Fresh Tea of the Moment
Cold Brew Rooibos Tea
Depending on your pitcher size or any container size, use around 4-5 teabags or a medium-sized filter bag with looseleaf rooibos (red tea) in it for 1 quart of temperature water. Refrigerate it for about 2-5 hours or overnight. For me, it’s best prepare it at night so that it’s all fresh and good to go the next day. You can add ice as your preference but it’s a lot fresher, cooler, and crispier without it.
Lastly, you can refill the pitcher with a second round and let it brew in the refrigerator for 2-5 hours. Sometimes you can tell if the tea isn’t in its full brew just by the intensity of the color. If the color is barely there, it’s time to replace the bags (or restart with a new type/flavor of tea).
You have the option to add your sweetener to your liking. You can also make it a little fancy by adding some fresh fruit, milk, boba, or any toppings, so you can make your own homemade boba tea. But for me, sometimes just drinking it on its own is just as refreshing.
Enjoy!
The Fresh Tea
When I started getting into (hobbyist) graphic design, I also decided to sign up for a deviantART account. When I first signed up, and this was around late 2000s,1 deviantART was booming and thriving as a community. I got to know some artists there and even participated in small fandom events that would earn me some llamas. Although I have abandoned it for sometime during the 2010s, I tried to revive it around 2019-2020 when the pandemic arrived. After all, around that time, I started taking up some online art courses and started experimenting.
In my devART account, I posted some of my sample graphics like banners, buttons, and the like, some experimental and WIP art, a few of my very old site layouts from my past sites, even samples of my (attempted) original fic and fanfics. Those were the fun, creative times, especially when you’re completely stressed from your non-creative job.
Then, February 2024 came, and I decided to cancel my membership and delete my deviantART. It wasn’t an accident or anything. I decided to leave deviantART together for the specific reasons below:
All of my friends and moots at devART are no longer active
First reason – the ones I’ve connected with over there have abandoned their devART pages. It makes sense, we’re all (working) adults now. Some of us may have gotten married and have children and have no time to socialize on the internet anymore. Some of us became career-oriented and no longer have the time to create our forms of art. Lastly, some of us have found other interests where we focus our artistic talents towards our love for our interests, which in turn, we don’t even bother with updating our devART with our new art pieces anymore.
At least, that’s how I felt then. But once I became inspired to create more art with the handy iPad and Procreate, I also realized that no one’s going to see my new art pieces anymore. There were a few from the community that I’ve never met before, but as soon as I checked out their devART page, their content were not I expected. I don’t mind non-visual art content, I don’t mind literary content, but non-genuine content is something I would have questions with. More on this later.
The communities I used to be part of are no longer active
I hoped that the communities I joined were still active and be able to reach them. Unfortunately, even the communities themselves were no longer active. I remembered one of the most active communities I joined years ago had their latest update of 2016. That was how outdated it was. This also reminded me that the owners may have moved on from this community, this particular interest, or deviantART altogether.
There was no point of me starting a new community because everyone over there are strangers to me, plus I’m not a big devART account anyway.
Generative AI
I first began using generative AI2 during my data analytics bootcamp program last year. We were taught to use it to generate some sample and references of job resumes and cover letters based on the information we provide. However, the words these AI programs generate doesn’t sound naturally human, so it’s not wise to just copy and paste them and pass it off as a genuine resume or cover letter. This is why I feel that generated AI is helpful in terms of references.
However, as a beginner artist, I have partial feelings towards generated AI being used to generate some (digital) artwork of some sort. Unfortunately, these are becoming a lot more unavoidable. Because of the processes that generative AI uses to generate these artwork, actual human artists posting their artwork on the internet are suffering and are at risk of losing their credibility as artists.
The way it works is that generative AI sources already existing art from all over the internet and generally combines them together to create new art. Sure, that may be somewhat okay if the artwork that was sourced was public domain, but (as of this writing) AI doesn’t limit their sourcing to exclude copyright-protected art. Because of that, generative AI also causes plagiarism altogether. Those prompting AI to create such art may or may not be aware of the process that generative AI does to create their “art.”
There are some people who try to train generative AI based on their own artwork, so that it prevents AI from “outsourcing” towards AI art. I’ve read articles about some manga artists in Japan doing this, so that it would be a little faster and easier for them to assemble their original manga scenes. I’m not a manga artist myself, so I don’t know how generative AI is working for them.
I too admit that I’ve used generative AI apps on my phone before to generate an “animated” version of my selfies to use as social media profile images. However, when I started getting that artistic vibe in me and making small kawaii art resembling myself, I began to replace these AI-generated profile pics with my own art.
Going back to the issue of devART, it now has a new featured called deviantART DreamUp. DreamUp allows creators to open a devART account and then posting generated AI-based artwork and then post them as art. It’s not perfect, of course, so there are still human artists who are opposed with it. I tolerated them at first in the beginning, as long as they’re tagged as AI art, but as time went by, I was beginning to feel dismayed. devART is one of the places where I can explore and admire creative works by other creatives around the world, but with very impressive AI art already overflowing the general gallery, I feel that devART as itself was no longer authentic.
Seeing so much AI art flooding devART galleries not only made me feel inauthentic, but it also gave me the nostalgia feeling that the vibrant community of devART from the old days are officially gone. This was the final straw for me and I decide to cancel my CORE membership and delete my entire account, along with 20+ years worth of my crappy creations. At least they’re handmade…
My thoughts about Generative AI artists
Please, be authentic and be truthful. Just simply state that you created your artwork using generative AI. In that way, those against AI art would not have to pay attention to your art.3 Lastly, don’t sell your AI art because you’ll never know that an artist out there can slap you with a plagiarism lawsuit.
But also, I do hope that you take some time to learn how to draw on your own. There are plenty of free tutorials there, as well as paid ones. Paper and pencil and pen is a good start too. Not only that creating your own art makes you feel original, so to speak, but it also relaxes your mind. Plus they’re a lot of fun to make too as a hobby. You can even sell your art through different types of merch with your own designs and then have your own shop on the side.
In general, human eyes can easily tell if a piece of art is handmade or generated by AI, so please, keep that in mind.
Where I am now?
I am on Pixiv and on Cara. On Cara, I don’t have any followers and I don’t follow anyone there because the account is brand new. Unfortunately, I don’t know anyone who uses that platform, but Cara is very promising.
Pixiv also accepts generative AI art, but there is also a tag to apply on these types of artworks. In that way, users can filter their views. I found Cara and other alternative platforms on a devART journal entry here.
If you stumble upon this post and a fellow (beginner) artist like me, I hope to see you!
