this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2025
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Unfortunately, yes.
You're looking at AI upscaling as a shortcut to the end result you want: your book. But from experience, jumping to the end of something robs you of the joy and accomplishment of doing the hard work to get there.
Instead ask if the book really needs illustrations. If it does, wouldn't taking the time to do them right be better? It would also give you more time to revise the other aspects of it.
If this is something you're passionate about, don't douse water on that fire by cheating to the end. If it's not something you're passionate about, why do it in your free time to begin with? If you think you'll somehow make money off it, you'll have plenty more hurdles to go through that can't be AI'd away. If it's just a passion project, use that fucking passion.
I understand the intense desire to just be great at something without putting all the effort in. But there really are no shortcuts to this shit. The main advantage that other people have over you on this is that they started earlier, so they have more time put into it already.
You're right, but what if I'm not good enough?
No one cares. Have fun, learn to draw.
I care. and I hate my own work the most.
That seems to be a common opinion among artists, I guess because you can see all the flaws in the thing you made and where you wish it were better. Those feelings are real, but they're not true. Your art was fine before; it didn't need any improving, enhancing, or upscaling to be art or to be valuable.
One theory of the true nature of art is that it isn't at all to do with what's on the canvas or what shape the sculpture comes out being, but that art is fundamentally about who is making it, and how they do it, and why they do it that way.
You're asking if what you end up with is "slop", but no one can answer that for you because slop isn't a natural kind. If you want your art process to be a process where you do some sketching and then run it through a graphics card along with all of art history and a short poem, you can absolutely be the artist who does that process, and what comes out will be genuinely your art.
But it sounds like right now you are an artist who does some sketching, doesn't really like the result, and taps something they don't really believe in, instrumentally, for the sake of a more marketable end product. And who then turns to the Internet because actually they feel bad about that process and don't really stand behind it, looking for some kind of approval or permission they can't give themselves.
Develop a process consistent with your values, steal as much or as little as you like (as all great artists do), ignore the opinions of people on the Internet, and whatever you end up with will be art. Act against the compass of your own soul, chasing the approval of others, and the result can only be slop.
Then become better.
I'm trying. It's hard.
Yeah. Would be weird if it wasn't hard. You won't get there taking shortcuts like AI though.