About

About 73corners

Growing up in an analog world

Being born in 1978 limited the creative expression to analog media for almost two decades.

Starting the artistic loop with wax crayons on wallpaper in winter and chalk on sidewalk in summer, I quickly progressed to watercolors on cardboard before refining the acquired skills with pen and markers on paper. Learning different painting techniques in school like painting with acrylics, ink, oil and various other materials prepared us to finish the loop by going back to the vertical walls of my childhood – armed with a rucksack full of spray cans to create graffiti and call it art.

Entering into a digital world

The first personal computers had black and white screens and therefore didn’t really lend themselves to being used for creating art. This changed substantially with the arrival of color monitors and a software called Microsoft Paint. However, interest faded quickly as I discovered that it couldn’t do what I wanted to create.

One day in 1994, my Dad came home with a CD called Adobe Photoshop 3.0 – but no instruction manual. Trying to create anything proved difficult and was a rather frustrating process with more setbacks than victories. Nobody to ask, no google to search and most certainly no YouTube to watch how-to videos meant that I lost interest multiple times. It was a rather frustrating learning curve until the eureka moment came in 1998 after receiving two CDs with General Motors press photos. In the last 20+ years I have created thousands of pictures with this fantastic software.

Exploring Artificial Intelligence

I could just claim to be anything but an early adopter – but thanks to a friend I have tried creating pictures with artificial intelligence very early on. The results frustrated me to no end and therefore I lost interest and stayed faithfully in my comfort zone called Photoshop for two years. Eventually I realized that AI had improved considerably and it is now possible to create what I want. I love the creative process with Photoshop but often it means working at a snails pace to achieve the desired result. Having more ideas than I could ever complete, I eventually started to use AI to speed up the process. Learning to write prompts, tweaking the results and polishing them with my favorite Adobe software is a lot of fun and often makes my mind go haywire with ideas that pop up on the screen, prompting me to get even more creative.

Let’s see where this journey will take me…

Why 73corners if I’m born in 1978?

73corners is named after the number of turns on the famous Nürburgring Nordschleife. My fun journey into the world of AI-generated images will have just as many twists.

Sebastian Motsch