad if they don’t have something new to post every few weeks

you’re still a creative person even if you aren’t creating something at a given time, for whatever reason

I've been working on a new painting the past couple days (and by that I mean fighting to the death with it) and am kinda stuck on the ugly intermediate stage right now. there's something great about the first loose stages of a painting though, when the canvas is still so ripe with possibilities and every brushstroke takes you in a new direction.

the reference photo is one I took when I lived in Alaska, and this painting process kinda feels like the grueling hike it took to reach this waterfall, snaking up a mountain and taking endless switchbacks that all look the same, and you aren't sure you're really getting anywhere at all until you can hear the falls in the distance and feel the mist on your face.