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Suiboku

Painting: Ink wash, Dry brushing

Suiboku example 1
Suiboku model comparison 2
Suiboku model comparison 3
Suiboku model comparison 4

The prompt

{subject}, monochrome ink-wash painting: the form built from confident gestural black calligraphic brushstrokes on warm bone-ivory paper, soft smoke-like ink-wash bleeds and feathered gradients shaping the volumes, dry-brush split-bristle texture in the detailed passages, one or two deep pure-black saturated accents anchoring the composition while edges dissolve into pale ivory negative space, visible water-and-ink granulation and irregular bleeding margins, {palette}, asymmetric breathing void around the subject, full-frame composition

Materials
Ink, Paper
Techniques
Ink wash, Dry brushing

sumi ink, ink wash, calligraphic gesture, monochrome, dry brush

Slot recipes

How the prompt changes for each kind of picture.

  • Hero: {subject} as a sweeping full-bleed ink-wash plate, the main gesture entering from one side and dissolving into a wide ivory void on the other; deepest pure-black accent set against the largest area of bone paper for dramatic asymmetric balance
  • Feature: {subject} rendered as a curated ink plate centred-left with a smoke-wash halo, dry-brush texture on the focal edge, calm ivory margin held to one side like a museum label
  • Avatar: tight three-quarter crop of {subject} in confident gestural strokes, eyes or focal point in saturated pure black, soft wash falloff to ivory at the edges, square composition
  • Empty state: a single restrained ink gesture suggesting {subject} adrift in a large ivory field, minimal dry-brush marks, mostly breathing negative space with one small black accent
  • Illustration: {subject} built from layered ink washes and overlapping calligraphic strokes, smoke veils threading through the scene, granulated bleeding edges, monochrome black on bone-ivory paper

Guidance

Do

  • Build the subject from a few confident gestural brushstrokes, not careful outlines.
  • Keep it monochrome: pure black sumi ink on warm bone-ivory paper.
  • Anchor each image with one or two saturated true-black accents and let everything else feather to grey wash.
  • Preserve a large asymmetric negative-space void so the ink can breathe.
  • Show the medium: water granulation, dry-brush split bristles, and irregular bleeding edges.

Don’t

  • Do not introduce color, tints, or saturated hues.
  • Do not use hard vector outlines, flat fills, or clean digital airbrushing.
  • Do not fill every corner; never lose the breathing void to clutter.
  • Do not render glossy 3D or photographic realism.
  • Do not add text, captions, framed borders, or empty margin strips around the plate.

In the lineage of

  • East Asian sumi ink painting (suibokuga), tradition. gestural monochrome wash

A generated style is an aggregate of many influences. Credit goes to the artists and traditions it draws on; it is not a claim of authorship.

Produced by unrecorded, sourced by unrecorded, images by unrecorded

Remix with this style

Apply Suiboku to any UI language and swap the palette: the preview takes this style's hero image.