#Is an AI painting app useful?

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

amber wadi
#

I've built Brushly AI - an AI tool for miniature painters. Born out of being new to the hobby, struggling to keep track of paint recipes and work out how to paint minis to a better standard. It’s something I built for myself, but now wondering if it's useful for all levels of painters. It's still in beta (and completely free), but provides a number of features you may find helpful.

It can reverse-engineer colour schemes, suggest paint combinations, help keep track of your paint collection, give coaching on partially painted minis and show which paints you own vs need to buy. I'm looking for feedback from actual painters. Is this useful? What features would you want?

Check it out: https://brushly-ai.vercel.app
Any thoughts or brutal honesty appreciated! 🙏

Screenshot_2025-10-16_at_16.19.39.png Screenshot_2025-10-23_at_18.55.44.png Screenshot_2025-10-21_at_16.13.08.png
Brushly AI - Miniature Recipe Expert

AI-generated paint recipes and expert advice for perfect miniature painting

sleek spoke
zinc bluff
#

I don't have much of an idea if this is useful, but I do have two upfront questions.

  1. There seems to be a requirement for an account. Is this a temporary or permanent thing?
  2. Why are Google or Github the only options for account creation?
amber wadi
#

Hi, an account is needed to save the recipes and create a paint inventory.

Google and GitHub were the easiest to implement for the beta. If you prefer other ways let me know

zinc bluff
#

That makes sense about saving stuff, but what if someone's just looking for a one-time thing?
I realize that's probably a "solution looking for a problem" scenario, but it's something that just stuck out to me.

I don't really have a preference for other methods.

subtle ginkgo
#

No thank you.

Keep AI out of art.

Recipes don’t matter.

Just turn your computer off for a while and paint.

dreamy bronze
#

Hi @amber wadi we have a no self promotion rule here. And generally speaking it's good manners to ask moderators if it's ok to be promoting things in any discord before you post it.

dreamy bronze
#

Also given it is AI can you give some insight into how you trained it?
What was your input data etc?

pure gale
#

“Is an AI painting app useful” was the original query so I’ll answer that

No.

lunar path
#

i'm not trying to be mean at all and i'm sure a lot of work went into making it i don't know the first thing about how to create an ai or an app so it is impressive you made something like this!! but tbh i just don't know how much practical use a thing like this has for our hobby?

#

there's already such a crazy amount of information and resources out there for how to paint miniatures

#

and i'm not sure what an ai can tell me about recreating a color scheme that my own eyes or better yet just asking the person who painted it in the first place could tell me if you get what i'm trying to say

amber wadi
amber wadi
dreamy bronze
#

Ok, if you've not trained and built it yourself then that means it will be built on almost exclusively stolen content. Generally speaking you'll find people in artistic spaces to be default dismissive to fully hostile to AI for this reason.

The only way you might get something like to be seen as a positive tool is to be fully training it yourself using data that is ethically sourced.

amber wadi
# dreamy bronze Ok, if you've not trained and built it yourself then that means it will be buil...

Thanks, that's interesting feedback. Just to clarify you're saying that use of generally available AI models (GPT, Claude, Gemini) is not well liked in the artistic community, as they likely have used "stolen" content in training those models (somewhere in their history)? So away from my idea/app, most artists/painters would be against using Gemini or ChatGPT for example to get AI feedback on their painted mini or ask AI to analyse how a particular base or armour may have been created.

dreamy bronze
#

I can't speak for everyone obviously but it's a very common sentiment. I'd encourage you to go look in some illustration circles to see how they feel about image generation AI.

If you were to actually train something on your own paint jobs and basic colour swatches etc. then it would probably be more palatable but you'd need to be very clear it was fully ethically sourced training otherwise people would just assume it was stolen content. And it's not "stolen" it is actually just fully scraped from the internet with no permission from the creators, so no quotation needed.

bleak hazel
# amber wadi I've built Brushly AI - an AI tool for miniature painters. Born out of being new...

Honestly, most people on here or well experienced in the hobby just have a strong dislike for new gimmicky tools that will help you do better because we know they don't work.

The clearest message we try to send people that come in here asking for help is to just practice.
Practice, practice, practice and before you know it you will look at a miniature and know how to get a similar result without having to know which brand of paint was used or how the colors were blended.

I don't need an AI to tell me how Richard Grey gets the results he does. He gets them by being damned skilled and experienced. That's it. That's always the answer.

For more specific questions ask a human.

tired birch
#

I think GW's mostly responsible for this idea of a recipe, and wanting to know exactly which paints are used. Sticking with the culinary language, knowing the ingredients doesn't tell you the method. I think in general it would be better to teach new hobbyists more useful things like color theory, volume and material, etc.

I also generally agree with the sentiment that I dislike the use of an AI that wasn't specifically trained on approved and known good data. If it was trained on reddit or instagram posts, I expect it to be largely useless, and find it immoral.

cerulean schooner
subtle ginkgo
cerulean schooner
faint night
#

Generally, any tool that requires an account to try out or use is usually not useful to me at all. If there is one thing that annoys me to the point that I will happily prefer the competition, it. Is the unnecessary requirement to create an account. Like my freaking lightbulb app that worked fine without an account now requires one.

zinc bluff
#

I agree with the account thing.
I was willing to entertain the idea is trying* it, until I came up against needing an account. I don't want that associated with my Google account, and don't have (or want) a GitHub account.

*(By "try" I of course mean running it once or twice in attempt to break/confuse it and then probably never bothering again)

dreamy bronze
subtle ginkgo
bleak hazel
proud garnet
shadow hornet
#

No. Gods no. Not only will Abominable Intelligence often lie to you, but its only good at replicating simulacra instead of actually creating. And that's to say nothing of it heavily impairing your cognitive ability by relying on a machine, like how people can't do math in their head without calculators.

brazen heart
#

The other useful thing an AI app could do is focus on Value. Where to put highlights, shadows and secondary reflections.
Still has the same issue with how the AI was being trained though.

latent anvil
#

Can I also point out the obvious thing that this seems like an abuse of the Help channel? This is clearly not the user asking for help, but rather using this as a platform to promote their AI-powered web app.

tired birch
# latent anvil Can I also point out the obvious thing that this seems like an abuse of the Help...

I don't know about that necessarily. I'm not the target audience for the app for sure but I don't know there's a place where they could gather this much feedback in one place continuously. It's not a painting journal for sure and would've easily died within the day if posted in #general-miniatures . Not everyone involved with AI is actively malicious, some are just misguided or don't care about the issues we've all outlined.

wooden kraken
#

I dont get why it needs AI?

It organizes?

If it organizes maybe.

I dont see how i can use it. Cos ok i do use AI for simple recolors, just to see how it looks. Gemini. The free one.
Also with feedback i dont think i wanna get that from a robot.

So yeah im curious but also dont see the use for it

sleek spoke
#

“reverse engineer colour schemes, suggest paint combinations, help keep track of your paint collection, give coaching on partially painted minis and show which paints you own vs which you need to buy.”

lunar path
#

it would be nice if real hobby help threads got as much activity as this one 😭 😭

bleak hazel
lunar path
#

youre RIGHT

amber wadi
# wooden kraken I dont get why it needs AI? It organizes? If it organizes maybe. I dont see h...

Personally I've found the app equally useful as an organising tool, keeping track of paints I have and need. Would the app be useful to keep track of paint supplies and painting projects......what you're aiming to try and paint soon, etc?

Perhaps I should aim the app as a paint/project organiser, rather than a focussing on AI features. Which (and thanks for all the honest feedback) I now understand are not wanted and there's concern with how the models are trained.

wooden kraken