The problem with participating in any race to the bottom is that you end up there.

Complex, detailed work takes time, attention, energy and labour. When we see something that is complex, we tend to be able to recognise it as such, even if we know nothing about it. Aeroplanes, computers, grand buildings are all amazing feats of human ingenuity even though most of us don’t have a clue about how these things actually work. We admire the person or people who spent all that time, effort, attention and money on making such a complex thing.

Simplicity, on the other hand, also takes time, attention, energy and labour. But, the effort, restraint, and experience required to know how to reduce, declutter, and clarify is often greater than that required to add, enhance, and complicate. Not always, but quite often. A master-crafted knife, air-conditioning you don’t think about unless it’s broken or simple on/off light switch. When a sauce is reduced, there is less of it, but the flavours are intensified.

I enjoy complexity, but I love simplicity.

Did you see that video with the cat doing the thing with the food? Or how about that waterskier who crash landed? Or what about that snow monkey in Japan who stole the phone and took it in the thermal spring with them? Or how about the life hack for growing your own cactus? Or that interview where someone got owned?

The online world is increasingly saturated with bite-sized nuggets of attention-grabbing triviality. And if that trough is the basis for our intellectual diet, it doesn’t seem to bode well for the things I value most – deep thought, detailed work, and nuance.

So, I’ve stopped feeding from the trough and, I have to say, it’s taken a while, but my brain is changing back: my attention is more focussed, I can read longer, think more deeply, and most importantly, the art I’m making is feeling more and more like me. No regrets.

In agriculture, almost everyone knows that monocultures are bad (the Potato Famine is a prime example, although there are many others). Diversity improves the resilience of crops – it makes them less susceptible to a single point of failure (like a single insect or bacteria that could wipe out a monoculture). We don’t seem to see ourselves as a bunch of potatoes, though, do we?

And yet, wouldn’t our individual illustration practices be more resilient if we could do more than one style or work in more than one medium? Most illustrators I know ‘diversify’ their income through selling products (brushpacks or art prints), teach workshops or do school talks/visits. Their income is more resilient because of it.

So, wouldn’t our collective practise be stronger if we had more illustrators doing different types of work within it – more ‘competition’ – including generative AI? More examples of what a person doesn’t want so when they come across someone like you they see that you’re perfect for the job?

Imagine a world where all illustrators produced all the same stuff? It would become so easy to mimic a computer could do it. A lack of diversity makes illustrators and potatoes vulnerable. Why would we want to stop it?

In a world where technology companies are here to ‘generate content’ on behalf of a human so that we perceive life to be more convenient and they make more money, making something yourself, from scratch, is an act of defiance.

Humans do more than ‘generate content’… we compose music, we invent new ways to see the world, we write to build bridges of empathy and connection between us. If we begin to believe that all we do is ‘generate content’ as ‘content creators’, we’ve already lost.

Social media needs the world watching. Success for social media platforms is a higher engagement rate, higher retention rate, more visits, more refreshes, longer sessions. And, as it optimises for this (to the benefit shareholders and investors in these platforms), the content we create, as creators, changes.

We are becoming complicit in addiction. Like a rodent that gets a treat if it presses the right button, platforms ‘influence the influencers’ to create content that brings them more likes, more views, more shares. In reality, what it’s doing is training us to create stuff from which people cannot look away – to keep others scrolling and not creating. Creators learn how to create ‘stories’ or ‘reels’ that hook people – that tap into a part of our brains that don’t let us look away. An exercise in perpetual micro-suspense. A still image is no longer enough.

And whilst these platform may parade as ‘harmless modern-day marketing’ or ‘just the way it is now’, I can’t help but wonder what it’s really doing to our brains; how our dopamine response is being toyed with – slowly desensitising us so that we learn to crave and create ‘content’ and life experiences that amplifies the response further; not just in the digital world, but in the real world to. A world where quiet repetition, introspection, and reflection – those things that true art needs most – are pushed aside by the junkie-type habit we’re pushing on ourselves.

I don’t know where it goes, but I won’t be watching. I’ll be making.

I used to tell people that I was a software designer with a ‘second job’ as an illustrator; ‘software designer by day, illustrator by night.’ I used to think that the illustration work was a creative and artistic salve for the days spent toiling on computers – a way to reset my mental health and to build up my energy for when it was time to return to work on Monday.

Now I tell people I’m an artist who needs a second job as a software designer so I can support myself and my art practice. Putting the art practice first is a profound shift in identity I never saw coming. But that’s the thing with practicing art – it helps you learn about who you really are and what you really care about. It turns out that the market doesn’t pay for things I care about, but I’ll make them anyway.

