As you can guess from the title, I’m pretty ambivalent about AI. But since it’s here to stay, we might as well use it if it’s helpful. This is part two of my investigation of the low-hanging fruit of AI use for artists. Part one goes into AI basics and (responsibly) using AI to make and edit reference images. In this installment, we’ll look at four tedious, non-painting tasks that AI can speed up so you’ll have more time to make art. What other uses for AI have you found in your practice? Share in the chat!
Pricing Your Work
Like many artists, I find pricing my work difficult. The hardest part for me has always been trying to make sure what I’m charging is in line with what others are charging in the same market area. AI can aggregate information on what artists working in your medium or chosen subject area are charging in your region, and can factor in where you are in your art career. I asked Gemini, Chat GPT, and Claude to help me price a 10×10″ piece I’m about to deliver to a local gallery, as well as another piece that’s at a different gallery already. All came back with prices in the same ballpark, though Gemini’s were consistently lower. Interestingly, Gemini and Claude suggested I lower my prices at the gallery that has a lower commission – which is generally not considered best practice. Chat GPT specifically advised against doing this, and also provided helpful by-the-square-inch and linear-inch formulas to help with future pricing. Claude provided a list of comparable works by other regional artists with the pricing for those works, and links to their websites so I could follow up and make sure they were accurate comparisons.
To get the best results, include information in your question about the gallery’s location, how many years you’ve been selling paintings, the prices of your most recent sales, and any significant juried shows, awards, or signature memberships you have. Uploading a picture of the art to be priced didn’t change the results significantly in my tests.
Comparison Shopping for Art Supplies
Art supplies are expensive, so I do a lot of comparison shopping before I buy. Paint is especially complex, because the same pigment will be sold under different names in different size tubes by different companies, and not all companies make paints from a given pigment. AI can gather and parse all the information for you quickly. For instance, I asked Gemini to find the best price per ml on single-pigment Pyrrole Red PR256 and it produced a chart ranking brands by price for this specific pigment. The rankings matched my own research, and were all reliable, artist-quality brands. I tested this question in Claude and got the same results. Price-per-square inch for paper questions worked similarly well.
Describing Your Work
A couple years ago I put together a solo exhibition and had to come up with descriptions of my art for 22 gallery tags. It’s hard to talk about your art in the third person, and it’s hard to put into words what was more of a gut feeling when the painting was made. I can perseverate over this kind of writing and that particular project ended up being a major time suck for something that was ultimately a very small part of the success of the show. AI could have written those gallery descriptions for me, and although I probably wouldn’t have wanted to use them verbatim, it would have been helpful to have AI do some of the initial turning of visuals into words to give me something to work with.
AI can also write artist statements, press releases, or whatever else you need put together. However, to make sure your unique voice is still coming across and the writing is decent, you’ll need to be careful how you use the AI. Here are some tips:
- Write an artist’s statement yourself, and then use AI to quickly adapt it and format it for different applications. This helps preserve your “voice.”
- Make sure you’re going back in to edit the work and use good judgement about whether the tone is correct for the application. You can ask AI to re-write and change the tone if it’s not what you want.
- Provide as much information as you can in your AI asks so you get less generic results.
- Beware of AI “tells” like “not only this, but this” sentence structures and excessive use of superlative adjectives that will make your writing sound like AI slop.
Speeding Up Tedious Formatting Tasks
We all at some point come up against tedious computer-based formatting tasks, and this is a place where AI shines. Here are some examples:
- Turn a spreadsheet of painting titles and prices into ready-to-print gallery labels
- Take your mailing list and turn it into formatted address labels
- Take your notes on past sales and turn it into a ranked list of your best customers with their contact information
For these tasks, you’ll need to upload and download information, which means you might only get one shot to ask the right question before you hit a paywall. Asking the AI what question to ask to get what you want before uploading anything can help you get things formatted faster and easier without using up your quota of free uploads.
A Final Cautionary Note: AI Isn’t Always Right, But It Sounds Like It Is
AI always presents information with certainty. It’s like getting advice from a friend who has somewhat unqualified opinions to share about everything. You’d take what that friend said with a grain of salt, and you should do the same with AI. Don’t turn off your brain, and you can still use AI to complete many tedious tasks more quickly and easily.
Once your task is completed, AI always asks if you want it to help you with something else. There’s always one more question to answer, so it’s easy to end up spending a whole day letting AI spoon feed you information. Stay aware to this trap, and remember that the point of using AI (for you) is to get away from your screen and back to your easel.
