Just Rob Styles › Storybook Illustration
Dragged Gouache Silhouette
A painterly AI art style prompt drawing on Storybook Illustration and Mid-Century Modern. Copy the prompt below into any text-to-image model, then add your own subject at the end. The prompt only describes the look.
The blend
The prompt combines 3 ingredients and gives each one a job:
- Jon Klassen — Klassen's dry-brush layering creates streaky directional grain inside matte flat fills through unidirectional strokes.
- Paul Rand — Rand's geometric reduction produces simplified masses with slightly wobbly contours via few overlapping shapes.
- Gouache dragged dry over toothy paper — The dry gouache infuses broken paper-tooth edges.
The fusion manifests as a restricted indigo, carbon black and single small vermilion palette on unpainted warm paper, hairline pencil marks reserved for minor detail, transforming any subject through flat silhouette-first construction.
On 4 models
The same prompt and the same subject, rendered by different image models — so the differences are the model, not the prompt.
The prompt
Original
Jon Klassen + Paul Rand + gouache dragged dry over toothy paper, where Klassen's dry-brush layering creates streaky directional grain inside matte flat fills through unidirectional strokes, Rand's geometric reduction produces simplified masses with slightly wobbly contours via few overlapping shapes, and the dry gouache infuses broken paper-tooth edges. The fusion manifests as a restricted indigo, carbon black and single small vermilion palette on unpainted warm paper, hairline pencil marks reserved for minor detail, transforming any subject through flat silhouette-first construction.
Render on BudgetPixel: FLUX 1.1 pro · GPT-Image-2 · Muse 1.0 · Nano Banana 2.1
Model-neutral
The same look with artist names and copyrighted references removed — for models that refuse them.
Contemporary picture-book dry-brush illustration + mid-century modernist graphic reduction + gouache dragged dry over toothy paper, where dry-brush layering creates streaky directional grain inside matte flat fills through unidirectional strokes, geometric simplification produces reduced masses with slightly wobbly contours via few overlapping shapes, and the dry gouache infuses broken paper-tooth edges. The fusion manifests as a restricted indigo, carbon black and single small vermilion palette on unpainted warm paper, hairline pencil marks reserved for minor detail, transforming any subject through flat silhouette-first construction.
Render on BudgetPixel: FLUX 1.1 pro · GPT-Image-2 · Muse 1.0 · Nano Banana 2.1
Effect only
The recipe removed — no artists, no wild card, no movements. Only what the style does to a surface.
Large flat masses of matte pigment are filled with parallel, streaky strokes that run in one direction, letting paper grain break through along ragged edges. Contours are slightly uneven and mostly unoutlined, built from a few overlapping simple shapes. Thin pencil-like lines appear only on small details. A restricted dark palette with one small warm accent sits on bare warm paper.
Render on BudgetPixel: FLUX 1.1 pro · GPT-Image-2 · Muse 1.0 · Nano Banana 2.1
Using it
- Paste the prompt, then add your subject after it — for example …, a lighthouse on a cliff at dusk.
- The original names artists. Some hosted models refuse that or quietly render around it — on those, use the model-neutral version, which describes the same handling without the names.
- The effect-only version drops the recipe altogether and describes only what the style does to a surface. Use it to mix this look into another style, or when you want nothing traceable to a source.
- Every sample here was rendered against the same short subject — Quiet streets whisper / Her footsteps echo softly / Sunlight paints her path — so it shows the style, not a lucky subject.
Tags
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