New Art: SFAU # 34

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If you are new to this series all the images are based on recent photos of me after basically being fed through a neural network (which can change age, gender, etc.) — the popular app FaceApp —  then edited and painted using various programs. None of the people actually exist, and thus they are like Self-portraits From Alternate Universes hence SFAU.

We’re down to the final three, though I can always add bonus images at any point after the series is complete. This elderly woman is the counterpart to the man in #33. She seems a bit more hospitable, perhaps, but I get the impression she has some strong views and I wouldn’t want to be subject to being judged by her, lest she judge me harshly. Her right eye is friendly, but the left is critical.

I was going for a traditional oil painting portrait look again here.

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Genesis

This digital painting and #33 are variations on #30:

#30 wasn’t based on a photo, but on an actual self-portrait digital painting I did nearly a decade ago, while living in China:

FaceApp likes some images and, in my experience, doesn’t like most others. I wouldn’t have thought a painting without much anatomical detail would have generated several other usable images, with a lot of tweaking, reworking, and repainting.

In the animation below you can see what the AI created, based on #30, and then what I did with it.

I’m not, or wasn’t until well into this series, much of a portrait painter. Rarely if ever did I attempt to paint hair or clothing, which is not to say it isn’t a wholly worthwhile enterprise. It’s just not really my thing, unless necessity requires it of me. Here, I invented the clothes and embellished the hair on the fly. You can see that I’ve changed virtually everything from the AI version, while still maintaining my collaboration with AI that is a part of every image in this series.

Speaking of portraiture, I did do a full portrait course online while working on this series, and parts of a few others. I’m also a veteran of about 5 life drawing classes in college, but they tended to be full body almost exclusively. If pressed I will admit that I think this series is a rather interesting take on the self-portrait, or portraits in general, for the 21st century.

The last two offerings are going to be a little different, and I’m planning to go out with a bit of a bang, so to speak. You’ll see.

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Details

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Here’s the full piece again.

And here’s the whole series so far in a slide-show.

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Or you can see them in a thumbnail gallery. Just click anywhere inside to go into the screen-show mode.

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And here’s a page with individual posts about individual additions, with details, process, and so on: Selfies From Alternate Universes.

Stay tuned if you are interested in this series. I’m planning on hammering out the next 4 in the next month to complete the series.

~ Ends

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And if you like the (experimental) sort of art that I do, and you don’t want me to have to quit or put it on a back-burner, please consider chipping in so I can keep working until I drop. Through Patreon, you can give $1 (or more) per month to help keep me going (y’know, so I don’t have to put art back on the back-burner while I slog away at a full-time job). Ah, if only I could amass a few hundred dollars per month this way, I could focus entirely on my art and writing. See how it works here.

Or go directly to my account.

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Or you can make a small, one time donation to help me keep on making art and blogging (and restore my faith in humanity simultaneously).