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The world is changing fast

Tuesday, 18 Mar 2025, 16:41
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An AI-generated expression of a human brain interacting with external ideas and digital and analogue forces.

The world is changing fast, and this is why. I’ve been using AI across various creative, analytical, and practical aspects of my work and life. 

This is a summary of what I’ve learned and achieved:

1. Writing & Story Development

  • Use AI to refine and tweak your novel Wishful Thinking, mainly by listening to ElevenLab’s voice reading. This process has helped me identify nuances, stumbles, and areas for refinement.

  • Recognised how AI can assist in adapting Wishful Thinking into a screenplay with ease.

  • I began revisiting and cataloguing older stories (Sardines, CC & Susie, The Girl in the Garden), considering their potential for development. My next novel project should be Angel of the North, setting a structured two-hour daily writing slot to work on.

2. Audio Performance & AI Voices

  • Amelia’s voice from ElevenLab provides an authentic, brilliantly performed reading of Wishful Thinking.

  • Used the AI reading to catch errors and fine-tune dialogue and pacing.

  • Reading a piece aloud reveals a new layer of clarity in storytelling.

3. Productivity & Time Management

  • Realised that structured creative work, with set hours and pacing, prevents burnout.

  • Experimented with using AI for planning and project organisation, recognising the benefits of AI-driven analysis without over-reliance.

4. AI in Memory & Reflection

  • Continued deep exploration of past diary entries, using AI to stimulate reflection and extract stories.

  • Discovered how AI challenges and enhances your recollections, appreciating different perspectives on past events.

  • AI helps clarify and structure your thoughts on past relationships, experiences, and creative choices.

5. Artistic & Creative Exploration

  • Used AI to assist in organising Open Houses Art Week preparations.

  • I began considering AI’s role in producing creative work beyond writing, potentially in visual art, historical research, and film adaptation.

6. Historical & Documentary Research

  • Applied AI to WWI project research, expanding your understanding and planning for a larger project.

  • Use AI to fact-check and recall details from past experiences, reinforcing your work as a historian of memory.

7. Future Considerations

  • Considering AI’s potential in film production, especially for adapting Wishful Thinking as a youth theatre screenplay or live-action short.

  • Noted that AI could assist with editing and improving past short stories to bring them up to publishable quality.

  • I am interested in AI’s ability to enhance storytelling across different media, from voice performance to screenplay formatting.

Key Takeaways

AI has helped me refine my writing, making it sharper, more immersive, and more effective.
AI-assisted voice performance has revealed story weaknesses and allowed me to refine my writing precisely. AI also helps challenge and expand my memory, making my reflections richer and more layered.
AI-powered tools offer a structure for writing and creative projects, helping with pacing and avoiding burnout.
I’m thinking critically about AI’s role in film, theatre, and historical research, exploring its potential without overreliance on it.




Tags: AI, ChatGPT, creative writing, project management, sports coaching, art, printmaking, fiction, learning
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Design Museum

Horses

Wednesday, 22 Nov 2023, 15:23
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Horses are tricky things to draw. Someone who knows horses will tell at a glance if the eyes are in the wrong place, the legs wouldn't work and it looks as if someone 'pinned the tail on' at a kid's birthday party. Trees are more forgiving, buildings better still. The human body is hardest of all - seven years of life drawing and I have a feel for it! But horses?!

I return to a scene in Northumberland of four horses in a paddock that has a huge, ancient beech tree in one corner. When it comes to the horses first, they have to look like horses - then a make of horse (I think 'breed' is the technical term!) will mean they are shorter, taller, fatter, perkier, hairier, or not ... and finally (as you'd want to achieve with a portrait of a person), they need to capture the character of the horse (even if it is a caricature: a Shetland pony is straight forward, maybe a cart-horse too, but there's everything else in between. 

A linocut print of a horse

Once you think you have a drawing, or outline right this must then be transferred to a piece of lino or plywood, and the entire thing cut out. There is no going back (or I haven't found a way to do so). Therefore, after several days of 'cutting' and a few 'graphite rubbings' I ink up and print off an A3 sheet only to find that I've made the head and neck too large and the eye is in the wrong place. Who'd know? My sister was polite. I pointed out that the head was too big - she agreed. She'd been supplying me with pictures of feet all week so they looked OK - but not the head. My fault. I had drawn a larger, detailed head, photographed this, and superimposed it on the body without being careful enough to check back with the original. I hear my mother's voice over my shoulder (she died in 2012) - telling me to 'draw what you see'. Observation, constantly referring back to the real thing counts for a lot (not over referencing photographs). 

A mask over the linocut indicating how the head size needs to be reduced

Anyway. I thought of a solution overnight - I masked off the head, printed up and once dry I will, with great care, ink in a head. Basically, I'll tape a drawing to the French windows, overlay the part-print, draw in the correct head in pencil, then use black ink to finish it off. This isn't to be a finished print, as I will then cheat further by reducing the end result by 200-300%, printing off on fine paper and glue it to a monoprint + beech tree overlay.




Tags: horse, printmaking, linocut
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