Art by Jennifer Herd

It's been a nice few days 🥰

It's spring in High Park! New episode of Capybara & Squirrel.

So my latest artwork got quite the response! I was surprised and delighted when I saw how much engagement has been happening on this account. Thank you all for your likes, shares and (sometimes spicy) comments. I'm really glad to see this piece stirring up a few conversations where artists' property, technology and ethics are concerned. Your input has been very interesting so far, and I'm still catching up on reading your comments. It's especially lovely to see fellow artists showing their support here, and sharing how AI apps have been affecting their lives.

With that being said, welcome to my page! There's a lot of new followers on both my Facebook and Instagram accounts, so I thought I'd introduce myself. I'm an artist living and working in Toronto, with many years of experience in illustration, comics and design. I've had artwork on display all across the city, including the billboards at Yonge & Dundas Square, the Toronto Clothing Show, and have sold published comics at TCAF (Toronto Comics and Arts Festival). I have a shop on my homepage, which has prints, stickers and tote bags for sale.

I'm currently working on a series called Capybara & Squirrel, a little story about two animal friends living in the city. There's another series about covid-related dreams that I started over the pandemic, but it was sadly put on the back burner. I only posted sporadically during that time while I dealt with some life events. I'm working on a new look and feel for that one as we speak, and hopefully, I can turn out some episodes of that in 2024.

Everything else posted here will be one-offs, much like the illustration that brought you here this week. I'll be doing a bit of tidying up and rebranding across all of my platforms as well. I haven't been putting much care into this FB page, but that's another thing I'm working on!

Anyway, thanks again for being here! You can find my artwork in the following links:

http://clearlymissherd.com
http://clearlymissherd.com/shop
instagram.com/clearlymissherd
instagram.com/capybara_and_squirrel

Hi, it's me! Your artist friend. Well, one of your artist friends, as I imagine you have a number of artists in your life. And if you know these people well enough, you'll have watched their careers grow from humble art school beginnings to whatever awesome stuff they're doing in the present. Those careers are now under real threat of being replaced, and I'm here to tell you why.

Artwork-generating apps operate on a vast library filled with thousands upon thousands of art pieces that have been ripped from the internet. You can enter a few prompts, and the app will churn out a fully finished piece that took all of an afternoon to make. Yes, they often look really fake and are full of mistakes (eg: the hands), but these apps are getting smarter and more intuitive every day. Eventually, you won't be able to tell the difference between the above illustration and something that came out of one of these apps. And there are even app users who are now branding themselves as artists, and taking commissions from clients. Selling illustrations cobbled together from stolen art.

These days, I'm seeing endless AI images on my feed, and they're often followed by likes, shares and ooh-ing and ahh-ing in the comments. And a lot of these app users/fans don't understand that the art they're seeing was made possible by countless artists whose work was taken from them without consent, without credit and without pay. We have to compete against the algorithms of social media as it is. AI apps have made our fight exponentially harder.

I made this illustration over the course of the last two weeks, in between my shifts as a professional designer. It shows tired eyes, greying hair and the ever-present wrist braces that alleviate work-related pain. It's full of flaws, but they're MY flaws, not glitches caused by artificial generation. It took hours to make from scratch, and from my own creative mind. And if someone asked me to make one for them, you can bet your b***y I'd charge a good chunk of change for it. Artists charge for this stuff because it's how we survive. And it's worth the money. It's worth it because a real, living, breathing person created something like this from the depths of their soul. From years of painstaking education. From late hours and sore hands. And it's a glorious original piece that you can cherish forever (or you can like, re-gift it if you hate it, whatever. As long as we get paid.)

I've been told by my lovely friends (who I'm lucky to have) that AI will never replace me. Sadly, that just isn't the case, as my services have indeed been replaced by AI apps on more than one occasion. I have lost clients because of this. If you can't afford to pay someone to make artwork for you, save your money until you can. If you're not going to hire me to draw for you, that's totally cool. But PLEASE hire another artist. Don't replace me with any of these plagiarizing apps. It doesn't just hurt me. It hurts all artists.

Or hey, learn a few tricks yourself. Making art is really challenging, but it's also fulfilling, and dare I say (GASP) fun.

Capybara & Squirrel Episode 4: So Basic

Some cozy sketching with markers.
Hope you're all having a good September! 🌿🍂🌙✨

Capybara & Squirrel: Episode 3: Capy and Squirrel prepare the littles for what's to come.

You know I had to.

