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Subtle Bodies

Posted on:September 1, 2019 at 04:12 PM

Translation from landscape paintings to figurative watercolors using U-GAT-IT

“Subtle Bodies” is a series of AI-generated artworks that mimic my figurative watercolors. The figures were generated from my landscape paintings using image-to-image translation, thus finding the subtle body within the landscape.

My previous work with image-to-image translation involved modifying textures and art attributes, but lacked form modification. My paper on this work was selected for poster presentation in the NeurIPS Machine Learning for Creativity and Design Workshop in 2018. Those works were shown in a solo show in Santa Fe December 2018 and online at http://www.aiartonline.com/art/holly-grimm/.

By using a new framework, U-GAT-IT, the model was able to make geometric changes to the form, such that the original landscape was unrecognizable in the new image. U-GAT-IT by J. Kim et al (2019), is a modification of a GAN (Generative Adversarial Network) for image-to-image translation on shapes as well as textures within the same model. It adds another layer from a CNN which weights the importance of each feature map.

I trained U-GAT-IT on two datasets: my abstract landscape paintings and watercolor life drawings. The resulting model was able to “extract” a figure from a landscape painting and apply a watercolor style.

AI Disclaimer: Although these images were created by an AI, the above text was wholly human sourced and does not necessarily reflect the AI’s opinion.

Here are six samples of input paintings and output figurative watercolors:

Magma Plume  Jungle TheoremLoretto MorningRose Garden SF Train StationPerseus Rumble
magma plumeJungle TheoremLoretto MorningRose GardenSF Train StationPerseus Rumble
magma plume 305001power surge 305001power surge 305001power surge 305001power surge 305001perseus rumble 305001

Full results:

Untitled (Green) - AI Generated - 305001

Untitled (Blue) - AI Generated - 305001

Untitled (2014-10-28) - AI Generated - 305001

Untitled (2014-03-29) - AI Generated - 305001

Splash - AI Generated - 305001

Rail Buster - AI Generated - 305001

Nymph's Choice - AI Generated - 305001

Lazy Hero - AI Generated - 305001

Kinch Motor - AI Generated - 305001

Sonder Phase - AI Generated - 305001

Power Surge - AI Generated - 305001

Magma Plume - AI Generated - 305001

Perseus Rumble - AI Generated - 305001

Nimble Tau - AI Generated - 305001

Cochabamba Bazaar - AI Generated - 305001

Great Barrier Niche - AI Generated - 305001

Japanese Garden - AI Generated - 305001

Van Allen Effect - AI Generated - 305001

Sparrow's Delight - AI Generated - 305001

Monstrodome - AI Generated - 305001

Chenrezig - AI Generated - 305001

Rose Garden - AI Generated - 305001

Aspen Vista - AI Generated - 305001

Jungle Theorem - AI Generated - 305001

June Virga - AI Generated - 305001

SF Train Station - AI Generated - 305001

Loretto Morning - AI Generated - 305001

La Fonda - AI Generated- 305001

Pilar - AI Generated - 305001

Silvia Sunset - AI Generated - 305001

Nambe - AI Generated - 305001

SF Canyon Preserve - AI Generated - 305001

Big Tesuque 2 - AI Generated - 305001