Re-visiting the Jabberwock

 kw: ai experiments, artificial intelligence, generated art, poems, illustrations, photo essays

A little more than two years ago I used Dall-E2 to illustrate the poem "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll. Now that there are four high quality generative art sites that I use, I experimented with bringing just the Jabberwock itself up to date. In nearly all cases the programs relied on dragon imagery.

This is a wide-view redraw by Dall-E3 of one result of my second prompt. It's a little less sinister than the results of the first prompt. Here is how it went:

Dall-E3: "The Jabberwock"

All are fierce dragons in near-silhouette. All but one are shown against the Moon.

Dall-E3: "The Jabberwock as a pastel painting"

The word "pastel" has evoked a less sinister atmosphere. We find flowers and butterflies and in one case the dragon is actually smiling. Now that Dall-E3 can recast a square image into one with a wider aspect ratio I had it re-do the second image, on upper right. Note that the wide image at the top of the post has elements from all four images. By experimentation I found that, while re-formatting each image produces a different result, repeating the re-format step on a particular square image yields exactly the same wider image as the prior re-formatting on that image. The re-formatting offerings are square and 4:3, but the resulting wide format images are actually 1792x1024, with a ratio of 1.75:1 or 7:4. That's close enough to 16:9 (HD) that it takes just a little cropping to produce a 16:9 image (1792x1008), which can be put through Upscayl to make it big enough to use for an HD wallpaper.

I went on to try Gemini (formerly Bard), which now uses Imagen 3 to make images, and only one at a time. The 3-panel pasteup here is from three prompts:

• An image of the Jabberwock from the poem Jabberwocky
• An image of the Jabberwock from the poem Jabberwocky as a pastel painting
• A full-body image of the Jabberwock from the poem Jabberwocky as a pastel painting

Adding "pastel" definitely produces a less fierce result. The third item is the least dragonlike. Unfortunately for much of what I do, one cannot outpaint with Gemini, and asking for "wide format" or "HD ratio" gets ignored.. Maybe such options are available with Gemini Plus, but I haven't yet signed up for that.

I looked next to Leonardo AI, which is the most recent tool I've used. It has many options and variations. Here I'll present four sets of results. Leo produces images in a horizontal string. I rearranged these as 2x2 rectangular arrays. The original images are 1368x768 pixels, not quite a 16:9 ratio (though it's labeled as such in the menu), but 171:96.

Leonardo: "The Jabberwock from the poem Jabberwocky as a pastel painting", Portrait, Cinematic

The "eye" in each image is a flag that indicates it is public. One needs a paid subscription to make private images. Though these are all dragonoid, some of them have no wings. This prompt without "pastel painting" produced much darker and fiercer results.

Leonardo: "The Jabberwock from the poem Jabberwocky", Concept Art, Stylistic Illustration

These were the most colorful results of all my experiments with Leo. The "Concept Art" setting pushes such limits. Though these have fierce expressions, they are rather cute.

Leonardo: "The Jabberwock from the poem Jabberwocky", Graphic Design, 3D

These are quite dark and sinister, but not as dark as some results.

Leonardo: "The Jabberwock from the poem Jabberwocky as a pastel painting", Graphic Design, 3D

The addition of "pastel" has lightened things up a lot, both in visual and emotional tone. It's interesting to note that these critters all have multiple tails. I count lavender as the least threatening hue.

Finally, I turned to Playground, which was once the most flexible of the tools. Since they shut down Canvas mode in mid-September, it has been harder to use all the filters and other options. The free version is slow, and sometimes times out. Playground also presents a horizontal string of four images, which I rearranged as a 2x2 matrix. I set aspect ratio to 4:3 mode, which one would expect to yield 1.333:1 images; the actual images are 1216x832, about 1.46:1 or 19:13. For the two Playground mode where this was possible I used the Watercolor filter, considering it similar to saying "pastel painting". Playground has three image engines available.

Playground: "The Jabberwock from the poem Jabberwocky", Stable Diffusion XL, Watercolor filter

The background architecture in items 1 and 4 adds interest. SDXL is now considered a "traditional" or even "retro" engine. I also had the option to set a "faithfulness to prompt" setting, and used 4 ("more free").

Playground: "The Jabberwock from the poem Jabberwocky", Playground v2.5, Watercolor filter

As I've frequently observed, PG25 is edgier and typically a bit darker.

Playground: "The Jabberwock from the poem Jabberwocky", Playground v3.0, no filter

Wow! What a difference from all the others. PG30 is apparently more attuned to "poem". It even tried to write one (second image), though the character strings are illegible. The third image looks like it could be a bookplate. PG30 is now the most colorful and creative engine Playground has to offer; it was introduced earlier this year.

I must say a word about limits and conditions in the free versions I use.

