It’s 2026… Can You Believe It?
Sometimes my husband and I look at each other in amazement and ask where the time went? It seems that the older we get, the more quickly the days (and weeks and months and years) pass. Even though I haven’t updated this website in a while (I know, I know.. I’ll try to do better), I have been doing something quasi-creative. I qualify that statement with “quasi” because I have been using AI a lot and therefore don’t feel I can claim most of the designs as truly my own. I have my own Etsy store (Designer Girl Gallery) and have been using AI to create designs for the store. Using AI is permitted by Etsy. Using it is a matter of convenience. AI use is a two-edged sword, however. For one thing, there is the concern about intellectual property rights. There is worry about whether or not or how much am I “stealing” someone else’s art since these AI programs are “trained” by images from the Internet. There is also some concern since some other print-on-demand store owners are using AI, will I be uploading a similar image to many others using the same AI bot or using a similar prompt? For the present, even with these reservations, I carry on. I now have around 150 items in my shop. I am trying to grow my business but my progress is slow. I understand that slow growth in the beginning stage of a store is not unusual. AI does drive me a little crazy at times. Tonight I was working on a graphic of a capybara, which are very popular animals on Etsy right now. First I had to remove the background on the AI site since the original AI result had a light-colored background. I wanted a transparent background so I could use the design on different colors of t-shirts. But when I tried placing the graphic on a black t-shirt I saw there was a white fringe around many of the edges in the graphic. So I used another website background removal feature to try and get rid of some of the fringe. Using the second website tool helped. Upon closer inspection of the graphic, I saw that the capybara had three toes on one front foot and four on the other one. So which was it — three or four? I did a little web research and found out that capybaras have four toes on their front feet and three on their back feet. So now in Photoshop I had to paint another toe. Then I noticed that the toenails (?) or claws (?) were missing from one of the hind feet. So… back into Photoshop to grab a brush and add toenails. The whole point is that sometimes AI is a good thing and sometimes not so much. Regarding the copyright issue, I do try to be somewhat careful. If an AI generation looks a little too commercial, a little too slick, I am leery of it. I either don’t use it, or at the very least, do an image search on Google to see if I can locate that image online. Ideally, I would modify each creation enough to ensure that it is non-derivative and unique. Sometimes that may not be feasible.
I hope to get back to real art soon. I need to get into my iPad again… if for no other reason, to re-charge my Apple pencil. I found out the hard way that an Apple pencil can die if you let the battery remain uncharged for too long. Apple pencils are expensive! I don’t want to let that happen again.
By the way, this may sound like just making excuses, but my computer has an extremely annoying habit of the cursor jumping around while I am typing. So if you are seeing a lot of typos that may be why. I proof my pages, but I don’t catch everything.
Well that’s all for now. :)