Pillar
Process and Provenance
How to document your process, prove a piece is yours, read image provenance, and tell generated imagery from real process work. Practical craft for artists working in the age of generated art.
Bio Rust has always been about made by hand craft. This pillar covers the practical side of that promise in an age of generated images: how to keep a record that shows how a piece was made, what provenance standards and embedded metadata can and cannot prove, and how to look at an image fairly when someone asks whether it was generated.
Start with how to document your art process, the habit everything else builds on. Then read Content Credentials and C2PA explained and image metadata for artists for the file level record. For judging images, see how to tell generated images from hand-made work, and for the bigger picture, what craft still teaches when machines make pictures.
When the question is aimed at you, read what to do when someone says your art is AI and why automated detectors misread hand-made work. The same honesty applies to the words around your art, covered in writing your artist statement in the age of AI writing tools.
The same construction, value, and edge skills taught in the other pillars are what make these methods work. An artist who understands why a face is built the way it is can both prove their own process and spot a picture that skipped one.
Techniques in this pillar
How to Document Your Art Process to Prove Authorship
A simple, repeatable way to keep sketches, layered files, and timelapses so you can show exactly how a piece was made.
Content Credentials and C2PA, Explained for Artists
What the C2PA provenance standard records, what it cannot prove, and how an artist can use it sensibly.
How to Tell AI-Generated Images From Hand-Made Work
A careful, craft based way to look for generation tells, and why the honest answer is often that you cannot be sure.
AI Image Tools vs Hand-Made Technique: What Craft Still Teaches
Why the skills of construction, value, and edge control still matter when a machine can output a finished looking picture in seconds.
Image Metadata for Artists: What Survives an Upload
EXIF, IPTC, XMP, and provenance data explained for illustrators, with a simple test to see what your platforms keep and what they strip.
Why AI Image Detectors Flag Real Art, and What to Do
Why automated detectors misread stylized and heavily polished hand-made work, what the research actually found, and how artists and judges should treat a score.
How to Respond When Someone Says Your Art Is AI
A calm, evidence first playbook for artists accused of posting generated work: what to share, what to keep private, and how to stop it happening again.
Writing Your Artist Statement in the Age of AI Writing Tools
How to write an artist statement, bio, or caption in your own voice, why text detectors misread plain writing, and how to disclose any help from a writing tool.
Common questions
Can I prove a digital painting is not generated?
You can make it very hard to dispute. No single file is proof, but a consistent record of roughs, construction, named layers, dated session saves, and a timelapse is something only the person who did the work naturally has.
Are AI image detectors reliable?
Not reliable enough to act on alone. They produce false positives on real, especially stylized, art and miss edited generations. Use a score as a reason to look closer and to ask for process, never as a verdict.
Do I need special software for Content Credentials?
Only an app that can attach them on export. Many artists start with a visible process note and a private archive, then add credentials where their tools support it.
Related reading
- How to Document Your Art Process to Prove AuthorshipA simple, repeatable way to keep sketches, layered files, and timelapses so you can show exactly how a piece was made.
- About Bio Rust and the made by hand manifestoWhy the library exists and what it stands for.
- How Bio Rust tutorials are madeHow techniques are written, tested, corrected, and illustrated.
- The full tutorials archiveEvery technique in one filterable list.
- Bio Rust homeThe digital art technique library, start here.