IRINA CHECKHOMOVA / Imagination.
PRACTICE
Choosing materials and practical aspects of the project is as important as developing the main idea and the topic of the project. I have been drawing my whole life and my favourite things to draw are portraits. This skill came in very handy and turned this project into something that can have a deeper meaning, something that can be studied and used in an exciting manner. Materials are my A4 sketchbook and many different types of pencils with different softness or sharpness of the graphite. In the end, it took a few months to realise what type of drawing was needed for this project.
The project had to stick to model-like faces so they would be appealing to the majority. The website rarely creates model faces because it bases the outcome on millions of pictures of regular people. So, it took a long time to search for artificial faces that somehow resembled the drawings.
The first drawings that were tried out were either ones that were drawn before or quick sketches to try different methods for this project. People from the website thispersondoesnotexist.com are created from the pictures of ordinary not "beautiful" people. Beautiful here is used as a comparison to the "perfect" proportions and model faces that they teach you to draw in art classes. Unfortunately, when you try to draw somebody who does not have perfect proportions out of your imagination people assume that you cannot draw or do not know proportions. Here is the example of a woman's face that I tried to draw not following the beauty standards. People that were shown this drawing just assumed that this one was an unsuccessful portrait. When drawing from imagination it is impossible to create a drawing that is “incorrect” but is realistic enough to look pretty. Even though I do not believe that people that do not fit the beauty standards cannot be beautiful.
This is the actual process of me drawing. I usually sketch out my idea to understand which type of hair or face I want to draw. Then find some pictures of people that look more or less similar so I can use it as a reference to make my drawings more realistic. This way I can achieve both; to draw from my imagination and to be able to bring realism into my portraits and make them more human like.
Now the editing process of the videos.
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1. The first thing is to edit the portraits so they would align in photoshop. For that, the eyes need to be matched with each picture. This creates the illusion of faces merging into each other. Then the background is removed and a black and white filter is applied for the next step.
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2. Then all of the pictures get processed through a free website that applies a sketch filter. This method is used simply because photoshop cannot achieve this effect in the way that is desirable for this project.
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3. For the videos these pictures were arranged in order: all filtered - all originals - filtered and original side by side. In between each picture, there is a merging effect to create a seamless transition.
This way this project could achieve the best result possible. By erasing the differences and presenting these portraits in the way that they are easily compared. This way it is possible to see how similar artificial intelligence is to the human brain. The videos are presented as exhibit 1 and 2 on the project page.
