Sunlit Gouache

/sunlit-gouache — Sunlit Gouache travel-painting illustration

This skill produces a single editorial illustration in a bright, painterly gouache travel-painting style. Every piece is a small captured moment of unhurried daily life — figures seen from behind walking toward warm sunlight, painted with chunky flat brushstrokes on textured paper. The recipe is locked; only the scene, light register, cast, overhead motif, and cultural register vary.

Prompt interpretation

The user typically supplies a short scene seed — usually a setting ("a sunlit café terrace", "a ferry pier at dawn", "a noodle shop in winter"). It is your job to brainstorm and expand it into a vivid, specific moment. Do not stop to confirm. Imagine the moment, then run.

For each invocation:

1. Take the seed. Note the setting, time of day if given, any specific figure/prop the user named.
2. Imagine the moment. Who is there, what are they doing, what hangs above them, what does the ground reflect, what's the one red accent?
3. Set the five dials (scene archetype, light register, cast, overhead motif, cultural register) — see "Variable axes" below.
4. Keep every other axis locked. The medium, palette, composition, viewing angle, mood — never vary.

Bias toward concrete, lived-in details: a half-pulled rolling suitcase, a paper bag of flowers, a discarded boarding pass, a cat curled in a light patch, a child reaching for a hand. The scene should feel painted from life, not assembled.

Locked style axes (NEVER vary)

Medium

• Opaque gouache on textured paper. Visible chunky flat brushstrokes with dry-brush highlights and small streaks of bare paper showing through.
• Every shape is a brushstroke. Buildings, trains, awnings, figures, reflections — all rendered as decisive flat strokes, not outlined and filled.
• NOT watercolor wash (no transparent bleeds). NOT digital vector. NOT photorealistic. NOT clean cartoon.
• The brush handling reads as semi-impressionistic — Henri Manguin or Pierre Bonnard cousin energy, not Andrew Wyeth realism or Studio Ghibli polish.

Palette (strict — six colors only)

• Cream / warm off-white — the lightest highlights, sunlit floor patches, sky behind the focal light
• Butter-yellow — direct sunlight, awning, signs, one figure's clothing
• Sky-blue — shadows on white surfaces, one figure's clothing, glass, distant air
• Sage-green — one figure's clothing, plants, painted woodwork, shadow accents
• Terracotta-orange — warm prop accents, painted metalwork, reflections
• One small red accent — exactly ONE saturated red object somewhere in the frame (a suitcase, a lantern, a geranium, a book spine, a scarf, a cap, a cat's collar). Never two reds. The red is the eye-anchor.

Avoid: pure black, pure neutral gray, brown, magenta, neon. Shadows are blue-green-violet mixes, never black.

Composition

• Vertical 2:3 aspect (e.g. 1024 × 1536).
• One-point perspective drawing the eye into a bright focal point at the far end — a sunlit pavilion, an arriving train, an open window, the end of the arcade. The focal point is always the brightest part of the frame.
• Figures grounded in the lower half, seen from behind or three-quarter, walking into the scene. Never facing camera directly. The viewer is always the trailing observer.
• Overhead band of hanging elements running across the top third — awning, prayer flags, catenary wires, bunting, lanterns, glass roof, hanging signs. This band creates the depth ceiling and frames the focal light.
• Dappled reflective ground in the foreground — wet cobblestones, polished stone, wooden floorboards, tiled platform — reflecting loose painterly patches of yellow, blue, sage in the same chunky brush handling. The reflections are abstract suggestions, not literal mirror images.

Light

• Warm directional sunlight flooding the focal point. The light is the subject.
• Long soft shadows in the foreground; midground is half-lit; far focal point is glowing-bright.
• Dappled patches of color across the ground — yellow, blue, sage, terracotta — never an even gray shadow.

Figures

• Painted as loose flat strokes, not detailed portraits. Faces are suggested with a few small marks (a cheek, an ear, hair) — never rendered.
• Always seen from behind, three-quarter behind, or in profile. Never facing camera.
• Body language reads as unhurried — walking, browsing, waiting, sipping. No dramatic action.
• Clothing pulled from the locked palette (yellow / blue / sage / terracotta / cream). Distribute so each main color appears on at least one figure.

Mood

• Airy, optimistic, warm. The quiet joy of an unhurried travel moment.
• Late morning to golden hour. Never night, never overcast, never high drama.

Variable axes (the dials you set per scene)

1. Scene archetype — where this moment lives

Strong picks: café terrace · tram stop · market arcade · bookshop interior · ferry pier · temple courtyard · train platform · airport gate · library aisle · greenhouse · noodle shop · hotel lobby · vineyard path · beach boardwalk · rooftop garden · museum hall · public bath house · funicular station · subway escalator hall · church side-aisle · stationer's shop · flower market

Each archetype should pick one defining structural element (the awning, the carved eaves, the tall bookcases, the catenary, the iron-and-glass roof) and let it own the overhead band.

