I am an interdisciplinary artist and illustrator from Estonia, exploring the integration of traditional analogue and digital mediums. I enjoy using AI tools to achieve a co-creation space where generated input informs the final artwork. The subject matter of my work often takes inspiration from art made by children and explores parallels between the development of humans and technology. I would like my work to challenge stereotypes of AI art, and present it as something created with intention, requiring skill and (human) creativity.

My work aims to interrogate the parallels and differences between AI art and children’s art, as well as naive styles of illustration and drawing that demonstrate simplified or caricature like imagery. My personal illustration practice draws inspiration from childrens books and cartoons, the drawings of my siblings, and decorative illustrations.

Teaching the Machine is an ongoing project through which I explore the integration of classic and AI art mediums and what their collaboration might produce. The subject matter is informed by children's drawings and naive style illustrations to highlight the current developmental stage of AI as we know it today, which could also be considered as being in its infancy.

My preferred style of illustration and drawing is strongly influenced by the books I read and cartoons I watched as a child, or have discovered and enjoyed later on in life. Some important sources of inspiration to me are the art and writings of Tove Jansson, Richard Scarry, Hannu Mäkelä, Sven Nordqvist, Ilon Wikland, and many others.

An example of exploring the collaboration of human and machine, the digital and the physical, is using generated outcomes of a styleGan trained on my own drawings as a source of inspiration and basis of collaboration. In this project, I took the generated drawings and continued or added to them based on what I thought the computer intended to depict, if it were a beginner artist, or a child still learning to draw.