My Character Art Process

My particular superpower—if I’m allowed to claim one—is words. For a long time, that actually created a problem when it came to commissioning artwork for my books.

Years ago, I hired a well-known and talented artist to create character art for me. I did what authors generally do: I wrote a detailed brief describing the characters, their appearance, their clothing, the mood, the setting, and what I imagined the finished piece would look like.

The artwork cost thousands of dollars, and when it finally arrived, it simply wasn’t what I had envisioned, yet couldn’t be changed. That wasn’t necessarily because the artist had done anything wrong. The problem was the gap between the picture in my head, the words I used to describe it, and the picture those words created in someone else’s head. By the time you discover that those three things aren’t the same, a tremendous amount of work may have already been done, and a considerable bill needs to be paid. The result was that I didn’t have art that fit my vision but couldn’t use the finished artwork, and couldn’t afford to commission more.

Around the same time, I conducted an experiment. I had created an AI version of character art myself, using a brief I had written. I presented readers with both versions: the professionally commissioned human artwork and the AI mock-up. Both versions were available for sale for a short time. Shockingly, in 50 sales, not a single reader bought the human-created version.

But I still wanted to use human artists. So those experiences changed the way I approached artwork.

I still begin with words, but now I use AI to create a visual mock-up of the characters I have in my head. I can describe them how I see them, adjust the language, change the composition, alter the clothing, expression, lighting, setting or mood, and keep iterating until the image on the screen begins to resemble the one that has been living in my imagination. I can keep trying until I get something close, even if it takes weeks, in a way that won’t break my budget. For those concerned about how AI systems are trained (understandably, I too have had my work stolen to train an AI), Adobe claims that Firefly is trained only on stock and public-domain material, as well as artwork that the humans have been compensated for the rights to use. So not all AI systems scrape artwork from the internet.

Once I have a mock-up that captures what I want, I give it to an artist, along with further instructions. Their job is different from that of an artist receiving a blank-page commission. She isn’t being asked to invent anything from scratch. She is recreating something based on an existing mock-up: correcting the things AI gets wrong, resolving details, improving anatomy, hands, fabrics, hair, eye-colour, expressions and other elements, and turning my rough visual concept into a polished piece I can use. Because of that arrangement, she doesn’t sign the finished artwork or present it as an original work in her portfolio.

Previously, I essentially had to say to an artist: “Here are 800 words. Please see what I see.”

Now I can say: “This. This is what I mean. Fix what isn’t right. Refine it. Make it better.”

That means fewer expensive misunderstandings, less wasted work for the artist, and a much greater chance that the finished piece that makes it into one of my books actually looks like the character I’ve been carrying around in my head.

For anyone worried that AI means human artists are on their way out, perhaps my own numbers will offer some reassurance.

Over the past ten years, I’ve spent a minimum of $36,000 per year commissioning human artists. In 2025 alone, I spent a staggering $75,000 on human-created designs. That figure also includes covers and special edition interior formatting, not only character art.

2025 was hardly the pre-AI era. High-quality AI image generation was already readily available. I could have stopped commissioning artists. But I have no plans to do that. I love hiring humans. I love putting beautiful artwork into my books. I love supporting the people whose skills help turn those books into objects readers want. If, as a reader, you decide that any use of AI whatsoever in a process is unacceptable, that’s fine. But there are many others like me who hand over substantial sums to humans every year, and the inclusion of AI in the process has not eliminated or even diminished those funds. In some cases, AI has increased the amount that goes to humans because the process now results in an accurate character portrait every time. There’s no more hoping the final art is usable.

For me, AI and human artists aren’t competing for the same chair. AI is simply another tool that helps me show someone else what I see. A human is responsible for the finished product.

That’s my current process as of 2026, and it was very hard won.

Below you can see an example of the process: from AI creation to the final image created by Sumera Kanwal, who works from the freelancer site Fiverr. I have had some suggest that her final work was still created with AI. If that’s so, then she has misrepresented her services to me very convincingly. She has provided process screenshots, sketches, and screen captures of her brush applying color.

No matter how we feel about the age of AI, making accusations without proof is not the way to address issues. There’s a reason people refer to it as a witch hunt. Women were put to the stake based on accusations and conjecture. At a certain point in history, a false accusation could mean someone’s life. Today, it can mean someone’s career. I won’t be found among the camp that points fingers, and I hope you will be considerate of creatives trying to make a living in a world where the rules are changing almost daily.

The image on left was created with AI, middle is Sumera's pencil rendering, final hand painted version is on the right.