Good commercial kitchens run like well-oiled machines and some of that comes down to the french term, “Mis en place” or “putting in place”. The idea that before one cooks, the kitchen utensils and ingredients should be organised in a way that makes the cooking process efficient and allows the chef to do their best work. At the end of a dinner service, part of the ‘cleaning’ process is the preparation for tomorrow – putting it all back in its place.

Good art studios are like good commercial kitchens; there is almost no bigger barrier to starting a process of creation for me than misplacing the pencils, the paper, the paints, the erasers which I use to make marks. The process of making is also far more stressful if, halfway through a watercolour wash, I can’t locate the towel I need to do some mopping up, or the right brush to finish the job in the moment.

There is no right way to organise this stuff of course, and I’m always evolving, but it’s a useful reminder – when the day is done, mis en place.

There is a subtle but distinct difference between the work created to sell something and the work created as art (which may or may not lead to payment). Understanding this difference is critical in helping artists flourish and to provide clarity for those who create images to sell something in a world where generative AI exists.

The fundamental problem we have when thinking about the ‘threat of AI on artists’ is that we are confusing someone who creates images for payment with someone who creates images for themselves (which may lead to payment, but not necessarily and, in most cases, for true art, never leads to payment).

I believe that the underlying cause of this confusion is the evolutionary way that commerce has needed to source images for the purposes of selling something.

Commercial-image making is not art

Before the advent of photography, brands and businesses needed to hire a person who could draw or paint if they wanted an image of someone or something (to use in advertising). Those people often but not always went to ‘art school’. They used traditional art materials like pencils, gouache, acrylics and watercolour to render objects and people so that whoever was paying them could sell stuff.

These commercial images and artefacts may have looked like art – after all, they were physical objects, often aesthetically pleasing in their own right, and rendered using traditional art materials. But, they were never art because the origin for the creation of these artefacts was a need from a company to create a competitive advantage for themselves in order to sell something and make a profit.

Soon enough, photographic technology came along and it was suddenly possible to ‘speed up’ the image-making process. A business owner no longer needed to pay someone to hand paint an image of their product, they could pay a photographer to take a photo of it. It was likely quicker, more accurate, and cheaper, especially as photographic technology became more easily available.

Photography didn’t kill every commercial image maker, of course, it just offered more choice to businesses – the question was a matter of style as well as budget and time. If I used photography to market my product, my ‘brand’ might also appear new and innovative because its advertising was using ‘new’ technology. If I used ‘traditional’ methods of creation (a human to paint or draw a picture of my product) my brand might also leverage that ‘tradition’ and appear wholesome and hand-crafted.

Either way, commercial image makers – whether they used cameras or traditional materials, never made art. But in the industry, we continue to call it ‘art’ e.g. ‘Final art’ is a common term for any visual artefact that is ‘approved’ and paid for by the client. There are roles called ‘finished artist’, ‘commercial artist’, ‘art director’ and so on.

In the modern age, there are still groups of people that create or render images for use in commerce. For simplicity, lets call them illustrators (people who use digital or non-digital tools to create images) and photographers (who use photographic technology to create images). These roles still exist for the same reasons as those who made images with traditional media – brands want a certain ‘style’, sometimes that’s photographic, sometimes it’s a particular illustrator’s style because it carries a feeling that the company or brand want to leverage for the feeling of their own product or campaign.

The fees that are earned by these commercial image makers vary wildly for a bunch of reasons. But, the artefacts that are created for this end are not ‘art’. We may call them ‘final art’ still, they may feel and look like art because they are a photograph or a canvas, or they are aesthetically pleasing, or they are used to convey emotions, but their origin lies in helping brands (businesses selling products and services, including picture books) solve a problem, for a defined audience or audiences, with specific commercials goals. That process is a design process.

So, if someone went to ‘art’ school, and got really good at making stuff with traditional artist materials (gouache, acrylic, ink, brushes, pens) or got really good at image-making with a camera or digital image-making software, it may seem logical to think of one’s self as a ‘commercial artist’. But, this term is an oxymoron because art cannot come from commerce. They are different things.

So, what’s art then?

To pretend that there is a single answer is a fool’s errand, as all of human history has shown. But, as a commercial image maker (illustrator) and an artist I have a few thoughts on how to differentiate art from commercial image making – if only so I can be clear about the role I’m playing at any given time.

