Prompt-Brush 2.0
The Next Non-AI Generative Art Model
I wish I had more time to draw. Why is it so hard to stand up and go to the large table behind me and pick up a brush. Maybe I don’t want to draw. Maybe someone else should draw. Maybe everyone else can draw. Maybe everyone else can help me draw so that I don’t have to draw.
That might be it.
Two years ago I started a project I called Prompt-Brush. People subemitted prompts online and I drew responses by hand with ink and a brush. I called it “the first non-AI generative art model”. Chronicle published it as a book last year. I drew 1,800 of the over 8,000 prompts that came in. I emailed every drawing to the person who submitted it. Rarely heard back from anyone. But then people bought the book, so that was some kind of positive feedback.
This project came at a moment where I really needed it. Since then I've spent a lot of time working alongside AI tools. Teaching a class about it at SVA, using it in different ways, trying to find the line between where it helps the process and where it makes the work generic and dull.
I’d like for this project to keep moving forward. But I can’t get up from this chair and pour black ink into this small ceramic cup.
I want to, I just feel like I’m filling my days with other things.
So this is an invitation. Yes, you reading this right now. Help me.
I've built a new version. Prompt-Brush 2.0.
This time it's you drawing.
It’s a site where anyone, anywhere, can respond to prompts submitted by people from all around the world.
You pick a prompt, draw directly in the browser, sign your name, and it goes live.
A growing archive of drawings made by humans, for humans.
Maybe this is coming to you at a moment where you need something too. Maybe it’s just an excuse to draw.
Or to be pushed to draw for someone else.
All the prompts come from someone else, and when you draw something, that person receives it.
The hope is that in a few years this becomes another book, a collective work made from many hands.
If you’d like to draw one, or a few:
—Pablo
THANK YOU for making this something we can take part in! I remember hearing about this idea and wishing I could one day do something similar. Getting the chance to be part of it and respond to some of the prompts is epic 🙏🏼