#cross-hatching

Advent Calendar 2025 day 18: Winter Bakery Run

Second time ever drawing Medic, and I feel like my style struggles with the tf2 style, but I do like the minimalistic look of the composition, the negative space gives it a cold morning walk feeling. So I succeeded in the vibe I was going for more than satisfaction with my ability to draw my beloved Medic.

These days, drawing a lot puts a strain on my hand, but since changing to a more looser, sketchy ink style--looking more like my pencil sketching--feels a lot more natural to me. I don't grip my pen as hard, I feel looser, and the drawings don't feel as stiff as they were a few years ago. I think it fits my cross-hatching style better too, and I'm looking forward to feeling more confident in it going forward.

When I noticed, I felt really ticked. Why would a creative course made to let others express themselves and learn more about making art have AI slop?

I confronted my teacher about it and some of my anger kinda faded. Her explanation was that nowadays it was hard to find digital coloring pages that weren’t AI generated, and she supported my rebelling and told me to keep at it.

I didn’t understand at first, and told my dad about it in the car once I finished my piece. He reminded me (while also trying to assure me that he didn’t support AI either, but needed me to calm down and understand;) that art isn’t appreciated enough in society and it takes skill, time, and money to bring something to life only for an artist to barely make a living off of it, so on the off chance that someone may buy it, it’s mostly gonna be pricey. Therefore original coloring pages, books and overall artwork online cost money to use, and that teachers would need to pay for it. However there lies the free solution open to them, aka, AI generated images.

Buying original coloring pages all the time would reduce the already limited budget my art teacher has (for all I know, she maybe even buys art supplies out of her own pocket.) What I failed to understand was that she meant it was hard to find coloring pages that were for free and not AI generated.

It was never my art teachers fault in the first place, it was due to the fact that art is rarely bought as it isn’t considered ‘important’ in this society & several creators around the world need to pay bills and stay alive by pricing their art and selling it, while AI has been slowly forcing its disproportionate, barely developed assistance into our everyday lives as people continue to depend on it if rather than use it as a helping/learning tool. It’s a tough battle between artists and AI.

So I plan to start bringing my own, self made coloring pages for her to use.

Because I would rather spend hours making free coloring pages for my class instead of let AI slide its soulless, stealing fingers into my art curriculum.

“The kinds of cross-hatching in ordinary use.” Cyclopedia of drawing. 1905.

Mark A. Nelson - An Octo-Monster.