Art is driven by an internal need not an external one

Commercial images are born from a reaction to a brief. “I need an image of my product that will increase revenue by 20%”. That brief is often supplied by a ‘client’ who also provides constraints – time, money, perhaps ‘style’ or intended formats and outputs. “I need 3 paintings of the Australian landscape to hang on the walls of my new restaurant to evoke feelings of the Australian bush,” or, in my case, “I need 24 illustrations for a picture book about Mother’s day in 12 weeks time”.

The final output in response to a brief may be something that looks like art – it’s a painting on canvas and hanging on a wall or some watercolour paintings. The process of making it looks like art – a painter using brushes, paint and an easel in a studio. But the need for those paintings came from someone other than the image maker themselves. It originated in commerce.

Art, as I’ve come to understand it from personal experience, is driven out of pure curiosity or need by the originator of the work. It’s a physical/external manifestation of a response to a question or questions and/or feelings experienced by the human who has the originating experience. Anecdotally, artists I know often say things like, “I just had to write this book for me because I was struggling with X and it was a way for me to process stuff.” Or, “I saw the piece of wood and, for some reason, was moved to carve it i this way, it spoke to me.” Or, “I just wanted to see if I could make a yellow and green painting that brought me pleasure.”

Art is made for the creator, first. It’s often but not always a way to process some feelings or solve some need that lives within the artist. In my personal experience, the ‘feeling’ of making art is very different from the feeling of making an image that comes from a commercial need. I am both an artist and a commercial image maker. They are very clearly separate.

My illustrations for picture books, mostly in physical watercolour and pencil, are often referred to as ‘artwork’. But the feeling I get when making something for myself is decidedly different from the one when I’m ‘rolling out a series of illustrations for a book’.

With art making, there is no feeling of ‘rolling out’ because the constraints and motivation are self-imposed and so the difficulty in producing the work is far greater – there is no deadline, cost, or end goal in mind (all the things that drive commerce and provide helpful constraints) by which I can make decisions against like there is creating illustrations for a picture book or commerce in general.

Art begins with an audience of one: the artist

With almost every commercially-driven image making brief comes a ‘target audience’. In picture books it’s often ‘kids aged 3-6’. If it’s a mural for a brewery its ‘males and females 18-40’. Again, this comes back to solving a need for someone else.

Because the origin of true art making is a self-generated curiosity or question, the only audience is the artist. In other words, does what I’m making satisfy that curiosity, help me process a life event, or give me a feeling I can get in no other way.

But, in my own experience, just because the artist solves a problem primarily for themselves, it does not mean that the resulting artefact won’t solve a problem for someone else. It’s just that it starts with themselves.

In fact, in many cases, the work does end up solving a problem for someone else; a viewer looks upon a work of art and is moved in some way – perhaps in the same way that the artist was searching to be moved themselves (”I didn’t realise I was feeling anxious but your art calmed me down”). Other times, the resulting artefact of an artistic act can create different feelings in the viewer than it did for the artist themselves.

This diversity of interpretation and reaction to the artistic artefact is in fact what separates it from the commercial image where, most of the time, what one is seeking is to evoke a ‘consistent’ reaction in the viewer. “Create a mural for my brewery for males and females aged 18-40 that evokes a feeling of happiness.” The image-maker can use their visual literacy and knowledge to meet that goal and if, once completed, the artwork has some people feeling happy but others feeling sad, anxious, angry, or depressed, the image is clearly unsuccessful.

The ‘success’ of a work of art is whether or not the artist has solved their problem or satisfied their curiosity. And yes, not all ‘finished’ pieces achieve that for the artist (and, as such, often the artist may try again, which is often a source of frustration for an artist, and the source of more work from which ‘artist’s themes’ emerge).

But, if that artistic artefact is publicly viewed/experienced in some way by others, it is not more or less successful if the reaction by those others is varied or consistent. To the artist, that reaction does not matter. This is why art is always ‘in the eye of the beholder’.

But what if someone buys my art? Does that make it a commercial image?

Commercial image making almost always has a budget – either requested by the artist as a ‘quote’ – “You will pay me $2500 for your mural request.” Or constrained by the client, “My budget for this work is $1000.” Even if there is no budget discussed up front, there’s always an upper limit in the purchaser’s mind because it’s about a return on investment, “I believe that if I pay $2500 for a mural for my beer garden, more customers will come and buy more drinks so I will make that money back by increased drinks sales in approximately 1 month.”

In commercial image making, compensation for the work is often but not always equated to time. E.g. my rate is $100/hour, this work will take 3 days, so therefore my fee will be $2100. Some commercial image makers work on a ‘value-based’ model, ‘this work will improve the profitability of your beer garden by 3x so I will charge you $7500 for it, no matter how long it takes.”

