A traditional artist told me my AI art was 'soulless' and it actually made me rethink my process

I was in a local art show in Portland last month, just showing some pieces I made using Midjourney and some manual edits in Photoshop. An older painter walked by, looked at my work for maybe 5 seconds, and said it was just "pretty patterns with zero intent behind them." At first I was really ticked off, but the more I thought about it the more I realized she had a point. I was just typing prompts and picking the coolest looking output without thinking about why I was making it. So I started doing sketches first on paper, then using those as the base for my AI generations instead of just random prompts. It takes way longer now but the results feel more like MY art, you know? Has anyone else gotten feedback that made them change their whole workflow like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

nora_dixon1mo ago

Oh man, I gotta say I was totally in the "AI art is real art, end of story" camp for a long time. But hearing you describe that painter's comment about "zero intent" really hit me, because I had a similar moment a few months back. A friend asked me why I made a certain piece and I realized I couldn't actually explain it, I just liked how the colors looked together. So I started keeping a little sketchbook and writing down a sentence about what I wanted each piece to say before I even opened the AI tool. It sounds dumb but now I can look at my gallery and actually see a thread running through everything, like a story instead of just random pretty pictures.

paigep201mo ago

Ah man, I was definitely one of those people who got defensive whenever someone said AI art wasn't "real." I used to think they were just gatekeeping and didn't get the technology. But that story about the painter calling it "zero intent" really got me thinking. I went back and looked at my own gallery and honestly, it was just a mess of random cool dragons and neon cityscapes that didn't mean anything to me. I had this one piece that was a mountain with pink clouds and I couldn't tell you why I made it other than it looked sick. So yeah, I started doing what you did, sketching out a simple shape or idea first on paper and then feeding that into the AI. It feels way more personal now even if it takes twice as long to finish anything.