Bad Artist Blames His Tools Hats

"A bad workman blames his tools" goes back to a late-13th-century French proverb - mauves ovriers ne trovera ja bon hostill, "a bad workman will never find a good tool" - and seven hundred years later nobody has found much to add. It survives because the excuse it refuses never went out of fashion. The lens, the knife, the software, the studio, the light: something else was responsible, and it was never you. 2026 has handed the proverb its loudest moment yet. Every argument about AI and art runs straight through it - one side says the tool is doing the work, the other says it is just a tool, and both are quoting the same line back at each other. A hat is a reasonable place to settle it. This collection sets the proverb the three ways people actually say it - bad artist, bad workman, poor craftsman - alongside the imperative version, the first-person version, and the two words the internet eventually compressed it into. Some are shouted in bold sans. Some are muttered in lowercase serif italic, which is how most people say it about themselves. Wear it as craft pride or as a confession; the words are identical either way, and so is whose fault it is.