AI-generated art is absolutely everywhere these days, and the results can range from the sublime to the ridiculous. If you’ve seen one weird frog guy with six legs and a top hat, you’ve seen them all – right?!
One of the coolest things about using AI to generate art is that you can apply any style you can imagine… any color palette you can imagine… and any idea you can imagine. The only thing standing between you and the result you want is the right prompt.
Since AI prompts can be tricky to get right, we’ve created this list of 7 art styles and ideas to supercharge your AI prompts and take your AI-generated art to new heights.
#1: Experiment with Art Media
Anybody who has visited a museum knows that the medium an artist uses can greatly impact the final image they create. Think about how different an oil painting looks from a watercolor, or metal from paper.
One of the best ways to switch up an AI image is to play around with media. For example, you could write a prompt and ask AI to generate an image that looks like origami, or a watercolor, or a photograph. Other ideas to try include stencils, charcoal, and graffiti.
#2: Emulate a Famous Artist
Even those of us who aren’t super knowledgeable about art history recognize some famous paintings. For example, who doesn’t know Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night or Leonardo DaVinci’s Mona Lisa? These great works of art can serve as inspiration for your AI creations.
Depending on how you want your AI images to look, you may use a prompt to ask for images in the style of Renoir, Frida Kahlo, Andy Warhol, Georgia O’Keeffe, or Gustav Klimt. You can even start with a photo and have AI reimagine it in the style of any artist you choose.
#3: Art Materials
Even if the first thing that comes to mind when you think about art is painting, there are so many other materials that artists work with. The wonderful thing about AI is that you don’t need to be a master sculptor or seamstress to make amazing creations.
What materials could you use as inspiration? Think about glass, crystal, flowers, wood, silk, wool, plastic, rocks, sand, or even candy! There’s truly no limit to what you can do, and the same prompt can deliver wildly different results when you switch up the material.
#4: Photography Styles
AI does a very good job of delivering images that look like photographs. What you may not realize is how many different styles of photography there are, or how many different photography “tricks” you can ask AI to use. Here are some examples.
Photography angles may include high angles, low angles, and panoramic views.- Composition options include close-ups, extreme close-ups, and distance shots.
- Low-shutter speed photography may be used to add a sense of movement. It’s often used to show the movement of the stars and has a lot in common with stop-image filmmaking.
- Bokeh photography is a technique that keeps the primary subject in focus while blurring the background, and it’s often used in portraiture.
- Black and white photography can give a vintage look to any subject.
You can experiment with any or all of these to give your AI-generated images a unique appearance.
#5: Photography Lighting
You don’t need to be a pro photographer to know that different lighting can enhance a photo’s appearance – and you can add lighting instructions to your image prompts. Here are a few examples.
- Light and shadow. Strong lighting that casts deep shadows presents a dramatic result that can add excitement to your AI-generated images. In the world of fine art, this is known as chiaroscuro.
- Neon lighting. Neon is effective if you want to create a futuristic image or even just something that pops off the page.
- Fog or smoke effects. Adding fog or smoke to an image can give it volume and amplitude, adding a different mood and feeling to whatever image you generate.
- Candle lighting. Candles create a vintage feeling and can take any modern image and make it seem older.
- Golden hour. The golden hour is that magic time of day just before the sun sets. Including it in an AI prompt can give the resulting image an almost-magical appearance.
Other things you can play around with include twilight lighting, street lighting, moonlight, and even fairy lights.
#6: Colors and Palettes
Playing around with colors and color palettes is one of the best ways we know to make AI images uniquely yours. For example, you could take a stock photo and ask AI to reimagine it in a palette of blues and greens, yellow, or pinks and reds to get an array of different results.
You may also want to play around with hex codes, which allow you to specify the exact colors you want included. Color palettes to experiment with may include autumn leaves, sea tones, or jewel tones.
#7: Structure Your Prompts
It can certainly be frustrating to enter a detailed prompt into an AI image generator only to have it return something that doesn’t have the characteristics you want. One option to avoid that problem is to use Airtable to give some structure to your prompts.
Let’s say you wanted to create a character. You could use Airtable to specify the character’s physical traits, clothing, color palette, and the composition of the image. You can even create a table with mix-and-match traits if you want to. Read this article to learn how to do it.
Conclusion
The 7 art styles and ideas we’ve included here are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to supercharging your AI image prompts. We hope you’ll use these as a jumping off point and build on them to create unique and exciting prompts to create new digital images and products to sell.
Do you want more pointers on how to create awesome images to sell online? Click here to check out Any Size Image Secrets, my guide to making scalable SVG images your customers will love!
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