Sketchelium - Stuff I Think Is Cool

It's happening!

They're done!

I'm calling this batch Midnight Auroras. I was a little worried if their eyes wouldn't stand our from the dark yarn, but after testing it, they came out pretty cute!

Also experimenting with some background pieces instead of the base gray... photography is not my strong suit lmao. Though the morning tornado-warning weather gave me some good lighting, at least.

Plus it looks a little better in the closeups. I think.

As always they are up for adoption on my etsy page!

Etsy

SophiaDrawsPictures - Etsy

Shop items by SophiaDrawsPictures located in Charlotte, North Carolina.

standing in line at the grocery store when inspiration hit and I messaged myself "monster hunter how to train your dragon"

if u want some stickers

*loses one single round of the pokemon tcgp event*

I hate pokemon it's always been bad

Tree Log Bag Pattern // Shroomigurumi

Can't wait to get toasted in February!

fresh batch of spiders up for adoption!

Etsy

SophiaDrawsPictures - Etsy

Shop items by SophiaDrawsPictures located in Charlotte, North Carolina.

i learned about Tim Wong who successfully and singlehandedly repopulated the rare California Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly in San Francisco. In the past few years, he’s cultivated more than 200 pipevine plants (their only food source) and gives thousands of caterpillars to his local Botanical Garden (x)

There’s a protest going on against AI art over on artstation, so I feel like now is the time for me to make a statement on this issue! 

I wholeheartedly support the ongoing protest against AI art. Why? Because my artwork is included in the datasets used to train these image generators without my consent. I get zero compensation for the use of my art, even though these image generators cost money to use, and are a commercial product. 

Musicians are not being treated the same way. Stability has a music generator that only uses royalty free music in their dataset. Their words: “Because diffusion models are prone to memorization and overfitting, releasing a model trained on copyrighted data could potentially result in legal issues.” Why is the work of visual artists being treated differently?

Many have compared image generators to human artists seeking out inspiration. Those two are not the same. My art is literally being fed into these generators through the datasets, and spat back out of a program that has no inherent sense of what is respectful to artists. As long as my art is literally integrated into the system used to create the images, it is commercial use of my art without my consent.

Until there is an ethically sourced database that compensates artists for the use of their images, I am against AI art. I also think platforms should do everything they can to prevent scraping of their content for these databases. 

Artists, speak out against this predatory practice! Our art should not be exploited without our consent, and we deserve to be compensated when our art is exploited for commercial use.