IS IT CHEATING?
I wonder whether, in the days when people predominantly travelled on horseback, a rider trotting along the road might have watched one of the earliest motorcars pass him and called out to his friend behind the wheel, "Tom, you're cheating!"
I wonder whether the same accusation was levelled at someone who picked up a telephone instead of sitting down to write a letter.
I know that when I first converted my bicycle to electric power with my friend Johnson — I do love it when the Chinese people I work with give themselves unusual Western names, something that happens quite frequently — I would ride past friends on conventional bicycles and hear them call out, "Yes, but you're cheating!"
Cheating. Interesting word. It has become something of a recurring theme for me over the past two years.
Cutting corners. Allowing myself to buy a replica watch. Using photographs, references and things that interest me to sketch out ideas with artificial intelligence before engaging my illustrator.
But is it cheating? Or is it simply the equivalent of driving past my friend, still trotting along on horseback, while I travel in a motorcar?
One thing is certain: designs that might once have taken twelve months to develop with an illustrator can now take as little as ten days. And I am only getting better at it.
I can begin with a rough composition, provide photographs and references, receive an initial rendering and then progressively refine the work until I am sufficiently happy with the result to pass it on to my illustrator.
My illustrator, whom I prefer not to name — although perhaps I have mentioned him before — works from another Australian city. He is young, has a fondness for fine menswear and enjoys working with me because our projects offer something quite different from the work he ordinarily undertakes for other clients.
We have developed a creative relationship that allows us to explore ideas, challenge one another and arrive at something that feels distinctly our own.
So, to arrive at the point: will I abandon AI and return exclusively to traditional hand-sketching?
No.
It is simply another tool in my kit, alongside sketching, inking, Procreate on my iPad, Adobe Illustrator and, of course, my trusty iPhone.
Another instrument that allows me to enhance my work, use my time more productively, reduce costs and expand the breadth of what I can offer.
And so I wish to acknowledge its use from the outset.
After all, I would never apologise for travelling by motorcar, flying in an aircraft powered by jet engines or riding my electric bicycle. Each of these inventions has advanced my ability to move through the world, even if I still take enormous pleasure in sitting down with a pen and pencil to sketch an idea or handwrite a note.
Technology has always changed the means by which we do things. It has also expanded the possibilities of what we might achieve.
Which brings me to the new design below , Parks of the World, still very much a work in progress.
Its origins lie in a rather lovely afternoon spent in a remote part of Kosciuszko National Park, where I watched some older friends of mine, spectacles perched on their noses, patiently assembling a jigsaw puzzle with a similar theme.
They worked away at it for quite some time, enjoying the small discoveries, the occasional frustrations and, eventually, the satisfaction of placing the final piece.
And then, having completed it, they simply dismantled the entire thing and returned the pieces to their canister.
There was something about that which stayed with me.
Why do people spend hours, sometimes days, assembling a puzzle, only to take it apart and put it away?
It struck me as rather Buddhist in its philosophy.
Perhaps the pleasure was never really in possessing the finished picture. Perhaps it was in the concentration, the companionship, the little triumphs and the passing of time.
To journey is to arrive.
And perhaps that is the point of all creative work, regardless of the tools we use to get there.
As for the other designs, they have stories of their own, which I shall share another time.