Hi, friends. I hope you're all well. I'm back to making comics, but first, a lengthy blurb.

So it's already been a pretty eventful year around here. I haven't stopped moving for one moment, but I feel as though I haven't moved forward either. It's strange, as well as frustrating.

My partner became very ill this past March. He suddenly felt an intense pain in his back one day, and by 3am the next morning, it was so bad that we called an ambulance. After hours of waiting (I wasn't allowed to be in the ER because of Covid), he was sent home with Tylenol. We initially assumed it was a pinched nerve or a slipped disc, but his pain wasn't easing at all. His GP created a huge obstacle for us because he refused to send Geoff for tests, saying he didn't need them. Again, another dismissal with Tylenol. It was a long and arduous battle with doctors and clinics and visits to the hospital and many argumentative phone calls, while his condition worsened. We finally got a doctor at the hospital to admit him and run several tests, some of which were invasive and terrifying. And to make matters worse, I wasn't permitted to sit with him or visit him in person for the entire week, because there was a Covid outbreak on his hospital floor.

It took 5 weeks of worry and confusion, 2 MRIs, one CT scan, a week in the hospital, countless blood tests and a painful bone biopsy before we finally got a diagnosis. A rare but fully treatable spinal infection. He was sent home and immediately put on strong antibiotics and painkillers. He gradually improved over the course of another 7 weeks, and is now back on his feet, visiting his office twice a week, and going for careful walks. I am so incredibly grateful he's better. But I'll never forget that his infection could have gone septic, and the worst would have happened if we hadn't managed to get someone's attention in time. I'm still angry with the state of our health care system, but thankful for those who did help us, and got Geoff on the right path.

We went through a sh*tstorm of emotions during that time. I've never been so terrified in my life. I didn't sleep for weeks, and to this day, I still can't really sleep. While he was in hospital and we didn't know what was wrong yet, I sat at home alone, fearing the worst. When I slept, I'd wake up in a panic from nightmares. I tried to stay positive for his sake, as well as his worried parents, but truly, my mental state was being held together by an imaginary strip of duct tape that wasn't very sticky anymore because it was covered in cat hair. I couldn't be in the room with him when he needed me the most, and it was devastating. I'm so glad we live in the day and age of Facetime and messaging, so we could at least keep in touch with each other. And thank goodness for our support system of family and friends. We both love you all so, so very much.

Nothing prepares you for this. Nothing prepares you for being the sole caregiver to your life partner and feeling totally lost. I'm definitely never going to be the same again, whoever I was before all of this. But I have my partner back. My favourite person. He winces when he has to sneeze or stand up after sitting too long, but he's eating pizza and playing video games like a beast. We're both not fully recovered, but we're well on our way.

This comic was inspired by some of the experiences we had while navigating the health care system. I'll make this part brief since I've already written you an essay:

- Lots of people yelling at nurses and emergency responders.
- A man actually ripping off his mask in the ER, swearing at everyone and coughing everywhere.
- Really, really sick people waiting hours and hours for help, some of whom lay in stretchers lining the narrow hallways.
- Clinics and labs just LOSING Geoff's test results, and having to have tests repeated.
- Exhausted nurses doing the ABSOLUTE MOST for everyone as much as possible, while keeping patients calm. If anyone made this entire process manageable, it was the work of those nurses. I was able to phone them at any hour of the night and ask if Geoff was ok, and they were more than happy to talk to me. It is disgusting that our government is doing nothing about the fact that our hospitals are so desperate for more financial support.
- Seriously though, no wonder health care workers are quitting en masse.
- The presence of Covid just making everything SO much worse.

So I hope you liked the comic. I hope you know I wasn't trying to make any of you feel bad about going to restaurants, or weddings, or gender reveal parties, etc. I hope you're all healing from your various pandemic trauma, and are enjoying the summer in a safe and careful way. I'm not doing any of that gathering stuff yet, but I am getting back to work on projects I've been dying to sink my teeth into for quite some time. And maybe, just maybe, I can start feeling some semblance of optimism again.

My shop is open again, and there will be new products coming very soon. Also if social media isn't showing the art the way it's meant to be seen, please feel free to visit my super buggy site that I didn't update for two whole years. Also, iPad art is hard. New tech, who dis? My tendonitis has tendonitis now.

https://www.clearlymissherd.com/single-post/a-friendly-reminder

It's Valentine's Day. Pour yourself a drink, crack open a book and don't go to Risa no matter how much your coworkers pressure you.

The pope called me selfish! How original! 🙄