I Used AI to Transform My Coloring Book Pages

Listen, I know a lot of people out there are sick of AI, frustrated with AI and I know there are a lot of people out there who are very critical of it, especially when it comes to creative endeavors, and things of that nature. However, I have found that using AI to make the things that I already do even cooler is a fun and interesting way to use AI, and I’ve enjoyed in my most recent project transforming paper coloring book pages using AI.

Here’s what I did: I colored some pictures and then took pictures of them with my phone. I’m not a professional in the use of AI. I’ve taken some courses on it, but I did not use any specific type of prompting for these really it was asking the AI to give me sort of a suggestion of ways to modify or change the artwork (texture, color, or style) so it gave me selections and choices and I also did prompt it to make the artwork look more realistic or 3D in some of them.

I think it’s really neat how AI can kind of bring that to life and add their own element of creativity to it. However, I also know a lot of people have concerns about that and feel like it’s taking your creativity away or it’s taking creativity away from people and I certainly can see where it can be like that because we’ve got lots of instances where people are just using AI to create and they’re not even putting any of their originality into it. I think that I like to use AI to create in a collaborative way.

As someone who thrives from creating, I love having the ability to use AI to modify or even make a whole new project or idea. Sometimes, there are things I never really would have thought about if I hadn’t used AI to help enhance something I had already done. That’s what I think the beauty of AI and creativity is; it’s a collaboration, and a way for a lot of us with more neurodivergent and scattered, ADHD brains, to actually store our thoughts and ideas. Sometimes, that’s all I need!

Other times, I think things like “I wonder what this coloring book page would look like if I asked AI to make it look more realistic?” The opportunity to explore these aspects of creation with AI I think are what make it truly valuable. We are definitely living in an age where being a copy cat and plagiarism is all over the place, however, if you learn to use AI in the right ways, if you use it to create beautiful things, or even just enhance beautiful things that you have already made, I think that is okay. I know a lot of artists may disagree with that. I kind of feel like we are living in this second Renaissance though, and it often involves exploring the many different ways we get to create now.

There are so many more tools available to us than ever before, and for people like me who have lived in a cycle of debt our whole lives, having affordable and interesting ways to use technology for the beauty of creation is just one way that we can access and use it. Do I think it’s important to still be an original artist and creator with your own content that is not altered or made using AI? Sure. Absolutely. Your raw, beautiful talent is wonderful and is absolutely enough, but I feel like as a society, we should be thinking about how we can use AI to expand our abilities, to create even more interesting art, and also ways that we can use it as a tool to teach people how to create!

I know personally, if I hadn’t thought to use AI to transform some of the pages I’ve colored in my coloring books, I wouldn’t have had such a neat idea for a post on my TikTok page, and my page is all about creation, art therapy, and inner healing. My advice to all the creatives and artists out there is to use AI in moderation, and don’t be afraid to explore with AI. It’s okay to explore, it’s okay to collaborate! As long as you are not just asking AI to do all the creative work for you, I think you are still creating, and you are still making something beautiful, and to me, that’s really all that matters at the end of the day. I’m enjoying seeing how I can use all these different tools now, and I’m excited for all of the new kinds of media that we have available to us now to create. The digital space CAN be a beautiful place to create, if you stay true to yourself, and you are honest.

I’m curious to know anyone else’s thoughts on this type of collaborative art or if they might have used AI to create in some unique ways, so if you have some interesting examples, please comment down below some creative ways that you have used AI! I would love to learn about some of the different ways others have used AI for creative projects.