Folk Ink Landmark Sketch Prompt

Create a two-part composition from a travel photo: ## Upper half: Real photo Keep the original photo's landmarks, proportions, perspective, roof/tower/door relationships, steps/columns/sculptures, surrounding roads/trees/water/walls, materials, natural light, and colors. Only apply light travel-zine/independent-publishing/art-exhibition photography grading with a faint film grain. No illustration, no moving buildings, no perspective changes, no added decoration, no sky replacement, no stretching/mirroring/copying. ## Lower half: Landmark sketch Do not redraw the photo fully or add an ink filter to it. Identify 2-4 most iconic structural elements (roof/dome silhouette, tower heights, main door/arch, steps/base direction, column rhythm, sculpture position, bridgehead/wall/waterfront). Remove tourists, vehicles, ads, signs, dense plants, repeated windows, brick lines, carvings, complex eaves, sky texture, and photo noise. Keep only the minimum information to recognize the building. The sketch should occupy 36%-55% of the drawing area, placed center, lower-center, or following the photo's focal bias. Leave 45%-60% continuous warm white paper around it. Delete the background first, then shrink the subject. Do not shrink the full scene into the lower area or fill the entire background. ## Ink lines On warm, off-white, slightly textured matte paper, use thick, slightly trembling black brush, oil marker, or coarse ink pen. Lines should show real wrist pressure and paper resistance: uneven thickness, slight hesitation and returns, local retracing, occasional breaks, small ink blobs, rough paper tooth, a few unclosed outlines. First use a few firm outer contours to capture roof, tower, door, steps, and base; then use minimal short lines, dot-like ink marks, or black patches to hint internal structure. Lines may be slightly clumsy but must capture the building's character. Do not make it a fine pen-and-ink architectural drawing, photo auto-trace, uniform vector outline, or children's coloring page. ## Color Use only 2-3 signature colors extracted from the original photo, plus paper white and black ink. Prefer: the building wall/roof representative color; one environment color from sky/plants/water/ground; optionally one deeper visual anchor color. Reduce saturation slightly to form full, slightly aged, matte watercolor flat washes. Color patches may show obvious brush strokes, uneven coverage, crossing ink lines, local misregistration, white gaps, edge chips, and paper texture showing through. Color need not fit perfectly inside lines; it should look like the artist brushed a few old color blocks onto paper, not digital closed fills. Use color only for main walls, roofs, ground, or two or three irregular background panels; do not fill the entire background. ## White space and composition Keep the sketch and text in two separate paper-white areas with clear gaps. If the building is left, place text on the right or upper right; if right, place text on the left or upper left. Keep obvious breathing distance between building and text. Besides building and text, leave at least one complete, continuous, blank paper area representing sky, distance, light, and travel stillness. Do not use a template that fills all four corners. ## Text Default to a restrained but readable English travel caption. Determine the text word-by-word from photo facts before generating, including: 1) a 1-3 word location/scene title; 2) a short phrase like "STUDY NO. 01" or "LANDMARK NOTE"; 3) a 5-10 word observation sentence describing the roof, door, steps, color, shoreline, or weather actually visible. The main title uses slightly hesitant bold English capitals, oil marker lettering, or hand-drawn old pencil. The title must be clearly readable at normal chat preview size, usually 20%-32% of the lower area width. Slight unevenness, broken ink, paper tooth, and hand letter-spacing are allowed, but not illegible scrawl. Number and observation sentence are about 45%-65% of title height, in small old pencil, handwritten margin note, or humanist sans-serif, also clearly readable. Use black ink or one dark color extracted from the building blocks; it should look written, drawn, or stamped on paper, not a floating smooth digital type layer. If the location cannot be reliably confirmed, use the real scene subject as the title; do not guess city, building name, date, or coordinates. Forbid Chinese titles, fake Chinese, pseudo-calligraphy, author names, signatures, social handles, logos, QR codes, URLs, invented places, and gibberish. ## Forced avoidance Avoid: fixed Chinese temple template, red-wall blue-background formula, invented stone lions, invented flags, fake seals, Chinese calligraphy, copied reference architecture, detailed pen-and-ink architecture drawing, transparent watercolor wash, screenprint halftone, full-page rubber stamp texture, woodcut hatching, automatic photo outlines, vector illustration, clean closed color fills, childish coloring-book style, cartoon landmark icon, complete background rendering, excessive architectural details, edge-to-edge painting, tiny unreadable typography, floating digital text, author signature, logo, watermark. ## Most important rule The upper half must clearly remain a real original photo. The lower half uses thick, slightly trembling black ink lines to capture the same building's most iconic roof, tower, door, steps, or sculpture; then uses two or three slightly overrunning, brush-marked old color washes to anchor the main relationships. Actively delete details, shrink the building, add a readable travel caption, and leave large continuous white paper, so the result looks like a folk building sketch earnestly drawn on a journey, not an architectural fine drawing, photo filter, or generic cartoon landmark.