FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:

QUESTION: Do you accept commissions and what are your rates?

ANSWER: During convention season my commissions are usually closed. I will usually let you guys know via my Instagram when they are open. If you are interested in my rates, I have a page including all information for none commercial clients here .

QUESTION: What is your stance on AI "art"?

That I put art in " when talking about generative AI should already tell you all you need to know. XD

When the buzz first arrived in 2022, before everyone knew how the machines were trained, I thought it was interesting that "mankind" now had built a machine "that dreams". 

You know? Yay science! 

The pictures it dreamed up looked "crude", whimsical. Abstract. Like no real danger to artists. Rather like something playful that you could spend an evening looking at and then forget. 

A few months later information got leaked on how these machines were actually trained, and that the companies behind them weren't really non profit at all. It doesn't have anything to do with artificial "intelligence", either, since it only vomits the data it was given. Like a stochastic parrot. We are still decades away from real general artificial intelligence.

Around that time it also came out that every artist's work that is on the internet (mine, too) had been fed into the machines without asking for our permission. And with no intent to compensate us while the big companies behind this are making bank.

Now, 4 years later, we have reached a point were deepfakes are a massive problem. I find it mind blowing how much generative AI is used to deceive people. Be it with fake videos of things that never happened. Or people pretending to be artists and even have the AI generate fake working steps for them. I wonder, if generative AI is so cool and awesome, and "it is over" for artists, like many AI bros say, why fake then that you're an artist who draws this stuff by hand?

If your machine's that cool, you should mark your generative AI pieces as such instead of trying to cosplay an artist who actually draws, paints, sculpts, etc.

The public view on AI slop has thankfully swayed since more people learned in what unethical ways it was created. The argument that it "will not go away" is a strawman. We all know that pandora's box is open. That's not the point. The point is to see how it is going to be regulated and how the public perceives it. Currently, there is a strong stance against generative AI in art. After all "why should I bother to read what you did not bother to write" is one of the strongest arguments I have seen.

Still, too many grifters fool people, boomers most of all (sorry boomers, but just look at what's happening on facebook with shrimp Jesus and all. XD) and so we are in urgent need of regulations. Boomers are usually also the group that shows the greatest naivety in regards to how generative AI is being trained and what impact it has on the environment.

The EU is planning to enforce regulations that require AI generated content to be marked. It comes late, but better late than never.

If you want to get yourself more educated, I would recommend reading "Empire of AI" by Karen Hao.

(Yes I drew the Patrick. That style is pretty easy to draw. Leave me the f alone. XD)

Some AI bro asked me why I still bother to paint by myself when he can do "the same" with his machine in only 15 minutes.

(His words not mine.)

That happened at a convention. A young tech bro was bragging that he could do "my work" better and faster than me with Stable Diffusion.

I am familiar with that model. Also with its output, not just because he held some of his generated pictures under my nose, but because you saw AI bros sharing it everywhere any chance they got.

The thing is: "His" female supposedly adult character looked underage and of course, she had too many fingers. I asked him what use is there if he lacks the artistic competence to see the anatomical errors. He didn't even spot the issue with the fingers. And he wouldn't be able to correct this error or any other error for that matter. And neither could his machine. If it could, the error wouldn't be there in the first place.

I may be slower, sure, but I will certainly not turn in a character illustration that looks all the same (because AI slop usually tends to look like the model most popular at that time) and I would never paint 7 fingers. Besides, if somebody wanted me to adjust something, I could do that quickly and exactly how the client wishes and would be competent enough to see it with my own eyes. And that is what my clients value.

Also, and this is what such people fail to understand:

I paint because I love painting and not because I want a random image handed to me.

I have a personal emotional connection to all my art. I spend days with it, sometimes weeks. I don't see it as a waste of time but instead as time well spent. I enjoy and love painting. I have an urge to paint. Why should I give that task away? Why should I "outsource" it when I have the skill to do it myself?

Figuring out how I can paint something new, learn a new style, handle new color palettes, is what is so much FUN to me.

It annoys me that I now have to defend my craft to people who either think I am obsolete, or that my art can't be made by me, because people allegedly can't do anything without generative AI anymore. Or who fail to see that some models look like my art because they were literally trained. on. my. art.

I am old enough to remember the past.

That means the time before 2023. When people still sat down and invested time to learn a craft.

Jokes aside. 2023 was practically yesterday. It is beyond me why SOME (not all!) people suddenly think that nothing can be human made anymore. That nobody harbors the ability to sit down and LEARN a craft.

I don't get it. How do you think hundreds, no thousands of years of human art history came into being? Who do you think created the art that was fed into YOUR machines so they can perform?

Humans.

Humans did this. 

And humans are the ones whose art is the very backbone of all the machine generated slop that you see on the internet.

I am aware that even before generative AI was around, some people were convinced that reaching a high skill in painting couldn't possibly be achieved. Because they couldn't imagine that instead of "partying" all night, artists sat down every evening and practiced how to draw!

They couldn't imagine this and so the computer "must have made it". Back then it was easy to say that there was no "make mountains" button. Now, sadly, there is. And that makes it even harder to explain to a certain type of people that yes, you can learn and do this. But you have to be willing to invest the TIME. And if you're not willing to invest that TIME, that does not mean, that other people are also lazy.

We're gladly putting our time into learning a new thing and then are proud of the thing that we made with our own hands.

Because. We. Enjoy. Making. Art.

By ourselves.

I realize that this has gotten much longer than a simple answer to that question.

I guess you can see here that I meanwhile find this discussion quite frustrating. I have literally been painting for 20 years. Why should I suddenly stop just because a machine ate all my art?

That makes absolutely no sense to me and I simply refuse to disappear just because some grifters think it is "over".

So no, I am not using generative AI for my art, or to have that text written. Why would I want a machine to write what I WANT to write? To say what I WANT to say? To paint what I WANT to paint? That makes absolutely no sense to me.

QUESTION: Do you offer tutorials or workshops to teach students how to paint?

ANSWER: I wrote a longer entry about that here. I used to teach a workshop for 15 years on how to paint with CGMA. Sadly, in late 2025, CGMA was shut down by Domestika. I am currently in talks with other platforms and might host new workshops with them. I am quite certain that I want to make something new.

However, it is most likely going to take months until I can offer a workshop again, since building a curriculum takes time.

Until then I can only offer the tutorials that have been mentioned here. There are also some brush packs and video tutorials on my Gumroad.

QUESTION: Do you sell prints?

ANSWER: Usually only at conventions.

I do sometimes sell a small selection of artwork on REDBUBBLE / SOCIETY 6 .

NOTE: If there is a particular piece that you would like me to add to the shops, just send me a message. :)

QUESTION: How can I get your 2020 calendar?

ANSWER:  My 2020 calendar is a limited edition event (there are only 33). So if you want to have one, you can fill out this google form and let me know.

I haven't made a new calendar since and am currently only keeping this section for nostalgic reasons. XD