As part of the CAS AI for Creative Practices course in late 2024, I explored how AI could help transform personal artistic styles into something new and dynamic. One special project was the creation of the gaumbART style generator.
Entire presentation see here.
Art and technology are blending more than ever. The gaumbART style generator project set out to see if an AI could learn the unique look and feel of handmade digital collages.
The project started by choosing 10 artworks from the "Best of gaumbART" gallery. These pieces show scenes like robots in canals, sculptures walking down stairs, and murals of children and saints. Using these images, a special AI model—the gaumbART-model—was trained on Replicate.com, using the Ostris Flux Dev Lora Trainer model.
Testing the AI: Fun and Surprises
The real fun began with testing. The AI was asked to create wild new images, like:
- A knight dancing with a dragon in a ballroom,
- A mural of a child sending love to her mother,
- Dogs riding Vespas through Florence.
Sometimes the results were strange, but often they captured important parts of the original artworks. The AI didn’t just copy; it created new versions with a playful twist. The random elements made the art even more lively and surprising.
Learning from the Experiments
Attempts to recreate original artworks through prompts showed that the model had truly understood the style. Even when the images weren’t perfect matches, they still felt right—keeping the dreamy, collage-like atmosphere alive.
One final masterpiece combined many elements: dragons flying in ballrooms, sculptures dancing, and gas-masked gods floating in the sea. It was pure gaumbART, seen through a new digital lens.
Final Thoughts
The gaumbART project proved something important: AI can be a creative partner, but the real artist is still the human behind it. Every image started with a human idea and vision.
Even something as funny as “an alien with an iPhone” became a piece of art when seen through the gaumbART style. This project shows that with the right mix of imagination and technology, the future of art is bright—and full of surprises.