From Idea to Image, Part Five

Prepared with Claude; edited and published by Owrang.

About this series

From Idea to Image is a weekly self-study course in making images with AI. The text of the series is also written with the help of AI and is edited and published by Owrang.

Each part teaches one skill and ends with a simple exercise you can do the same day. The images on this page were made with the same description and the same scene you will read below.

Last week we made a character who could move from one image to another while remaining recognizable. We took Mahin, with her green cardigan, round glasses and white streak, from the kitchen by day to the kitchen at night and then into the courtyard. This week we do not move her. The same kitchen, the same glass of tea and the same morning light stay, and something else changes: the medium of the image.

We have written this part like a session of a media-arts class. In such a class, before anyone sits at a computer, the teacher puts a sheet of watercolor paper, a brush and a glass of water on the table. The better we know artistic materials and tools, the more precisely we can describe them, and the more deliberately we can guide the image model toward the result we want.

What the medium is

Every image you have seen is made of something. A photograph of light and grains of silver or a camera sensor. Watercolor of paint dissolved in water and spreading on paper. Gouache of thick, matte paint that sits on the paper and covers what is under it. A pencil drawing of lines and shading that grow darker or lighter with the pressure of the hand. A hand print of a surface that has been cut and inked. We call these the medium of the image. The medium is not just a look. Each medium has its own characteristics, and those characteristics make the feeling of the image.

One thing should be clear from the start. In making images with AI, by the medium of the image we mean recreating the visual qualities of artistic materials and methods, not actually using those materials. An image the model makes "like a linocut" is not a linocut; it is a digital rendering of a linocut's marks.

Today's image models have learned from millions of pictures, and many of them were photographs of paintings, drawings and prints. The model knows the word "watercolor" from those pictures. But "watercolor" on its own is like "a woman in her sixties" last week: it leaves millions of possibilities open. The tool usually arrives at a generic, overly polished watercolor-like image that looks more like an advertisement than like work done on real paper.

The answer is the one we met in Parts Two and Four. Instead of naming a general style, describe its visible qualities. In the medium, those qualities are the traces of material and tool. What follows are common characteristics of each medium, not fixed laws, chosen for this week's exercise.

Traces of the material

In watercolor, paint spreads on wet paper and makes soft edges. Where the water dried, a darker edge remains. In traditional transparent watercolor, the white of the paper is the white of the painting and the lightest places are the bare paper, although some painters also use white gouache. The texture of the paper shows under the paint.

In gouache, the paint is matte and opaque. A light layer can go on top of a dark one. Areas are flat and even, and brushstrokes show a little.

In a pencil drawing, darkness is built from lines laid over each other, parallel or crossing. Edges are sharp in some places and soft in others, and the white paper is the space between the lines.

In a linocut or woodcut, the image is made of flat black and white areas, with no soft shading. The marks of the cutting tool show in the white lines. The ink sometimes sits unevenly, and the grain of the paper shows through.

In a film photograph, fine film grain lies over everything. The blacks are not fully black and the highlights burn out softly. Each film stock has its own colors.

Any of these sentences can go into a prompt. To get an image that looks like a linocut, the word "linocut" alone may not be enough; describing its visible characteristics, from flat black and white areas to the marks of the cutting tool, helps.

Before the computer, by hand

This week, before writing any prompt, work by hand for five minutes. Drop some paint or weak coffee onto wet paper and watch how it spreads. Draw a few parallel lines in pencil and cross them with others. If there is a potato and a knife in the house, cut a simple shape into it, ink or paint it and press it onto paper. Keep these scraps. They make your words more precise, and, as we will see, they can themselves be given to the tool.

If you want to learn to see from masters of the craft, museums and makers of art materials have posted short instructional videos on their own official channels. We list a few official videos at the end of this part. You can watch them free of charge through these links, but free viewing does not mean free republishing. Do not republish any film or image from them without permission, and do not give them to an image tool either.

Today's technology: your own image instead of other people's names

Many of today's image tools let you give an image along with your words and say that its "style" or "medium" should be taken from it. The feature has different names in different tools, style reference, image to image or editing with an image, and its rules differ from tool to tool. Read your tool's guide before you use it.

In this series we follow this policy for using it.

