Cinnabar Seal
Painting: ink wash, drybrush, seal stamping
The prompt
{subject}, a Chinese liu-bai ink-wash (shuimo) rendering — the subject built from a few confident graded black-to-grey sumi brushstrokes with deliberate dry-brush texture and soft wet washes, the vast majority of the frame left as untouched warm off-white rice-paper that IS the composition (intentional negative space), {palette} carried only in the ink values, monochrome and disciplined with no color fill, anchored by one small cinnabar-red square seal stamp placed precisely in a single corner, full-frame artwork edge to edge
- Materials
- sumi ink, rice paper
- Techniques
- ink wash, drybrush, seal stamping
ink wash, shuimo, liu bai, sumi, negative space
Slot recipes
How the prompt changes for each kind of picture.
- Hero: {subject} rendered large and off-center in liu-bai ink wash, two-thirds of the frame left as untouched warm rice-paper void, one cinnabar seal stamp in a lower corner, full-bleed landscape composition
- Feature: a single {subject} in disciplined sumi brushstrokes with graded ink and dry-brush edges, surrounded by generous empty paper, one cinnabar seal in a corner, balanced square or portrait crop
- Avatar: tight head-and-shoulders of {subject} in a few confident ink-wash strokes on warm paper, minimal detail, one small cinnabar seal in the lower corner, square crop
- Empty state: almost entirely empty warm rice-paper with a single faint grey ink stroke or mist wash suggesting {subject}, one cinnabar seal in a corner, the absence is the composition
- Illustration: {subject} built from economical graded sumi brushstrokes and soft wet washes, large surrounding liu-bai void, one cinnabar seal stamp, monochrome ink only
Guidance
Do
- Leave the majority of the frame as untouched warm rice-paper — the void carries the composition
- Render the subject with a few confident, economical graded sumi brushstrokes
- Use dry-brush texture on edges and soft wet-on-wet washes for shadow
- Place exactly one small cinnabar-red square seal stamp, precisely, in a single corner
- Keep everything monochrome ink; let the warm paper supply the only warmth
- Compose asymmetrically — anchor the subject off-center against the emptiness
Don’t
- Do not fill the background or add color to the subject
- Do not use more than one seal, or place the seal away from a corner
- Do not crowd the frame or surround a tiny subject with dead studio whitespace
- Do not add outlines, crosshatching, or photographic detail
- Do not use gradients, neon, or pastel washes
- Do not add text, captions, or a second signature
In the lineage of
- Chinese shuimo ink-wash painting, tradition. liu-bai negative space
- Seal-carving (zhuanke) culture, tradition. cinnabar seal accents
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 Cinnabar Seal to any UI language and swap the palette: the preview takes this style's hero image.