Benbowhh, Rainbow, Flowers, Abstract Expressionism

December 21, 2023

by GymDreams

Man in white beard with abstract expressionist paint, flowers, and rainbow color palette.

Benbowhh, Rainbow, Flowers, Abstract Expressionism

Benbowhh (IG @benbowhh) is one of my favorite gay artists on Instagram. His digital paintings, mostly self-portraits, are a sight to behold. What’s even more impressive is how he incorporates the iconic rainbow flag into his artwork.

As we all know, the rainbow flag has long been a symbol of pride, representing the beautiful diversity within the LGBTQ+ community.

Designed by Gilbert Baker in 1978, it’s a flag that instantly resonates with so many. However, when it comes to using the rainbow palette as a graphic device, it can be quite challenging.

As a designer myself, I’ve often been tasked with incorporating the rainbow colors into promotional materials for various LGBTQ+ organizations. It’s a creative brief that has always filled me with a sense of dread, until I discovered Ben’s brilliant solution.

Rather than placing the colors side by side, Ben ingeniously minimized the contrast between each stripe by creating gaps between them. This separation allows each color to maintain its individuality while still being part of a collective whole. It’s a stroke of genius that immediately captured my heart when I first laid eyes on it.

Inspired by Ben’s ingenuity, I created a series of portraits showcasing him as I see him: an artist who harnesses the expressive power of paint, blending it with the vibrant diversity of life itself. Symbolizing this diversity are the flowers that accompany him in these illustrations.

Benbowhh’s artistic vision and mastery of color truly inspire me, and I hope these portraits convey just how much I admire his talent and the way he embraces the rainbow flag in his art.

Technical Workflow

These works were created using Stable Diffusion in an advanced workflow.

To capture Ben’s essence as accurately as possible, I partnered with BrawnyAI to train a custom SDXL LoRA.

LoRA, which stands for Low-Rank Adaptation, is a specialized AI model designed to assist the Stable Diffusion AI engine in generating concepts it’s not familiar with.

To create the LoRA, we carefully selected 30-50 images showcasing Ben from various angles and lighting conditions. Each of these images was then annotated with descriptive text captions.

Using a high-performance GPU (nVidia RTX 4090), we were able to generate the LoRA model. This model was then utilized in a txt2img workflow.

By providing specific descriptions like “portrait of Ben with rainbow paint splatter in the style of abstract expressionism,” I was able to create a series of paintings that truly resembled him.

While training AI models in this manner does require some time, it proves to be highly efficient, especially when compared to face swap technology.

By using LoRA for portrait creation, we can generate an infinite number of paintings and variations without the need for additional steps, unlike face-swapping techniques.