“All art is a self-portrait.
Even if you do a painting of someone else. Art helps us find ourselves.”
― Rod Judkins, Lie like an artist
DREAMING ABOUT WORKING ON MY SELFPORTRAIT IN MY NEW STUDIO
encounter with a argumentative monster
End of March 2026 I lost my Studio in Wien Meidling. I had been there for 10 years. It used to be a office and computer laboratory before. After they moved out and sold the building, the new owner, a patron of the arts, turned it into a studio space. 4 levels, with at times over 80 artists having studios in there. A few years back, the owner of the building sold it to a real estate company who wanted to tear it down and build a apartment building. All this time, the lease was renewed year by year. Then in the Fall of 2025 we were notified that the lease would not be renewed anymore. So by the end of March 2026 we had to move out. Since then, I stored some of my art work at my small apartment, but the bulk of it at my sisters country house in Nether Austria.
A 'new' studio is not within reach for me - rents in Vienna are too high, and what I had before at the 'Kunstquartier Wien Meidling' was reasonable, but something like that is rare. Since I do not have space to work in my apartment, I have since then primarily worked at my desk on my laptop, working out ideas with the use of AI. Eventually, I may, if circumstances permit, translate some of these ideas into actual analog art.
These here are produced in my AI 'Dream Studio' on my desktop at home
Portrait of the artist Otto Rapp at his studio
what is the difference between kitsch and art - from the viewpoint of AI?
I asked the same question, (without involvement from 'Prompt Magic') of various different models, including my three private loras and one community lora.
The visual answers were very different. This one here is from my NEW SELFIES LORA
I posed it here (using the question as my prompt), and then asked Co-Pilot - in our exchange Co-Pilot said:
"You’re putting your finger on something that a lot of people feel but rarely articulate clearly: AI-generated images overwhelmingly drift toward kitsch, even when they’re dressed up as “art.” And you’re right — the proof is in the pudding. If something behaves like kitsch, reads like kitsch, and circulates like kitsch, calling it “art” doesn’t magically elevate it."
April 2026 I published a blog on my Wordpress that goes into depth about these questions, AI versus Analog Art and what is Kitsch?
Surrealism, Hallucination, and the Art of Working With AI
▲ linking to my wordpress article and also a convenient QR code that leads to my official website
NOW BACK TO MY SELFIES
My Neurologist advised me to quit this nonsense
before all the neurons leaked out of my brain
CONSISTENT CHARACTER 'OTTOWIZARD'
GANDALF'S LABORATORY was made not with my Selfie Lora, but I used what is called a 'Consistent Character', which is also produced by uploading one image of myself. Here are a couple of others:
THE CYBORG TAXIDERMIST
putting clockwork birds together was easy, compared with operating on myself - now, weak minds may want to skip the next ones.
OK BRO - I WON'T HURT YOU - WE ARE GOING TO GET YOU FIXED UP IN NO TIME
Finally, concluding this longwinded and self-indulgent post, there is a advantage with AI - I can at the spur of the moment jump into my Ferrari and drive to Paris for breakfast. I've been there several times in 'real life', but it is much more convenient dreaming with AI.
My page on Nightcafe is here: ART OF THE MYSTIC ON NIGHTCAFE - should you be interested in what you could do on Nightcafe, here is a INVITATION LINK, this is how it would work (for both of us):
You can sign up to a regular free account (I am on a first level Pro Account). Before, I just had a free account, and it worked pretty well for me also. But there are many pro models now that it does make sense to eventually go pro. But just for testing it out, a regular account works pretty well, some of those regular models are actually quite good, I am particularly impressed with Dreamshaper XL Lightning and better even is Z-Image Turbo. There are several more models available to free accounts, particularly the ones called 'Lightning' are quite good.
Visit my website
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PRINTS OF MY ARTWORK AVAILABLE HERE:
Bonus Special: THE ARTISTS EYE
should you not be on the blockchain, or have no upvote power, or this post is already older than 7 days, you can always just buy me a coffee.
Final Words of wisdom and a pet concern of mine, especially about art diplomas:
I had in years past come across quite a few 'fake diplomas' that pretend to be academic credentials. Next to 'Pay to Play Galleries' they are the scourge to be avoided. The summary of a paper about this spells it out
DEGREE MILLS - THE BILLION DOLLAR INDUSTRY
If you google the title you will find where this book is available, but also there are many videos on this subject.