AI trying to imitate actual artists, take two. Turns out, if you spent the last century being dead and famous, there's a larger chance AI will do a better job copying your style.
I'm using the same data model as before, Stable Diffusion 1.5's Dreamshaper v6.3. This time, the prompt is "asian woman with bob cut hair, wearing a red qipao dress, garden background, cinematic lighting, high definition, detailed", the seed is 56089033061910. For the Western artists, the addition to the prompt is "painting by x", for the mangakas it's "anime art by x", for the Japanese printers it's "woodblock print by x", all weighted at 1.2 .
Edouard Manet - I was going for "Luncheon on the Grass", got "Music in the Tuileries" instead, if that. It's fairly close, although the brushwork is not as chunky as in the originals. That and, the level of detail would make Manet sweat.
Claude Monet - I was going for "Garden at Sainte-Adresse", got, uh, the other "Luncheon on the Grass". And again, the environment is a fairly faithful representation (water lilies in the sky notwithstanding), but the character is way off model. It's closer to Art Nouveau than anything, something between Mucha and Klimt.
Vincent van Gogh - well, fairly close. I get slight Frida Kahlo vibes from the face, but van Gogh's technique of tightly packed thin strokes is clearly noticeable.
Julie Bell - it's closer to her pinup work than her fantasy work, and gets the color palette and sheen on skin right. Not so bad compared to the next one.
Kaja Foglio - well, that's not Kaja Foglio. Not in the slightest. Kaja Foglio's art, as you can see on the Magic: the Gathering cards she illustrated, is very comicbook-like, simple and bold. This is some generic ArtStation stuff.
Gracjana Zielińska - I know her personally, but I think that showing this image to her and asking if that's anywhere near her style would be rude. That and, she kinda does that generic ArtStation realism mostly, so it's hard to tell how close this one is.
For the mangakas, let's just say that this model doesn't get anime at all. I mean, shit. It's all generic, even if I was going for more distinctive styles, all old as dirt and at least shojo-adjacent.
Kuniyoshi - the only thing this has in common with Kuniyoshi is the palette. Looks more like a poster from the 1920s than anything. The only thing it's got going for it is the fact that it's far from the baseline. "So you have heard of me", to quote a classic.
Hokusai - you know what? This is closer to Hayao Miyazaki's art than whatever I'm getting from asking for Hayao Miyazaki's art. It's far from the baseline, it has some ukiyo-e vibes, but the Studio Ghibli style is obvious.
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"rn I feel like reading about someone's quiet daily life, maybe a diary or letters, set in a place or context I don't know much about, without turmoil or tragedy" oh! do you have any recommendations for books like this?
This is one of my favourite types of books! Here are 30(ish) recs...
May Sarton's The House by the Sea or Plant Dreaming Deep
Gyrðir Elíasson's Suðurglugginn / La fenêtre au sud (not translated into English unfortunately!), also Bergsveinn Birgisson's Landslag er aldrei asnalegt / Du temps qu'il fait (exists in German too)
Gretel Ehrlich's The Solace of Open Spaces, which iirc was originally written as journal entries and letters before being adapted into a book
Kenneth White's House of Tides: Letters from Brittany and Other Lands of the West
Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book
The Diary of a Provincial Lady, E. M. Delafield
Growing Up with the Impressionists: The Diary of Julie Manet
Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim (do not read if you don't like flowers)
The Road Through Miyama by Leila Philip (I've mentioned it before, it feels like this gif)
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, I keep recommending this one but it's so nice and I love snails
Epicurean Simplicity, Stephanie Mills
The Light in the Dark: A winter journal by Horatio Clare
The Letters of Rachel Henning
The letters of Tove Jansson, also The Summer Book and Fair Play
The diary of Sylvia Townsend Warner—here's an entry where she describes some big cats at the zoo. "Frank and forthcoming, flirtatious carnivores, [...] guttersnipishly loveable"
The Letters of Rachel Carson & Dorothy Freeman were very sweet and a little bit gay. I mostly remember from this long book I read years ago that Rachel Carson once described herself as "retiring into her shell like a periwinkle at low tide" and once apologised to Dorothy because she had run out of apple-themed stationery.
Jane Austen's letters (quoting the synopsis, "Wiser than her critics, who were disappointed that her correspondence dwelt on gossip and the minutiae of everyday living, Austen understood the importance of "Little Matters," of the emotional and material details of individual lives shared with friends and family")
Madame de Sévigné's letters because obviously, and from the same time period, the letters of the Princess Palatine, Louis XIV's sister-in-law. I read them a long time ago and mostly I remember that I enjoyed her priorities. There's a letter where she complains that she hasn't received the sausages she was promised, and then in the next paragraph, mentions the plot to assassinate the King of England and also, the Tartars are walking on Vienna currently.
Wait I found it:
R.C. Sherriff's The Fortnight in September (quoting the author, "I wanted to write about simple, uncomplicated people doing normal things")
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
Pond, Claire-Louise Bennett
Rules for Visiting, Jessica Francis Kane
The following aren't or aren't yet available in English, though some have already been translated in 5-6 languages:
ツバキ文具店 / La papeterie Tsubaki by ito Ogawa
半島へ / La péninsule aux 24 saisons by Mayumi Inaba
Giù la piazza non c'è nessuno, Dolores Prato (for a slightly more conceptual take on the "someone's everyday life" theme—I remember it as quite Proustian in its meticulousness, a bit like Nous les filles by Marie Rouanet which is much shorter and more lighthearted but shows the same extreme attention to childhood details)
Journal d'un homme heureux, Philippe Delerm, my favourite thing about this book is that the goodreads commenter who gave it the lowest rating complained that Delerm misidentified a wine as a grenache when actually it's a cabernet sauvignon. Important review!
Un automne à Kyôto, Corinne Atlan (I find her writing style so lovely)
oh and 西の魔女が死んだ / L’été de la sorcière by Kaho Nashiki —such a little Ghibli film of a book. There's a goodreads review that points out that Japanese slice-of-life films and books have "a certain way of describing small, everyday actions in a soothing, flawless manner that can either wear you out, or make you look at the world with a temporary glaze of calm contentment and introspective understanding [...]"
I'd be happy to get recommendations in this 'genre' as well :)
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