Steph Fizer Coleman

LMPB Success Story: Julian Plum — Let's Make Picture Books One of my big joys in Let’s Make Picture Books is seeing students polish their skills, take creative leaps, and go on to sign with agents and start illustrating (and sometimes authoring) children’s bo...

I really enjoyed reading Julian's interview over on Let’s Make Picture Books Blog 🤩 Lots of great advice!

Thanks @julianplum.com @stephfc.bsky.social

www.letsmakepicturebooks.com/blog/lmpb-su...

#kidlitart

Generative Al is being marketed as a tool designed to reduce or eliminate the need for developed, cognitive skillsets. It uses the work of others to simulate human output, except that it lacks grasp of nuance, contains grievous errors, and ultimately serves the goal of human beings being neurologically weaker due to the promise of the machine being better equipped than the humans using it would ever exert the effort to be. The people that use generative Al for art have no interest in being an artist; they simply want product to consume and forget about when the next piece of product goes by their eyes. The people that use generative Al to make music have no interest in being a musician; they simply want a machine to make them something to listen to until they get bored and want the machine to make some other disposable slop for them to pass the time with. The people that use generative Al to write things for them have no interest in writing. The people that use generative Al to find factoids have no interest in actual facts. The people that use generative Al to socialize have no interest in actual socialization. In every case, they've handed over the cognitive load of developing a necessary, creative human skillset to a machine that promises to ease the sweat equity cost of struggle. Using generative Al is like asking a machine to lift weights on your behalf and then calling yourself a bodybuilder when it's done with the reps. You build nothing in terms of muscle, you are not stronger, you are not faster, you are not in better shape. You're just deluding yourself while experiencing a slow decline due to self-inflicted atrophy.

re: generative AI

I have finally fully and accurately explained my problem with how it’s marketed and used.

And now, you can use it, too.

Letter from Kurt Vonnegut to high school students - "Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta: I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana. What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow. Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula. Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK? Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow. God bless you all! Kurt Vonnegut"

The Kurt Vonnegut letter to those high school kids is never wrong -

Back at it with the Bird Mail newsletter as of last week, promising very occasional emails with new bird art.

I declared this month to be Hummingbird Month and started by painting a rufous-crested coquette. So fancy, eh?

Bird Mail is a free newsletter at www.stephaniefizercoleman.com/bird-mail

🎉🎉🎉

A four panel comic titled Bird Sounds. In panel 1, labeled thrush, a wood thrush sings its beautiful eeohlay song against a forest background. In panel 2, labeled wren, a winter wren delicately sings tweedly tweedly tweedly. In panel 3, labeled warbler, a yellow warbler delicately sings sweet sweet. In panel 4, labeled heron in a death metal font, a heron screams KRAAGH against a background of fire.

Bird sounds.

"i asked grok" "i asked chatgpt" yeah well i asked carl sagan and he said the greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge 🧪

thanks Natasha!

Well I cant stand summer but these red ruffed lemurs don't mind.

Important June Dates

3 Egg Day
4 Hug Your Cat Day
4 Cheese Day
6 Donut Day
10 Ballpoint Pen Day
13 Pigeon Day
14 Gin Day
18 Picnic Day
18 Panic Day
19 Sauntering Day
21 Longest Day (WTAF)
22 Onion Ring Day
23 Pink Day
30 Meteor Day

It’s always worth repeating that when the tech guys say “we are going to disrupt x industry”, they mean they are going to disrupt the wages of the workers and make it easier for capitalists to exploit us.

When you outsource thinking, you not only get garbage, but lose your ability to think. When you lose your ability to think, someone else gets to hand you what they call “reality”.

I have those fancy pens I make on sale. thingsbydan.myshopify.com/products/pis...

For a hot second, I thought it said "earnest newt" and I was like yeah he's a serious guy, that makes sense 😂

well you've worked so so hard and it's just a joy to see the pieces finally coming together for you!

Amazing! So happy for you I could cry 🥹

You're a monster! That's a textural nightmare food 😂

It's penguin month in the Bird Mail newsletter and this week we met the gentoo penguin, known for being a super zippy swimmer.

Sad you missed out on this week's Bird Mail? Get the free newsletter here and get new bird art and facts delivered every Tuesday: stephfc.com/bird-mail

season three, but you already know that!

Thanks for sharing, Sarah!

thank you for not using AI!

Fairy Penguin from yesterday's edition of the Bird Mail newsletter.

Get my bird art and bird facts delivered to your inbox each week and give your eyeballs a break from All The Things: www.stephaniefizercoleman.com/bird-mail

White-Eyed Thrush from yesterday's edition of the Bird Mail newsletter.

Get my bird art and bird facts delivered to your inbox each week and give your eyeballs a break from all the Things: www.stephaniefizercoleman.com/bird-mail

A four panel meme from "The White Lotus," S3, Ep,6, Panel 1: Saxton: Why can't you just like my geneative A*I art? Panel 2: Chelsea: You have to be vulnerable enough to be bad at something to be good at it, but you're too much of a coward. Panel 3: Chelsea: Because you're soulless. Panel 4: Saxton disassociating

"to democratize art is not every person having a cute drawing made in seconds, to democratize art is every person having time and health to learn and make art if they chose to, and mainly to have the means to think and relate introspectively with art."

One bright side to being forced to live in an AI slop tornado is now I see my artistic mistakes as incredibly endearing. The human machine of my body made that weird line. My worst day of drawing is completely untouchably better than anything AI will ever produce until the heat death of the universe

American Robin for yesterday's edition of the Bird Mail newsletter.

Get my bird art and bird facts delivered to your inbox each week and give your eyeballs a break from all the Things: www.stephaniefizercoleman.com/bird-mail

yup cheesecake is the correct answer! and congrats on a second book too! i'm so excited for you and can't wait to see your books out in the world 🎉

what are you doing to celebrate turning in your first book art???

Doing a new thing for fellow bird nerds and folks who want cute bird art and fascinating bird facts booped into their inbox every week! Bird Mail 🐦

It's a free weekly newsletter (not Substack) and you can sign up here: www.stephaniefizercoleman.com/bird-mail

The first bird will land tomorrow.