I’ve been a bit obsessed, all along, with trying to make faux linocut print images with AI. My main obsession — with Día de los Muertos — has been many decades in the making, so of course I’ve tried to combine the two in Midjourney numerous times. I made the image below nearly a year ago, only it turned out to be black with gold a sick shade of mustard yellow. Except for that, I really liked it, so I changed the yellow to white in Photoshop.1
Fast forward to last week, when I used Midjourney’s “describe” function to make similar images to the javelina, with what I felt was limited success. I asked the Midjourney prompt group on Facebook if there was anything that might work better. As luck would have it, Midjourney had just — mere hours before — introduced a new feature called “style references.” I tried it immediately, using the image above as a guide to the new style I wanted to create, and was impressed by the results, one of which is below.
Another ongoing quasi-obsession has been with faux Tarot cards. Honestly, saying that I’ve had limited success with those would be Pollyanna-ish at best. Nonetheless, I tried yet another Tarot card and, except for the fact that I asked for a completely different scene, received a fairly credible result.2
I really like Lady of Guadalupe imagery and wondered what would happen if I used last week’s javelina image as a style. I was quite happy with several of the results, including the one below.
Of course no style experimentation on my part would be complete without a touch of Día de los Muertos.
Something else I’ve been trying to do, with virtually no success at all, is to create an image of an old pickup crossing a bridge, using a retro national-park-poster style. Midjourney does OK with pickups, and it does OK with bridges — but the two together often blow its artificial mind. I finally had a few successes, using two very different images to set a style.
I wasn’t completely satisfied with the traditional Guadalupe image above, so … I bet you’re not the tiniest bit surprised to learn that I added a bit of Día de los Muertos flavor to her (below).
Last, out on the plains of eastern New Mexico there’s an old, now-unused church in the small settlement of Taiban. I was thinking about it last night and got curious about what Midjourney might come up with.
The church in Taiban looks very little like the one above … but I confess I like this version quite a bit as well.
Yay Photoshop!
This faux Tarot card could easily be the 6 of Swords.
Wow, Lisa, you have become really good at creating new illustrations in different styles in AI!