Sumi
Painting: sumi-e, drybrush, graded washes
The prompt
An ink-wash brush painting of {subject}, rendered as sumi-e brushwork: built from a few decisive loaded-brush strokes and soft graded washes of a single dark pigment drawn from {palette} on absorbent off-white paper. Large areas of bare untouched paper carry the composition as negative space. Visible brush tooth, dry-brush drag, and bleeding wash edges where ink meets damp paper, with faint horizontal paper grain. One small restrained seal-stamp mark in the most saturated accent from {palette}, placed in the open space as the single colour accent. Calm, spare, high contrast, generous emptiness. NO text, NO letters, NO logos.
- Materials
- ink, paper
- Techniques
- sumi-e, drybrush, graded washes
sumi e, ink wash, brushwork, negative space, monochrome pigment
Slot recipes
How the prompt changes for each kind of picture.
- Hero: A wide ink-wash scene of {subject} with the inked form pushed to one edge or corner; reserve the larger remaining area as calm bare-paper negative space for the headline overlay, with one small seal-stamp mark low in the open space.
- Feature: A single iconic {subject} centred in a wide field of bare paper, built from a few decisive loaded-brush strokes and one graded wash, hard at the core and feathered at the edges.
- Avatar: A three-quarter ink-wash portrait of {subject} emerging from bare paper, a few brush strokes for the planes of the face, much of the frame left empty, one small seal mark in the margin.
- Empty state: An almost-empty composition of {subject} as a single faint brush mark floating in a wide expanse of bare paper, one tiny seal-stamp accent.
- Illustration: A spare diagrammatic ink-wash of {subject} built from a few confident brush strokes and thin rule lines, washes only in the mid-tones, bare paper between every element.
Guidance
Do
- Carry the image with one dark pigment plus the bare paper; let graded wash and dry-brush drag do the work.
- Leave large areas of untouched paper as structural negative space — the emptiness is part of the picture.
- Make each stroke look decisive and loaded, hard at the core and feathered where the brush lifts.
- Place exactly one small restrained seal-stamp mark in the most saturated accent as the only colour.
Don’t
- Do not use smooth photographic gradients, glossy renders, or soft drop shadows.
- Do not fill the frame edge to edge — bare paper is the composition, not a background to cover.
- Do not add a second accent colour or let the seal spread into a wash.
- Do not bake any text, letters, or logos into the image.
In the lineage of
- Sumi-e (Japanese ink-wash painting), tradition. the monochrome brush tradition this technique abstracts: one pigment, graded wash, decisive loaded strokes, and bare paper as structural space.
- Chinese literati ink painting (shuimo), tradition. the broader East Asian ink-wash lineage whose wet-into-wet bleeds and dry-brush drag are reproduced here.
- Sesshu Toyo, artist. the spare, architectural ink-landscape economy of mark echoed in the technique's confident strokes and wide emptiness.
- Hasegawa Tohaku, artist. the soft mist-and-void washes and reserved negative space this technique leans on.
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.
Images by gpt-image-2
Remix with this style
Apply Sumi to any UI language and swap the palette: the preview takes this style's hero image.