Drew Draws Pinups!

COMPLETE - Paco: No AI!

Added 2024-08-28 23:52:51 +0000 UTC

Happy Wednesday, my lil' paints and pigments!

Continuing on the trend of "things I wanted to have ready for the Art Night Market" (details at the bottom of the post), we have the inaugural use of my cute artist character Paco. Inspired by the aesthetics of Mario Paint and that colorful "art class" kinda feel, Paco is a character I'd love to use more in the future.

I'm strictly in the camp of "no AI-derived imagery" as it exists now. The ethics of it are not in a place where I'm comfortable using it or endorsing it and it's clearly actively doing a lot of harm to myself and basically all other working artists. The technology is growing faster than legislation can keep up with, and it's poised to do a lot of damage to the creative space as we know it. It's a disheartening thing we're witnessing right now.

You can see the rough version here:

And the cleaner sketch here:

You'll notice I initially had it as "NO AI" with the "NO" crossed out and it wasn't until right at the end of the process that I realized...hey, that sure could be construed as me being pro-AI. So I changed that obviously, haha. Silly human brain stuff.

Also changed up the expression a bit at the end. I know I have my characters winking a lot but this seemed like a fun place to utilize it. Kind of a little "fuck you" to AI culture, I think.

I hope you like the piece! It'll be available as a print (I'm thinking 5x7 inches?) this Saturday at the Art Night Market in Burbank, but I'll have this and the other new items available on my etsy shop next week if you can't make it.

This piece was sketched in Procreate, and inked and colored in Adobe Illustrator.

Thank you!

Drew