A SONG ABOUT A PORTRAIT – AND ACTUAL PORTRAITS
While producing our song, “The Portrait”, which we recently released, I started painting portraits of the man who inspired the song. A year later, I had painted more than 40 portraits of him, mostly in acrylics. The paintings are the result of my hearing as well as seeing the music. Since the paintings are of a real person, I wanted to animate the photos of the paintings to show the portraits coming to life, like the lyrics of the song describe. If a portrait painting is sufficiently realistic, it will appear as if the eyes of the sitter come alive and look back at you:
” Ah, there you are.
A cigarette in your silhouette
to the strum of the guitar.
Aah, all that I see –
These eyes, they come alive,
feel you staring back at me.
Oh, your eyes that follow closely,
a haunting, sweet disguise.
A painted soul reflecting
the stars up in the skies.”
PAINTINGS THAT COME TO LIFE
I imported six of my paintings into Grok, which animated them precisely as per my prompts, which were to not change, delete, or add anything. This was difficult to achieve, since it is contrary to Grok’s functionality. It meant that the program could not add details to the image from its database, which it would automatically do. What you see here in the animations, is what there is. What is in the animations, is in the paintings.
The movements that Grok imposed on the images are movements and gestures that are either already in the pose of the sitter, or almost identical to his gestures in real life. Does he smoke? Yes. Does he smell a rose? Yes. Does he rest his face on his hands? Yes. Did he sing those two phrases in the song? Yes, he did.
CHECKS ON REALISM & FIDELITY
I used Grok to check whether I had made mistakes in the realism and fidelity of my portrayal of the sitter. When painting portraits, two criteria must be met; the portrait has to look like the real person, and it has to say something true and accurate about the person. Since Grok could not change or add anything, or improve any facial feature, any mistake I had made in the painting – a line, a shadow, a shape – would remain and become visible during the movement.
When I saw such a mistake – and there were many! – I went back and corrected the painting.
THE SUBTLETIES MATTER
Interestingly, while Grok’s output is the same as the original image, something does change in the animation. Perhaps an expression or an emotion, or a balance or proportion. Human faces are complicated and even the smallest detail can change the meaning. So, in some of the animations, he looks very much like himself. In others, it is almost as though he is expressing something that he rarely feels. But only he and I would be able to pick up on that.
REAL ART COMES FROM THE HEART
What I hope to show with this video is that A.I.-generated images and music can never replace, or be as good as, real art, because real art comes from inside someone, from their unique thoughts and feelings. This is my art, painted by me, with music written by me, and this is how I see my subject.