• Dall-E3 lets you run 15 prompts daily, and each prompt yields four images. There appears to be no charge for re-formatting an image.
• Gemini has no explicit limit, but when I asked, it told me that sending many image requests in rapid sequence could slow things down.
• Leonardo AI gives you 150 points to use in a day. However, that doesn't mean 150 images. There are about ten (the number occasionally varies) Presets. Two of them "charge" 10 points per prompt, and in the free version, you always get four images per prompt. One of them is 24 points (on a few occasions I saw it was 104 points). The rest are 14 points. So it is possible to generate fifteen 10-pointers, or ten 14-pointers plus one 10-pointer, or six 24-pointers (with 6 unusable points) per day. A "day" resets to the time you created your account, which is 8PM for me. You can outpaint and inpaint with Leonardo, for variable numbers of points per action.
• Playground originally let me generate 150 images daily, up to four at a time. More recently the limit has been 50, and at present I don't see an indication of how many images I have left in a session.

Paying for a subscription to Playground or Leonardo AI opens up greatly expanded limits, and added functionality. I haven't tried all the combinations of either of these programs, but one day I may pick one of them to subscribe to. I have lots else going on in my life, so I don't see much need to do so at the moment.

AI illustrates Jabberwocky

kw: ai experiments, artificial intelligence, generated art, poems, illustrations

Behold the Jabberwock! The first poem longer than a nursery rhyme that I learned to recite was "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and other books.

I've been experimenting a lot with DALL-E 2, and I decided to see how it might "illustrate" the poem. First I prompted it with the word Jabberwocky. This is an out-painting of one of the results.

DALL-E's initial response was this panel of four images:

It's interesting that two of the pictures have the creature holding a book or paper, indicating that DALL-E "knows" this is a piece of literature. I like the whimsical blue ones, so I out-painted the second one also. 

Note that each session of out-painting required five or six "generate" actions, each of which consumed a credit. For those new to DALL-E 2, when you sign up you receive 50 free credits, which is enough to help someone become familiar with the way it works. Thereafter, 15 free credits are added to your account each month, but must be used up in the month they are added. If your usage is light, and you have a modicum of patience, that is enough. At any time, credits can be bought in batches of 115 for $15, which comes to just over 13¢ per credit. Thus, generating each of these lovely creatures cost me about 75¢.

I wanted to have DALL-E illustrate the verses of the poem. I decided to get its response to couplet after couplet; each verse is two couplets. DALL-E doesn't keep track of what we do with it so I knew I couldn't get it to produce illustrations with any coherence from one to the next. Therefore, I just generated a single response for each couplet and extracted all the results.

Here they are; enjoy!

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

      And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

      The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

      The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;

      Long time the manxome foe he sought—

So rested he by the Tumtum tree

      And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

      The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

      And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

      The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

      He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

      Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

      He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

      And the mome raths outgrabe.

I did not re-run the last verse. The source for the text of the poem is the Poetry Foundation. It differs slightly from my recitation memory.

Anatomy without all the dissection

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, nature, illustrations

I sometimes wish I'd have kept up the drawing I did as a child. A lack of eye-hand coordination meant quick drawings weren't accurate, and to draw a good likeness of anything was much too time-consuming. I sometimes marvel at the drawing skills of naturalists, pre-eminently Roger Tory Peterson, whose Field Guide series sets a very high standard for nature illustrating. Nature Anatomy: The Curious Parts & Pieces of the Natural World, written and illustrated by Julia Rothman is not quite a field guide, so much as an enthusiast's collection of nature arcana, illustrated in a more cartoonish style.

The "anatomy" is primarily external, no dissecting knife needed. This illustration of the parts of a flower from page 62, and a cutaway of Earth on pages 14-15, are about as "deep" as it gets.

Many more pages are devoted to catalogs of interesting specimens from every natural realm, at least for critters and plants larger than an inch or so. There is a good illustration of the various kinds of feathers on a bird, and one of the external anatomy of a typical insect, using an ant. This page of butterflies of interest to the author is typical.

A book such as this is not intended to convey lots of knowledge. Indeed, if you add up the words, they amount to a small chapter. Rather, it introduces the reader/viewer to all the breadth of living things. Quite an enjoyable book.

Sandblasting your Senses

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, essays, poetry, illustrations

The book jacket blurb from the Seattle Times reads, "When Margaret Atwood is good, she's very good. And when she's barbed, she's better." So I can't say I wasn't warned.

Atwood's little book The Tent is touted as an essay collection, and it mostly is. A few chapters are poems in free verse. I read these little pieces at odd moments while reading other books. Whether she's rebuking photographers of all ilk as papparazzi, looking at orphans from a round half-dozen viewpoints (except their own...), or recasting old fairy tales to comment on society and politics, she has her stompin' boots on.

Perhaps she's working at filling the shoes of Dorothy Parker—though reading between the lines, Atwood's done better at love. Or perhaps, instead, those of Alice (Roosevelt) Longwood, of the famed pillow reading, "If you don't have anything nice to say about anybody, come sit be me." Her illustrations are an odd cross between Egyptian temple art and Dr. Seuss.

Her voluminous prior writing, both fiction and nonfiction, covers quite a spectrum, and can be warm or dry, bitter or humorous, so this little volume may simply be, as the last line in the book reads, "...the right thing to do on the darkest day of the year."