The Phantom Inker

So... I mean, y'know, what the title says :D

I started drawing Sura in mid-2021, and I got as far as drawing and coloring and shading her entire body and drawing the waterfall and the stream and and the near grass, and... then... it just kinda stopped. I had roughed out the rest of the background, but drawing backgrounds is incredibly boring, and the picture never went anywhere after that. She sat in a drawer for three years.

Today, I pulled out the picture, and I made an AI draw the rest of the background for me, and I let it partially redraw my stream and waterfall too. I think I like my waterfall's and stream's richer colors better, but the AI's version fit better with the rest of the background. I had it render a few dozen to produce a version I really liked. And after it finished, I still did a bunch of tweaking on its background so she'd really pop against it, and this is the result.

Does that make this "AI art?" I don't really know: It's a collaboration. I drew the pretty orange-haired girl entirely on my own; and an AI filled in some parts of the background — not just via some text prompts, but by tracing and painting my background linework. I put those trees and mountains and bushes there; I just didn't give them any detail and let the computer do it instead. Honestly, it drew the parts that you're probably not paying attention to anyway ;P

I guess if you're virulently anti-AI art, you might hate this even more than art that's completely AI-generated, but the alternative was that she continued to stay in a drawer with only the bottom-right quarter of the background drawn. Personally? I'm glad to see her finally finished.

Anyway, there's an NSFW version of her elsewhere here on my website, and a higher-resolution version on my Patreon.