The first right use is your own scrap of paper. Photograph or scan that watercolor blot or potato print and give it to the tool as a reference for the medium. Now the medium of your image has come from your own hand.

The second right use is free works. Paintings and prints in the public domain, like many older works in museums' open collections, can serve as references. Check each work's licence on its own page before you use it. The legal status of a work and of the digital photograph published of it is not the same everywhere, and the terms of your image tool matter too.

And what we avoid: directly imitating the personal style of living artists. Out of respect for artists' rights and creative work, in this series we do not put a living artist's name in a prompt or give their work to the tool. Instead of naming an artist, we describe the qualities of materials, tools and artistic methods. When you use other people's works as references, check the legal status of the work, the licence and the terms of your tool.

This week, step by step

We keep Mahin in the daytime kitchen. The description and the scene stay untouched in every step, and only the sentence about the medium changes. If your tool accepts a reference image, give it Mahin's reference image, as last week.

The base of every prompt is this. "The same woman as in the reference image, with the same face, the same hair, the same glasses and the same clothes." Description. "She sits at the kitchen table holding a glass of tea, with a window beside her. Medium shot at eye level. Soft light from the window on an overcast morning. Horizontal frame, wider than it is tall." In each step, add the sentence about the medium to the end of this base.

Step 1. Photograph. "A photograph shot on film, with fine film grain across the whole image, soft blacks, slightly burnt-out highlights, warm, faded colors." This image is the zero point. Compare the others with it.

Step 2. Watercolor. "A watercolor painting on textured cold-press watercolor paper. The paint has spread on wet paper and has soft edges, darker edges remain where the water dried, the lightest places are the white of the paper and its texture shows under the paint. Little detail, especially in the background." The last sentence matters. A watercolorist does not paint everything, and the empty space is part of the language.

Step 3. Gouache. "A gouache painting, matte and opaque paint, flat even areas, brushstrokes slightly visible, light layers over dark ones, a limited palette of five or six colors." A limited palette is not a property of gouache itself but our choice for this exercise; it reinforces the matte, simplified look we want and keeps the image away from glossy digital painting.

Step 4. Pencil drawing. "A drawing in graphite pencil on white paper. Darkness built from parallel and crossing lines, the pressure of the hand visible in the lines, the face worked with more care and the background with a few quick lines. No color." The difference in care between face and background is a compositional choice that guides the eye, one many draughtsmen make, and the tool usually will not make it unless you say so.

Step 5. Linocut. "A linocut print in black ink on cream paper. Only black and white, no soft shading, flat areas, white cut lines with the marks of the tool, the ink slightly uneven with the grain of the paper showing through." Here the face becomes simpler and last week's markers come into their own. The round glasses and the white streak still say Mahin in black and white.

Step 6. If your tool allows it, give one of your handmade scraps as a reference for the medium and write: "Take the medium and texture of this image, not its shapes or colors." See what the tool makes of the work of your hand.

Step 7. Put the five or six images side by side without the prompts. Under each one write one word for its feeling, as we did with light in Part Three.

When the medium does not come out right

Is your watercolor too clean and glossy? Remove words like high quality, detailed or intricate. They pull the image towards photography and digital painting. Instead, speak of empty space, soft edges and the texture of the paper.

Does the linocut have gray shading? Say plainly: "Only two colors, black and cream, no gray."

Did the face change when the medium changed? That is natural, because each medium simplifies the face in its own language. Go back to the reference image and keep the markers, as last week. In the simpler media the viewer knows Mahin more by her glasses and white streak than by the details of her face.

Did the tool put a signature or fake lettering in the corner? The model learned from signed paintings. Write "no signature, no text" and, if it still appears, crop it or remove it. Never keep a fake signature in your work.

Working words

medium, جنس تصویر، مدیوم

watercolor, آبرنگ

soft edge, لبهٔ نرم

cold-press paper, کاغذ زبر

gouache, گواش

matte and opaque, مات و پوشاننده

limited palette, پالت محدود

cross-hatching, خط‌های متقاطع

linocut, چاپ لینولئوم

film grain, دانهٔ فیلم

style reference, مرجع سبک

What happened in practice

Both images on this page were made with Gemini, with the same profile and the same scene as in this lesson, and the image of Mahin from Part Four as the reference for her face.

