Hey!

In an earlier post I was exploring the idea of starting with an initial sketch, and improving on it step-by-step by running the sketch through the Stable Diffusion neural network (DreamStudio) with descriptions, and then taking the resulting AI-generated image(s) into Krita and draw, colour in, edit and tweak them to my liking.

The theory was, that after each iteration, both the image, and my "drawing skills" would improve, and maybe some day I would be proficient drawing something on my own.

Here's where we left off last time:

I ran into three problems.

First of all, the images I got out from DreamStudio had bits I liked, and bits I didn't like, and it started to look like I needed to "mix and match" parts in the images, to create a new one. Thus...

1. Because Krita is relatively new software to me, I don't actually know how everything is done on it, I will have to use some time learning it. That'll take some time.
2. The Wacom tablet is quirky, and uses some weird keystroke commands to relay fingered gestures. That needs to be fixed. Doable, but hardly trivial.
3. I ran out of DreamStudio credits.

The third one can be fixed with a bit of money, unless I want to try installing StableDiffusion on my computer. (That is not currently even possible, because of certain driver issues.) The first and second problems mean I need to use actual time into learning how to use Krita efficiently, and also the solution to the graphic tablet issue.

Anyhow.

These were the pictures DreamStudio gave me after uploading the above image and letting it dream about it for a while.

I ended up layering them, and erasing the parts I didn't like from each image.

This is where I am now:

I managed to generate some potential images for painting and drawing on from DreamStudio, before I ran out of credits, but I think I'm again head to head with the same issue I had earlier. I will likely end up having to cut and paste the best parts out, and then combine them into a new image, again.

Here are the candidates for edits, tweaking and drawing on:

That's just the best of them. I ended up creating a literal shitload of candidates, because I just wasn't satisfied with most of them. I ended up trying a lot of different styles like "steampunk", "cyberpunk", "futurism" and I even tried "photograph" on few, and still couldn't quite get an interesting one out.

So I've loaded all of these as layers on Krita, and I'm about to embark into editing and drawing on them.

But to be sure, an before I start "retouching" them, I'll ask you guys a question...

Which ones do You think are keepers in this batch?