I dreamt about it once

I dreamt about it once. Not an electric pencil penetrating my mind, that’s a different dream. No, I dreamt that one day I might make a living from drawing. I was at home at the kitchen table, watercolours, pencils, paper and left over sandwich crusts. Between my coffee and the ink pot I realised I loved this. Not just drawing and painting. Being at home with my own sounds, my own coffee, my mind unmolested by other people’s problems. If I could make a living doing this, I would be at peace. It was a beautifully modest dream but ultimately unattainable at the time. And so it remained a dream while I trudged into the mundane.

I realise the dream is fleeting. I dreamt of singing songs, and I became a songwriter. I dreamt of becoming an engineer, and I became one. I dreamt of being alone, and I was alone. I dreamt of being someone else, and I forgot who I was. The dream was real for a moment, until the distinctive sultry presence of reality slunk in with the laundry.

‘I was looking for a job and then I found a job
And Heaven knows, I'm miserable now’

I am a dreamer by nature. All my school report cards said so. I daydream everyday. Some days I daydream everything I could/ should/ would/ need to be doing, so precisely and so acutely that by the time I am done, I am so exhausted by the mental load, I am unable to actually do anything. Except for drawing. Because sometimes I daydream about drawing. And if the daydream about the drawing was a good one, I can do that drawing. And this is when I realise, the dream of becoming an illustrator was a good one; for me.

Sure there are some annoying things about being an illustrator. It can be as mundane as any other job. It is a job after all, not a hobby. Sometimes the pressure of a deadline can ruin the joy of drawing and imagining, but it is a small price to pay. I could be cleaning toilets or sitting in meetings or measuring cracks or typing numbers into spreadsheets or picking up stones, cleaning up blood and vomit, sitting on a damp bus in midwinter breathing the indiscriminate scent of other humans. I don’t have to do any of those things now. I do this instead.

But why should you care what I dream about?

Good question, glad you asked. I don’t know the exact answer to that. But I think it is important that you, or I, or we should all care about what someone else, anyone else, dreams about. It is about caring for the fortune of others. If we do not care about the wellbeing of individuals in society, we do not care about society. If we don’t care about our society, well, we may as well pack up our belongings and call it quits. Because we are all fucked if everyone thinks they are an island.

None of us exist without the good fortune of others. Or indeed, the bad fortune of others. Imagine yourself on a hill, naked, nowhere. It is cold or hot. You need shelter, you need water, you need food. But there is no one to help you. No one who cares whether you live or die. You are alone. It is likely you will be dead in a few days.

Now imagine the same situation but you are with twenty other people. The odds of your survival are more favourable. Someone in the group might have the knowledge and skills to survive. Now you all have these skills. Or perhaps the connection and encouragement of other people will compel you to keep fighting for survival. You will survive until… you reach civilisation. Where your salvation lies. And, you are with twenty naked people. I don’t know, maybe you like that sort of thing.

That’s why you should care what I or anyone else dreams about.

Do AI image generators dream of electric pencils?

Probably not.

I work with all kinds of people. Writers, artists, musicians, small businesses, people with wild ideas, people with sensible ideas, people campaigning for something important, people who have absolutely no agenda and all those in between. To all of them, without exception, their work has a deep meaning to them. They dreamt about it and are now willing that dream into existence. Well, as an illustrator, I illustrate those dreams. I take time, attention and care to visualise an aspect of the dream. My contribution to their work is meaningful to me and to them. It is a deeply satisfying human interaction.

So a writer comes to me with their novel. A piece of work they laboured over for months, maybe years. They poured their soul into it. Maybe they sacrificed friendships, strained their relationships, lost a job. They definitely cried. Maybe they came apart at the seems. But in the end, no matter how good it is, no matter how eloquent and erudite, no one will look at it if it doesn’t have a good cover. Don’t judge a book by its cover! I agree. But before we read the book, all we have is the cover.

I am human. I read the book. I daydream about the book. I conjure images for the book. I talk to the writer and the art director about the book. I craft something that I hope captures what is inside the book. It matters to me. Your book, your work of art, has become something that really matters to me. I want it to succeed. I want people to read it. I want my cover design to inspire people to read it. I love it.

Illustration for Allesandra Jacobs’ Death in the Time of Suburbia

An AI image generator does not care about your book. It is a cold, thoughtless hijack of human creativity. The engagement of AI makes islands of us. It robs from us and isolates us. The corporations that own the AI will drop you like a number from the bottom line if it suits them. There is no care. There is no love. Only pretty illusions.

Note - I believe there is room for AI to help humanity and there is room for AI within art as a medium. But I do not think dropping a prompt into a website to generate an image stolen from humans is a sustainable or reasonable use of the technology. It just expedites the burger eating contest.

I don’t know what it’s like to be an illustrator

I only know what it’s like to be me. There is a sense that I am a certain way. I am real. I don’t just think I am real, I am real. As real as you. You create something, I can illustrate it. It is a modest but beautiful interaction. If you work with me to create art, you make a small contribution to human creativity. A sympathetic donation to our collective consciousness.

Or you can get an image generated by AI.

The end.