Switched from stable diffusion to drawing by hand for a month and it changed my mind about AI art

I used to defend AI art hard because I can't draw to save my life and thought it was a fair tool. But I tried learning basic pencil sketching for 30 days after my niece asked me to draw with her. After that month I saw how much time and skill real artists put in. My sketches looked like garbage but I felt proud of them. Now I still use AI for fun but I get why artists get mad when people call it 'real art'. Has anyone else actually tried making art by hand after using AI and felt different about it?

3 comments

3 Comments

quinn1611d ago

My niece is seven and she drew me a picture of a cat that looked more like a potato with whiskers, but she was so proud of it she hung it on the fridge. That's the thing about making something yourself - the value isn't just in how good it looks, it's in the work you put in. I spent three hours on a sketch of a coffee cup and it still looked like a wobbly blob, but I understood for the first time why artists get attached to their work. You type a prompt and get a perfect image in ten seconds, but you didn't fight with the paper or figure out why the shading doesn't work. The final result might be stunning, but it's hollow compared to something you actually built with your own hands, even if it's ugly.

olivermason1d ago

But isn't the whole POINT of an AI that it lets people who DON'T have the time or talent to draw still EXPRESS visual ideas they couldn't otherwise? Feeling proud of a bad sketch doesn't make it more valuable than a stunning AI image if the FINAL RESULT is what matters.

nancy_king291d ago

@quinn161 nailed it with the pride aspect. The missing piece here is that making art by hand teaches you to value the process over the product, and once you experience that, it changes how you see everything including AI images. Type in a prompt and get a perfect result instantly, but you miss out on the struggle that makes the ugly sketch feel like a real achievement.

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