10/08/2026
Please read in full. It may help explain a few things. I will also be adding this to my website by way of a blog.
How AI Became My Ultimate Business Sidekick 🎨✨
IRunning a creative business is a massive balancing act. As a very busy, working face painter, my schedule is always packed.
Between traveling to gigs, managing bookings, teaching students, prepping materials, and stocking my Shopify store, there never seems to be enough hours in the day.
Recently, however, I found a secret weapon that completely changed the game for my hectic schedule: Artificial Intelligence.I know AI is a hot topic right now, and many people are hesitant about it.
I want to share exactly how it helps me manage my busy workload, save thousands of pounds, and protect my clients' privacy—while still keeping ethics and a strong moral compass at the heart of what I do.
Navigating the Ethics: Water, Jobs, and ArtBefore we dive into the tools, let's talk about the elephant in the room. There are very valid, serious concerns about AI. Many people are rightly worried about the environmental impact, especially the massive amount of water used to cool data centres.
There is also a real fear that AI is taking away jobs, particularly from creative people like writers, designers, and artist. As a creative myself, I take this very seriously. I do not believe in using AI to steal someone else's style or replace human artistry. Instead, I use it strictly as an administrative support system, handling the tasks I would otherwise have to do myself. Such as coding, formatting, and brainstorming keywords. I also make a conscious effort to look for tech companies that prioritize good data policies and ethical practice.
When I teach my students how to run their businesses successfully, I always emphasise the importance of a strong moral compass. That applies to how we treat our clients, how we price our work, and which digital tools we choose to use. Boosted Google Rankings (Without the Giant Price Tag).
As a professional face painter and instructor, having a strong online presence is vital, but finding time for marketing is tough when you are constantly out working on the job.
I started using an AI sidekick assistant to help with my digital marketing, and the results have been great. My Google SEO ratings and page performance are doing so much better.
In the past, achieving these kinds of results would require hiring an expensive SEO agency, creating a massive financial burden, which I could simply not afford. Not only did AI save me a huge upfront cost, but it also saved me precious time.
Setting up a traditional marketing service takes weeks of onboarding. With AI, it was up and running instantly, fitting perfectly into my busy routine. It's like having a Private PA (Who Never Leaves).
Working with an AI assistant is truly like having a private personal assistant to help run the business while I am busy painting, sending out orders, teaching, doing tutorials and having a family life. Time is precious.
When you are stretched thin, you cannot always think of the perfect marketing questions or keywords instantaneously. The brilliant thing about AI is that it understands your business goals immediately. If it misses the mark, you can re-explain your needs in a quick sentence, and it adapts. Best of all? You can walk away, go have a cup of tea, and when you come back, your PA is still sitting there patiently with all the answers ready to go.
Balancing Social Media with The Cotswolds Privacy Expectations
Living and working in the beautiful Cotswolds, privacy is incredibly important to my clients. Parents here generally do not want photos of their children taken on the job and splashed across public social media channels.
Furthermore, as a professional who charges for my time rather than working on a Pay Per Face (PPF) basis, I don't have the time to stop and take photos during a hectic gig. In my opinion, it simply isn't right to take photos for your own self-promotion when you are working on somebody else’s paid time. Stopping to set up shots, check lighting, and get permissions means you are ultimately going to paint fewer faces for the host who hired you.
But there is also a darker side to social media that we need to talk about. Once you put a photo online, major platforms can take your images, and they can appear goodness knows where. .
I know this firsthand because it happened to me. A bogus, spammy page—set up purely to monetise content—stole images of children that my daughter and I had official, personal permission to photograph. We actually know these children. Yet, random pages on Facebook and Instagram took their photos without permission and used them as their own just to make money. It was deeply unsettling, and it made me fiercely protective of the faces I paint.
Reusable Innovation Created with Care for the Planet
To solve this, protect families, and save time, I look back to a tool I created over a decade ago. In 2015, I designed my reusable practice boards to map out my face painting looks.From day one, these boards were created with deep care for the planet. They are a low-carbon-footprint item designed to be used over and over again, reducing waste in our industry.
Today, we sell these boards worldwide, and I regularly hear from customers advising us that their original 2015 boards are still going strong today!To bring these physical designs to life online without compromising any child's privacy or wasting a client's paid time.
I now use Photoroom, an incredible photo editing app created ethically in France with excellent data policies. Through the app, I can take a photo of my original practice board designs, instruct the AI not to change a single stroke of my actual artwork, and seamlessly transfer the design onto an AI-generated face.
Clearing Up the Misconception:
Who Are These AI Faces?I know what some of you might be thinking: “Aren't those AI faces just stolen photos of real children?”It is a common misconception, and while early or unregulated tech companies in the past faced valid criticism regarding data scraping, that is not how ethical modern tools work.The faces generated by the app are entirely synthetic. They do not belong to real children or real people anywhere on earth. Instead, the AI uses mathematical algorithms to build a completely new face from scratch—essentially learning the geometry of what a human face looks like and painting a digital canvas that is entirely unique.This gives a busy professional like me the absolute best of both worlds: My audience gets to see my exact, real-life face painting skills.Local children and families enjoy 100% absolute privacy from online thieves.
My social media feeds stay with fresh, content year-round without eating into my booking hours or harming the planet.
The Verdict: Mindful Use of Modern Tools
AI hasn't replaced my creativity! It has freed me up to do more of it. By choosing ethical platforms, creating planet-friendly products, and using AI for tech, SEO copywriting, and formatting, I can focus on what I do best: painting, innovating, and teaching the next generation of painters how to thrive responsibly.
FINALLY!
"I often see people post status updates online saying, 'I will never support or buy from any business that uses AI.'
It makes me smile because those very same people are posting that message on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok. The reality is, if you are scrolling through social media, you are actively using AI every single second. It is what chooses your feed, targets your ads, runs the filters, and moderates the content. Avoiding AI entirely today means completely unplugging from modern digital life."
The Double Standard: Artists vs. Science selective Outrage:
The people claiming they will never buy from a business using AI are being exceptionally hard on small creative businesses while ignoring AI's massive role.
The Double Standard: Creative Scapegoating
The people claiming they will never buy from a business using AI are being exceptionally hard on small creative businesses while ignoring AI's massive role elsewhere.
The Hypocrisy:
They will happily accept AI-developed medicine to save their lives, use AI-driven navigation like Google Maps to get around, and scroll through AI-curated feeds on Facebook and Instagram.
Creative Scapegoating: Small creative businesses and independent artists face the brunt of this public backlash because their use of AI is highly visible (e.g., text, layouts, backgrounds). Meanwhile, corporate, medical, and administrative AI is invisible to the consumer.
Something worth thinking about. 💬
