A digigraph is a visual piece created with a deep-learning model. Text-to-image models are the most popular, but image-to-image models are also in use. The term digigraph was coined in conversations between myself and pioneering digital artist Ken Heiderich in early 2023, to distinguish deep-learning pieces from other algorithmic and machine-generated art, e.g. fractal art. The process is digitography, and a practitioner is a digitographer.

       I use the term to distinguish between more creative, spontaneous, experimental, subjective, and curious works from the command-heavy, explicitly goal-oriented outputs produced by people who want cheap stock photos, instant logos, easily obtained portraits of their anime waifus, etc.

       Techspressionism is a nigh-useless umbrella term that describes art that could not be created, or sometimes even displayed without modern electronic software and hardware. It encompasses everything from algorithmic art, virtual reality 3D paintings, elaborate looping GIFs, glitch art caused by intentionally frying circuits, interactive digital displays, and, of course, art generated by the algorithmic interplay of deep-learning models. In the context of my gallery, I’m using it to refer to the latter, though my oeuvre of Techspressionist works are not limited to the generative digigraphs on display here. One example of my hand-made Techspressionist works is my High-Rise, a 4k-resolution dithering experiment that looks different depending on your display and even the browser you view it with.

       Now, I can learn how to paint like a 19th-century oil painter, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to learn how to paint like a computer spazzing out with lossy artefacts. I can introduce lossy artefacts by adding noise or finally rendering something with shit fidelity, and I actually do that frequently with some of my paintings, but I don’t know how to paint lossy artefacts. The human brain wasn’t designed to invert gradients and distort shapes into streaks of giant, repeated pixels.

       I utilise various technological effects in order to achieve the following (and more):

• Distinctive level balances (light and shadow relationships)
• Distinctive tonal (colour) relationships
• Distinctive textures
• A level of ambiguity, forcing the viewer’s mind to draw upon their own memory and imagination to fill in implied details

With the exception of The Hills and Wave Form (which I used BlueWillow to generate), all pieces were digigraphed with Midjourney. Any and all post-production work has been done in Clip Studio Paint EX on a Wacom painting tablet, either a Cintiq, or MobileStudio Pro.

       I make exceptional use of the very schizophrenic, freely-associating v3 of Midjourney, with very abstract, seemingly non-sensical, sometimes word salad-esque prompts or other extended prose. These images are then fed back and forth across other versions of Midjourney, sometimes with the prompts completely changed, and frequently remixed with other, wholly unrelated images, such as photos of physical wallpaper. Most of my digigraphs are the mutated, intermixed offspring of very diverse “family trees”. I do this because I think the ingredients will go together nicely to make something interesting.

       Within Clip Studio Paint, functions I frequently use are Tone Curve; Color Balance, Level Correction; Hue / Saturation / Luminosity; and various layer types, such as Hue; Overlay; Soft Light; Hard Light; Vivid Light; Saturation; Color; Multiply; Overlay; Screen; and Add (Glow). I also make heavy use of layer masks, of course.

I do, but my paintings aren’t on display here. I prefer to keep my hand-drawn work separate from my digigraphs, just like how I keep my digital photography separate from my clay sculptures and watercolour paintings.

       For the same reason I take digital photos even though I can sketch and paint en plein air—digitography offers its own sets of challenges and possibilities, and captures through a unique lens its scope of the world in a different way. I truly adore the free-association these models are capable of!

       Perhaps you’ve noticed by now, but I don’t use these models to create free stock images for myself to use. I use it to create Pizza Dog. Sometimes you want to draw a dog, sometimes you want to take a photo of a dog, sometimes you want to take a digigraph of a pizza dog. I want to paint more like Midjourney, and these endeavours, in addition to being lots of fun, are also highly instructive in my own development as a whimsical, associative illustrator.

       I can only speak for myself, especially as it seems I approach digitography very differently from the typical “genner”. For me, it’s really more akin to the experience of beachcombing, and scrapbook material collecting. I proceed in a general direction, not looking for particulars, but instead, I am open to whatever my current stroll may yield. I pick up shapes of seaglass, shell, and rock I find interesting; sometimes I find wood, too. Of old magazines I cut out interesting snippets… When I have a bunch of interesting pieces, I try to put them together in various combinations. From then on, I try to “refine” the composition, perhaps by rearranging certain pieces, swapping things out, or throwing something entirely foreign in.

       When you go out for a stroll, and you bring your camera with you, do you intend to take photos of something very specific? I suppose if you’re looking to document a certain bird, certainly, but when you’re simply walking out and about because you have free time, and a camera… It’s the same thing, for me. All of these are strolls, and the Internet is both my beach and my scrapbook. That is all.

       If I really want something specific, I have the means and willpower (very important) to just paint it myself. It’s not that hard. It just takes time and focus to learn how to paint. That’s all.

       Study like hell. If you like something, ask yourself why you like it. Study colour theory, study composition, study rim lighting, study silhouettes in animated storytelling, study, it, all. The more you expose yourself to, the greater your knowledge and experience, the more you will have to draw upon in any creative venture, not just digitography.

       Go to an art museum or library, find an artbook and look at some paintings. Read curators’ analyses of these paintings, which will tell you why the paintings matter and why they work. Don’t know where to start? I have a free YouTube documentary for you, featuring the great, late Robert Hughes: Shock of the New.

Well, if you insist.

I hope that helped clarify how to make really, really good generations. Now get the hell out of here and start building a visual vocabulary and understanding of composition.