In contrast, I don’t know an artist who has ever priced an artistic artefact before they created it. And, if they had, I can’t see this any other way than an act of design and commerce, not art.

Most artists begin the art process without a clear vision of what will emerge at the end because the act begins with a question – uncertainty is part of the motivating force to begin the act in the first place, so putting a price on an unknown artefact becomes impossible.

But, people do buy art and artists do price their art for sale.

I’m not here to discuss how artists go about pricing their art but suffice to say it’s often a particularly personal choice. Some use the cost of materials, the size, the ‘strength’ of their work in their own eyes, their sentimentality of the work, the ‘average price people paid for my work last time’ i.e ‘the market rate’.

The reasons behind giving an artistic artefact a financial value (both as a buyer or a seller) are varied. But, even though money regularly changes hands in the ‘art market’, it does not add confusion to the separation between commercial image-making and art; the commercial conditions of image-making for commerce are set before the work begins, with art, if it happens, it happens after the completion of the artefact.

Where does this leave generative AI?

Recently, I’ve been reading articles in various media outlets, that “AI will end artists”, “AI is coming for artists”, “AI will replace artists”. But this is where our language limits our world.

Those who engage in commercial-image making are not engaging in art creation. They may also be artists if they also spend time in their lives creating artistic artefacts that are helping them satisfy a curiosity or answer a question that they put to themselves, with no audience or price in mind in the beginning; but not all commercial image makers do that.

In a marketplace where some brands and companies prioritise speed, a certain style, or are driven by budget constraints or return-on-investment goals, generative AI image creation will be a satisfactory solution to their problem and, under these conditions, some human commercial image makers may not be preferred. In many ways, that’s just an expression of the fundamental mechanics of market competition.

But artists? That space is completely and utterly human because it does not originate in commerce so the things that commerce wants – lower cost, greater efficiency, better productivity – don’t exist there. The act of artistic artefact creation begins outside of the ‘market’. It may eventually end up there, but there is no competition in its origin and therefore, AI does not pose a ‘threat’ here. If anything, it may be advantageous to help an artist think.

So, for as long as humans have existed, we have manifested objects and images in our external environment to help us understand ourselves and our relationship to the world better. We have used those artefacts to connect with other humans who, through interacting with those artefacts, generate their own emotional responses – sometimes the same ones that drove the artist, sometimes different ones. Sometimes, those reactions are strong enough to move people in a market to give it a financial value and pay for it but that market interaction is a byproduct, not the point.

So, generative computer programs cannot touch art or artists because it does not have emotion or inherent curiosity. It may convincingly mimic emotion and curiosity, but the biology and physiology of the human is utterly unique to our flesh, blood and bones.

Commercial image makers on the other hand have new competition for their services. Yes, new, AI-led competition is already emerging in the market and, like with everything else commercial, what matters is what you’re selling and how much you’re selling it for. Buyers (individuals and companies) will, as they always have, continue to have different needs at different times. The question becomes, “are there enough buyers for what you’re selling so that you can live the lifestyle you want to live?”… But that’s an entirely different question to “Will AI destroy artists?” The answer to that is a clear, obvious, and resounding no.

So, go make art. And, if you’re a commercial image maker who feels threatened by additional competition that automated generative tools are bringing, you need find renewed clarity on who your own target market is, what you’re offering, and what people are willing to pay for it.

If what you’re offering isn’t unique, interesting, different, or cheap enough – if it doesn’t give a client decent ROI, improve their productivity or bring costs down, then it was just a matter of time before you close shop anyway.

There has been a big idea for a graphic novel living in my head for over a couple of years. It’s so big that I keep telling myself that I haven’t had the time to progress it. But the truth is, I’ve been afraid to.

I’m so excited by this big idea that I know if I keep it in my imagination, it can remain as good as I could possibly imagine. I know that as soon as I start drawing it, it will no longer match what I can see it my head, it probably won’t be as good. But no one benefits by my keeping it there. No one else will make this idea in my lifetime – it’s weird but it’s also, potentially, wonderful.

So, I started. And, that thing I put off for almost 2 years now has presence on the page. Is it as good as I imagined? Well, the thing about putting it on the page is that the answer to that question no longer matters because now it’s about responding to what I’ve drawn, not what I imagined I could’ve drawn.

Now that it’s on the page, I can make it better. Other people can help me make it better. And, through the act of drawing, new images and ways of thinking have emerged that I certainly didn’t imagine.

Drawing is progress and it ain’t gonna draw itself.