Monty Singer, Brian Gonzales and Cody Kamrowski are giving up their big studio, so the last Thursday night painting session at the Edith Bunker was on April 10th. I have been drawing there since 2017:
DRAWINGS
COLORED SHARPIES
I continued to draw with colored Sharpies, trying to add some bulk to my figure drawings:
PENCIL DRAWINGS
PRINTMAKING
CUSTOM DIE CUTTER
We received the custom die cutter that Tim ordered from the Ukraine on Ebay, to punch 7 inch wide "hat" shapes out of linoleum and expanded PVC foam. I have not really tried it yet, but we did discover that we need some real pressure even to punch out "hat" shapes from Styrofoam:
The large "hat" linocut shapes were exactly 20 inches at the widest, and about 15 inches at the tallest:
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KREA allowed us to train 5 AI models for free in the first week of April, as a way to celebrate their new remodeled website. So I trained 6 six models on my drawings, and also subscribed to their basic membership for a year on March 31, 2025:
The die cutter will be especially useful to punch out "hat" tessellation shapes from expanded PVC foam, since we can not cut PVC on the laser cutter. However we can cut PVC on the CNC at Quelab, and bought a drag knife to do that.
STEAMROLLER TESSELLATIONS
Meanwhile Ethan laser cut some large linoleum hat shapes (from 36x36 inch sheets from Dick Blick) -- 20 inches at the widest -- so that we can make large collaborative Steamroller prints during the Southwest Print Fiesta in October. Each sheet only took about 10 minutes to cut:
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20 Inches at the Widest --
DOWNLOAD to cut in LightBurn:
We thank Brian at Quelab for designing the vector file for the laser cutter (without any double lines, where the "hat" shapes meet):
Four large tessellation tiles
will fit in a square
(also we could carve the grey remainder pieces as well)
I already gave out large tessellation tiles, to Ellie Weadock, Henry Morales, Remarque Print Workshop, Adam Berman at UNM, and sent two large tiles to Joe Marshall in Tucson:
Jessica Krichels accepts
a large tessellation tile at Remarque Print Workshop
- I have 12 large tessellation tiles, however I do not think that the Southwest Print Fiesta has enough Paper and Patience to make more than three prints. We will be discussing that next month, and perhaps even find more steamroller printmaking opportunities.
OTHER
Deborah and I had a good time at Remarque Print Workshop during their SCREEN PRINT SOCIAL HOUR in the evening of April 25, 2025. I was thinking about doing a social hour for cutting small tessellation linocuts.
Diwan Bhathal came through Albuquerque on April 10th, and helped push the printmaking fever forward. I sent him a tessellation tile to carve:
Diwan Bhathal came through town,
with a lot of printmaking enthusiasm
- We also learned this month that the next SGCI print conference will be coming to Albuquerque in 2017.
AI ART
KREA
KREA Blog Posts -- and the AI Models trained on my drawings:
- KREA Training
- (Flux model) Abstract Figure Drawing
- (Flux public model) Entangled Knots
- KREA -- Finished My Drawings
- (Flux model) KRRRL Book
- (Flux model) Mechanical Figure Sketches
- KREA -- in Real Time
- (Realtime model) KRRRL Long Drawings
- ORIGINAL vs AI Drawings
- Abstract into AI FIGURES
- April 7, 2025
- (WAN video model) KRRRL book drawings
ORIGINAL vs AI Drawings
AI VIDEO
Google AI Studio allowed us to generate AI videos for free using VEO 2 (since about April 15th). I can upload an image and create an incredible video -- but Google censors like crazy, and will not allow me to upload an image with a person in it:
Perhaps even crazier (though not as good) were the AI videos I generated on a semi-super computer at Quelab. Holly sent us a Docker Container with the WAN 2 video generator. It took about a half hour to download that 28 gig container at Quelab. Then Adam set it up so that I could generate short AI videos locally, without using a service on the Internet:
Chat to 3D
I got Google's "Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental 03-25" (in Google AI Studio) to generate 3D objects from the 2D images I uploaded, by asking for OpenSCAD code. I did this for free at the beginning of the month, April 2nd -- but by April 15th the experimental version was no longer available, and the "Gemini 2.5 Pro" version was charging:
AI in BLENDER
The new MCP (Model Context Protocol) approach allows one to talk to Blender directly, using Claude Desktop, to make a 3D scene. Merely by chatting -- one did not need to know or go through any Blender commands to do it! It was a little convoluted to set up (but Tim and Adric got it setup at Quelab), and there were some limitations -- but chatting with AI looks like the simple way to create things in the future:
KREA STAGE
I generated a 3D scene with the "Stage" feature in KREA,
and downloaded this 2D render from it
(I can also download a 3D scene file as well)
- HIT RADIO AI -- online music station with all AI music
MORE
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Gerald Peters Gallery banner
promoting Tom Birkner
Tom Birkner's painting
SUMMARIES