The image in the middle of the page, watercolor and gouache, came out right on the second try. The first try had two faults. The reference image itself slipped into the picture, so each panel showed two women: Mahin drinking her tea, and the Mahin of the reference looking straight at us. The gouache panel also looked more like a photograph than a painting. For the second try, we wrote at the start of the prompt that the attached image is "only a guide for one woman's appearance: her face, hair, glasses and clothes," and that she appears "once in each panel, alone," and for the gouache we added "clearly a painting and not a photograph," with flat areas of color and visible brushstrokes. You can see the result. In the watercolor panel the paint has spread on wet paper, the edges are soft and the lightest places are the white of the paper itself. In the gouache panel the paint is matte and opaque and the shapes are simplified. If your tool reproduces the reference image itself inside the final picture, do the same: say what the reference is for and how many people are in the frame.

The image at the end of the page, pencil drawing and linocut, is only partially successful. The linocut panel is what we asked for: only black and cream, white cut lines, and the grain of the paper under the ink. But in the pencil panel the model left the scene and drew a portrait. Mahin faces us instead of sitting by the window, there is no glass of tea in her hands, and the white streak at the front of her hair is gone. The hatching and the extra care on the face did come out right. When one of the two panels drifts away from the scene, either remake that panel on its own, or repeat the description of the scene in the paragraph for that panel.

One general point remains from this experience. Even when the description and the scene stay fixed, changing the medium can change the composition and even the face of the character. So this week's exercise is a test of what the tool can do, not a guarantee that the character will stay exactly the same.

This week's exercise

Choose a scene from your past exercises and do not touch it. First, make three scraps by hand: a blue or brown blot on wet paper, a few crossed pencil lines and a simple print from a potato or an eraser. Then make the same scene in four media: photograph, watercolor, pencil drawing and one medium of your choice. If your tool accepts references, once use one of your scraps as the reference for the medium.

Check your work

Put the images next to your handmade scraps. Which image is closer to the work of your hand, and which looks more like a computer "effect"? For that one, find the word that pushed the machine towards gloss and replace it with a word about material or tool. Show the images to someone who has not followed the exercises and ask what each one is made with. If they can recognise the method you intended, you have probably rendered its visual qualities well.

Next week. From the still image to the moving image. How do we bring Mahin out of the frame, so that she breathes, blinks and turns her head? The first step from image to film.

Learning links

All these links go to the official channel or page of the museum or maker itself. Watch and learn, but do not republish anything from them or give it to the machine.

Watercolor. The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, "How to use watercolor," from the In the Studio series, about sixteen minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIFbLdPDGzo

Watercolor, shorter. Tate, "How to Paint Watercolour Like Turner," Part 1, about five minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wce-7Mw0mtc

Gouache. Winsor & Newton, the paint maker, "Watercolour Vs Designers Gouache," the difference between watercolor and gouache in under five minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjcZ5vtAEK4

Graphite. Smithsonian American Art Museum, "Graphite!," about the material itself, about six minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toKcd3b5iBI

Relief printing. MoMA, "Pressure + Ink: Relief Process," a master printer cuts, inks and prints a woodcut. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bjymxow3TVQ

Linocut. Harvard Art Museums, "Picasso's Reduction Linocut Technique." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg6FowI4h8o

Film grain. ILFORD Photo, the film maker, "Film ISO - A beginners guide," why faster film has coarser grain. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ9rwLC8yqs

Persian painting. British Museum, "Arts of the book," in which the Iranian-born artist Farkhondeh Ahmadzadeh recreates a miniature with traditional pigments, brushes and gold. https://islamicworld.britishmuseum.org/video/6

Persian painting, step by step. Harvard Art Museums, "Artist Demonstration: Persian Miniature Painting," a copy of Riza Abbasi's "Young Dervish." https://vimeo.com/35276945

Style reference in two tools. Adobe Firefly's official guide, "Reference images for styling." https://helpx.adobe.com/firefly/web/work-with-images/generate-images/reference-images-for-styling.html And Midjourney's official guide, "Style Reference." https://docs.midjourney.com/hc/en-us/articles/32180011136653-Style-Reference