2. Light register — time + angle

• Golden hour — warm low sun, long shadows, terracotta and butter-yellow dominant
• Noon overhead — bright even cream light, minimal shadow, sky-blue and sage dominant
• Soft morning — cool cream light, gentle, sage and butter-yellow dominant
• Late afternoon — long warm shadows, butter-yellow and terracotta dominant

3. Cast — who is in the frame

• Solo wanderer (single figure walking ahead)
• Couple (two figures, often holding hands or carrying something between them)
• Small group (3–5 travelers, mixed ages)
• Family with child (the child is often the locus of motion)
• Worker + visitors (a waiter, a monk, a vendor, a librarian, a stationmaster — one figure in a working role + others passing through)

Distribute the locked palette across the cast — at least one figure in butter-yellow, one in sky-blue, one in sage-green, with terracotta in props or accents.

4. Overhead motif — what hangs above

The depth ceiling element that runs across the top third:

• Striped awning (café, market)
• Catenary wires + station signs (tram, train, subway)
• Prayer flags + paper lanterns (temple, festival)
• Bunting + bulb-string lights (market, terrace)
• Iron-and-glass roof (station, arcade, greenhouse)
• Tree canopy / climbing vines (vineyard, courtyard)
• Hanging chalkboards + paper menus (café, noodle shop)
• Long carved eaves (temple, traditional architecture)

Pick the one that belongs to the archetype — don't bolt prayer flags onto a Parisian café.

5. Cultural register — geographic flavor

• European street (default — Parisian, Italian, Iberian)
• Asian temple / market / noodle shop / bath house
• Mediterranean coast (white-and-blue, terracotta tile)
• Tropical (palm shadows, open-air markets)
• North American small-town (wooden boardwalk, diner)
• Generic travel (deliberately ambiguous)

The cultural register tunes the architecture and the overhead motif — not the palette. The palette stays locked.

Reference images (the locked set)

Five canonical pieces anchor this style. Use them as visual references when prompting an image model — pass at least one as an image input where the model supports image-to-image, or describe their handling in the prompt.

Prompt recipe

When constructing a prompt, follow this structure. Adapt the bracketed slots; keep everything else verbatim.

Loose opaque GOUACHE painting on textured paper — visible chunky flat brushstrokes with dry-brush highlights, semi-impressionistic, NOT watercolor wash, NOT digital.

Scene: [archetype + cultural register + light register]. [Composition sentence describing the one-point perspective and what the eye is drawn toward].

[Cast description — 2–4 figures, seen from behind or three-quarter, distributing yellow / blue / sage / terracotta across clothing; one specific lived-in prop or gesture; the ONE small red accent].

[Overhead band description — what hangs above and how it frames the focal light].

[Ground description — what the ground is and how it dapples yellow/blue/sage/terracotta reflections in loose painterly patches].

Color palette: cream + butter-yellow sunlight, sky blue, sage green, terracotta orange, single red accent. NO heavy shadows, NO photorealism, NO sharp lines — every shape is a brushstroke. Vertical composition, one-point perspective drawing the eye toward the brightest focal point. Airy, optimistic, [time-of-day mood] mood. Every shape is a brushstroke — no hard digital edges.

Model guidance

This style has been validated on GPT-Image-2 at vertical 1024×1536 with high quality. It also works on Seedream 5 and Qwen-Image with slightly looser brush handling. Avoid Flux Pro — it tends toward photographic interpretation that breaks the gouache surface.

When the chosen model supports image-to-image, pass ref-market-arcade.jpg (the canonical anchor) as the reference image and reduce prompt length. When the model is text-only, the prompt recipe above is sufficient on its own.

Evaluation checklist

Inspect each generated piece against the locked axes before accepting:

• Surface reads as opaque gouache, not watercolor wash or digital
• Brushstrokes are chunky and flat, with visible dry-brush highlights
• Palette stays inside the six-color set (cream, butter-yellow, sky-blue, sage-green, terracotta, one red)
• Composition is vertical with one-point perspective into a bright focal point
• Figures are seen from behind, walking into the scene — none facing camera
• Overhead band is present and belongs to the archetype
• Ground shows dappled painterly reflections, not even gray shadow
• Exactly one small red accent — never two
• Mood reads as airy and optimistic, not dramatic or moody

If a generation fails on two or more checks, regenerate rather than ship it.

Anti-patterns (what to reject)

• Watercolor-wash transparency (amber pooling, soft edges) — the brushwork must feel opaque and chunky
• Photographic depth of field or sharp digital edges
• Figures facing camera or rendered as portraits
• Even gray shadows on the ground instead of dappled color patches
• More than one saturated red object
• Black ink outlines around shapes
• Heavy contrast or moody night scenes — the style is daylight-only