New artwork - working title "Awkward Thoughts"

 Having been a bit disappointed by ControlNet, but also knowing I can feed it poses via images, I decided to plough ahead with creating a new piece in Blender to some semi-finished state and then transferring it over. I reused by rather scrappy human model and spent quite a while posing a set:

Next I need to start adding some environment - probably a sort of gangway. I also need to make it clearer that the chap with the idea is not a religious moment, and to change each of the blokes so it's clearer they are not all the same person in some animation sequence, but rather a shuffling line...

I was re-reading some of the material on ControlNet, and it occurred to me that I can actually trying using the image in lots of different ways - pose, but also depth, edge detection etc to see which gives me interesting style transfer while keeping close to the image above... I can also:

• Try adjusting the rendering to spit out some controlnet-friendly images directly e.g. no need to extract a depth map when I can generate an accurate one directly
• Try cutting the image up by removing elements that clash and then recombing them later

Stable Diffusion ControlNet

 I've been ploughing on with looking at ControlNet... I fed Google Colab some cash and installed ControlNet - once I'd gone through the initial pain of getting my head around the Colab notebook, adding ControlNet was pretty straightforward, although there's a minor gotcha that it won't warn you that you don't have any ControlNet models installed (you have to install them during the initial start-up of the notebook), it will just generate the image without adding the controls :(

Since I'm interested in pose, I started with that. What's cool is that the input is just an image - the pose is extracted for you. You can obviously find images with the pose you want, or, if you are trying to be an artist, you can use posable models on the web to generate the pose you actually want... Or even manipulate a real life person or doll and photo that.

I set-up this reference pose:

And applied it to a picture of a "worker" in a vector style:

What's interesting is that it appears to act like any other constraint on the model - i.e. image2image or the prompt - meaning that it's not 100% mandated that the model follows it, but also meaning that the model attempts to 'rationalise' (non tech term) the pose - the more unlikely the pose and the more at odds with the prompt, the more weird the results... 

I then tried with two people posed:

And got:

Again, interesting to note that the model attempts to 'make sense' of the pose by putting them on a beam. Also interesting to note that the tension between the wacky poses and the prompt is resolved via a compromise, not applying the pose as a hard constraint. In practice, I suspect this means I'll have to break the image up when there is a tension between what I want to see and how I want to constrain it - i.e. I'll have to feed it a set of requests that make 'sense' in the context of the training material and then stitch it back together again...

Sketching

Since Central St Martins gave me a lovely little sketchbook, I've decide to try sketching. I've always been a bit funny about it because I am (I think) getting quite good at creating art digitally, but I really can't draw... But then I figured if I try and sketch once a day, I'll probably improve - I can still sort of remember the day I first tried to make an image with pycairo and it was very hard so...

Who will we be in the moment of our death?

Who we truly are is revealed in the moment of our deaths. Beyond hope of reward, beyond fear of punishment, how will we spend the last moments and thoughts? 

My father died alone in a hospital bed, overlooked, perhaps afraid and resentful. My mother died unexpectedly, confused and upset, her mind and inner strength destroyed by dementia. My wife died as she lived, filled with strength, love, and concern for others.

We are taught to fear death, but if we lived our lives working backwards from the moment of our death, would we lead better lives? Perhaps we would see the small things in the world before death gently takes them from us? Perhaps we would be willing to wipe the slate clean, before death wipes it for us?

The things we leave behind

My home is filled with things that don't belong to me, that I didn't ask for, I don't really want. My wife's stuff haunts me, gently and sometimes soothingly, but I didn't ask for it. 

My bookshelf is filled with books I've never read, I remember her reading, but I probably never will read myself. My wardrobe is half-filled with clothes I can't wear. The corner of the sitting room is occupied by a piano I can't play, and piles of music books that came alive to her, but I can only flick through in ignorant curiosity. Her coat is still on it's peg, hanging unworn and unwearable. 

These are not things I wanted, I wanted her voice telling me about the things she's read, I wanted the sound of her hands on the piano keys, I wanted her coat hanging damp from a walk together. How can so much stuff remain, and yet these things be so irreparably gone?

Beech And Clouds, hello and goodbye

 Quite a quick artwork, done in Blender for three reasons :- 1) to celebrate autumn 2) to get a break from the snot and tears of my MA art and 3) to experiment with outlining objects in Blender... I was thinking this is too simple:

But it met my goals, and I can't think what I would add, plus I often overwork my stuff (need to watch for that!) so yeah, done! I'm quite pleased with it in a simple way - it gives me the feeling of space and openness I wanted.

Our bodies and our art - reflections on Holly's blog

Managed to find and set-up FeedRabbit so I can more easily keep track of some of my peers' blogs. Which was great because I caught the latest excellent post, "She has a body of work, OnlyFans", from Holly. It's well-worth a read. I was stuck by the number of unexpected parallels between her work and mine, despite the subjects and approach be quite different at first sight. We are both:

• Considering how people react to images that are, in some senses, socially taboo
• Thinking about how we place ourselves and our personal lives into our art as source material, and both perhaps considering making art from something many people could consider 'off-limits'
• Making art that explores stereotypes around the body, and what it is acceptable to do with it

For me, it sparked some further questions I need to consider in relation to my own work:

• To what extent is everyone a performer? Is it unusual to make art from yourself? Or is it an extension of what we all do anyway? We are all using ourselves to make money/social capital in some way
• How do the audience relate to the work? Is it just for their titillation, be that sexual or voracious?How do you want them to relate? What impact does it actually have on them? In some senses there is the same thrill in seeing a glimpse of someone's private grief as there is in seeing a glimpse of their bare skin
• How do you create an experience that lasts with the viewer? To have an impact, I need to make a lasting impression - people might (one day!) engage with my art by hitting 'like', or pausing in a gallery, but will the then almost instantly forget it? If so, what can I do to bury a worm in their subconscious? I need to research how education helps plant ideas in the brain, and perhaps make art that is more than just a passive image to be viewed
• To what extent do our bodies/lives belong to us? To what extent other people? On what basis? To be a carer, is in some ways, to lend your body to someone else. I love my home and I don't mind my car, but neither would be the way they are if it was just up to me. How does money relate? What other ways do we transact? My kids show me love in exchange for the care I give them
• Pity and exploitation? I imagine people looking at my art and being moved to think again about difficult topics, but to what extent may they just feel pity? Worse, to what extent might that be hypocritical or even voracious pity - the same mixture of false pity and voracious enjoyment that makes people watch TV shows like Jeremy Kyle?

All in all, an amazing haul of ideas and insight, so glad I took the trouble to read Holly's work :)