"AI art" vs my *very human* process (burnout piece)

My art is not AI. I know you know this. But there’s chatter about this stuff on social media, and I thought it would be cool to show you just how human this work is. Here’s my process for making “Fuel.”

The idea first came to me when I thought of the word “EXTINGUISH” as a synonym for burnout. I jotted it down in the corner of my notebook where I’d been working on something else. “We protect ourselves from burn out by refusing to become fuel” I wrote, along with, “Burnout is what happens when we turn our selves into fuel.”

This was last year, looks like the day after Christmas. I turned the page and jotted down more ideas. “I am not fuel” and the idea of pairing the text with a foggy, well-watered wintry landscape. Inflammable. I was thinking about the droughts that follow warm winters, noting “snow as summer water supply” and also, “taking out dams, increasing wetlands.”1

I tried out landscape color palettes.

I turned the page and tried out more.

On the left page here I tried blocking out where light blue text could go on a lush green background. It all felt too wordy, and like the image, while being atmospheric, didn’t exactly help visualize the idea. On the right side I did a color study, wondering if I could put a cool liquid-feeling center into something flaming. I tried encasing it in some multivalent lines that served as little shelves for the text. At the top I noted, “force field protecting a gem kind of vibe.”

I still didn’t have an idea that clicked. I tried out a lot of ideas — landscapes, protected gems, color splotches, three green shapes in a line.

I returned to the idea of fire coming up around water, wondering if could separate them a bit, showing that the fire couldn’t consume the water. I tested out colors and white markers. Notes say things like, “needs a way warmer red” and “white text cut out from watery blue” and “R211 marker.”

I tried a very watery color study, using masking fluid to make a clear line between the blue shape and the red/yellow shape. It dripped everywhere.

I tried this, using a different kind of paint.

I went back to trying to figure out what colors I wanted to use.

I tried another gem-shape with the lines wrapped around it.

And then, when nothing seemed right, I went back to pencil and looked for a new idea. I thought: what if in three panels a flame went from fire to a droplet of water?

I made a new color study. I tried to figure out what would go between fire and water. Yellow and green felt like my only options, but they didn’t look like anything meaningful.

I tried again on better paper and with more careful brushstrokes. Look first at the big three in the middle: fire to water with something weird and green in the middle. Then I realized the green one could be something living, an abstract plant. There are three small green attempts around the edge, along with some other versions of the fire and water. I scanned these in — my favorite fire, plant and water from this page became draft 1:

I slept on this for a few days because it felt close, but also kind of confusing and hard to read. I spend weeks/months on each of my paintings trying to make them as simple and clear as possible. I want people to see them and have an almost simultaneous experience of recognition and surprise, like they are both seeing something for the first time, and also seeing something they know intimately, perhaps a part of themselves.

This was not quite that. So, as always, I asked what I could take out. I tried getting rid of the water.

I liked it more but still felt like it was a lot to read, and that the visuals only made sense after you “got it,” but they didn’t help show the idea. Danielle and I talked about it and thought that this 2-image version felt like it was saying that you avoid burnout by keeping yourself well-watered. Initially I was thinking of “becoming fuel” to mean that your own Self was being used as fuel instead of outside resources, but I could see this other interpretation too, that if you dry out you become flammable. So I wondered: what if the image goes from healthy plant to drying-out/catching-flame to fire?

I turned the page in my sketchbook and tried one more time:

This was it. I liked it because the image told the story even without the text, and there’s depth now: at first you glance you understand something is catching fire, but if you spend time with it, you begin to wonder what happened to the self as it became kindling; you can imagine what will be left after the fire burns out. Extinguished.

After several pens and several pages of text trials, I went with the dark blue ink and the simplest phrasing: “Burnout happens when / we become the fuel.”

Ta da! Just 200 easy steps over six months.

It’s occurring to me now that showing you all of this might make it look like I am not very good at making this art since it takes me forever to get it right.

But that’s also the point: creating art is full of half-started sentences and uhhhs and tangents because art is communication, not a product. This is one of many reasons that AI image generation is not comparable — it’s a data set, just a regurgitation of things that have already been made (and stolen ones at that).

The great joy of communicating it that it is a reciprocal act, it is a kind of connection. Human art is so dynamic because it is viewed by other humans, and it becomes part of their lives. We respond to art. We feel something, we hold a new thought, the sense of our life is different than before the art encounter.

Thank you to everyone who has responded to this piece (and all the others) — receiving your stories and perspective brings it all to life.

love,
brit

ps. I posted the new sticker reward yesterday, another painting that went through many, many iterations before arriving at its final form. You can read more here.

If you’d like the print and/or sticker reward, make sure you’re on the right tier before the cutoff this weekend (Sunday, May 31, midnight PT).