ClydeBlogsy

Do you like or hate it?  

AI is, I suppose, the greatest invention ever made. Most days it infuriates me, and I just want to throw the computer out the window! Yes, it is extreme, but it is absolutely true. I do think that spending hours a day in front of a computer was never meant for me.

In general, I find it quite taxing. I’m positive that’s the reason I paint landscapes. Every day, I long to stroll through the outdoors and let the sunshine warm my skin. To live the dream of working as an artist full-time and only spending two hours a day on design work instead of spending the entire day behind a computer coding. 

It still feels like I am behind on everything when it comes to my business. But if I am honest without AI in the last few years, I would never have managed to get started. My Blog website would still be a dream thought in my head. Instead, it is real and a work in progress I am now proud of. 

How does AI improve my workflow, then?  

Within a couple of hours I was able to create a plan to build my blog site. AI wrote a step-by-step instruction sheet for me to follow, and every time I got stuck, I just asked another question to get unstuck.  

I used Perplexity AI to research my business name to make sure no one was already using it! I got AI to check the competition for that name on Google. The reason being I didn’t want to run into copyright issues later down the line once my business had been established. 

Tip: Always make sure you can obtain a suitable domain name before selecting a business name. Ensure that the name is not too similar to any other business names. Check if you can get the social media handles. 

The more businesses with the same name as you the harder it will be to rank no. 1 on Google and the more money you need to pay out on SEO and business advertising. You also run the risk of being sued for copyright. 

I used AI to write various prompts then used another AI to write content for my website using the prompts I provided. I even used it to give me suggestions on what I could possibly blog about. I wasn’t overly happy with its suggestions and instead I have been using it to fix my grammar and spelling. Rewriting some of my blog posts but mainly it is a very good tool to help plan out long posts. 

I tend to get stuck a lot on writing good titles. I can easily use AI to generate some sample titles based on my blog critiera. 

Other ways I use AI  

Canva has a built in AI that lets you grab items from your image and move or delete them. This is amazing if you have an image you want to use on your website but the background is full of clutter. It can easily be deleted and something nicer put in it’s place.  

Tip: Magic Media app withing Canva Pro can give you AI images you can use on your blog posts. No need to worry about copyright issues or sourcing images anymore. 

Canva pro is my go-to design app for creating images, design products, social media post and creating video clips. Have you tried it yet? 

Remember when you download images from Canva you want to save them as .jpeg make sure and use a compression tool to make the images small for uploading to your website. The more images you have the slower your website can be especially if your images are more than 100kb. Ideally each image should be under 100kb. 

I use XnConvert to compress my images before I upload them to my site.

Tip: Remember good naming conventions with your images can help your SEO. SO please don’t call your images Banner1, banner 2 etc. Each image name should be lower case with dashes; don’t leave any blank spaces as this can cause URL issues with your images. Example: dream-comes-true-banner.jpg 

Most websites give the option to fill in information for the image like Alternative Text used if the image doesn’t load. Title, Caption, Description and the image URL. Use AI to help you fill these in as it will help with you SEO and Google ranking. 

So, wrapping this all up… yeah, AI and I have a bit of a love-hate thing going on. Some days it feels like the greatest invention ever (seriously, how did we survive without it?), and other days I’m fantasizing about chucking my laptop out the window and never looking back.

But here’s the honest truth: without AI these last few years, my little art business would still just be a vague dream floating around in my head. My blog? It’d probably still be “coming soon” forever. Instead, it’s real, it’s growing, and I’m actually proud of it….even if it’s still a work in progress. 

AI hasn’t turned me into a tech genius overnight, and it definitely hasn’t replaced the joy of standing at my easel with paint on my hands. But it has given me back so much time. Time to plan faster, unstuck myself quicker, create content that sounds like me, fix those pesky grammar slips, generate mockups, compress images properly, brainstorm titles when I’m blank… all the stuff that used to eat entire days now takes minutes or hours at most. 

The best part? It’s letting me get closer to that dream life: more hours painting landscapes, strolling in nature, feeling alive out there instead of drained behind a screen. I’m not fully there yet—business stuff still piles up sometimes…but AI is the quiet partner that’s making the path a lot less overwhelming. 

If you’re running a small creative business like mine and feeling buried under the tech/admin side of things, give AI a real try. Start small, experiment with prompts, play around in tools like Perplexity, Canva’s Magic Studio, or whatever clicks for you. It won’t be perfect every time (trust me, I’ve had my share of “what even is this?” moments), but when it works? It feels like magic. 

And who knows….maybe one day soon I’ll spend those full days out painting, with just a quick two-hour AI session to handle the rest. A girl can dream, right? 

What about you? How’s AI showing up (or driving you nuts) in your own world?

Drop a comment—I’d love to hear your stories. 😊