hotpromptA worked example

The Degas cat

Both pictures came from the same six words. The only thing that changed was how much of the ask was written down.

What was asked

paint a picture of a cat in the style of Degas.

_As written
A Degas ballet rehearsal room — barre, mirrors, dancers in tutus — with a tabby cat sitting in the middle of the parquet floor washing itself.
A ballet rehearsal room. Barre, mirrors, six dancers in tutus — and a cat added to the floor. The model reached for what Degas painted.
+Sharpened
A painter's studio in muted browns and greys — stacked canvases, an easel, a jar of brushes — with a calico cat washing its paw on a worn armchair, painted in loose, broken brushwork.
A painter’s studio. Stacked canvases, window light, a calico mid-wash on an armchair. The model reached for how Degas painted.

Both images are model output, generated for this page. Neither is a Degas — the signature in the first one is invented too, which is its own small argument for saying what you actually want.

The lesson

“In the style of X” reaches for X’s subject matter unless your subject is pinned down first. Style is not a filter you lay over a picture; to the model it is a bag of tokens, and Degas’s bag is full of dancers. Name the cat, the room, the light and the framing as separate decisions, and style has nothing left to fill in but the brushwork.

What the sharpened prompt saidImage generation✓ you had this+ we added_ only you know this
  1. ✓TaskPaint a picture of a cat in the style of Degas.
  2. _Subject + specificityDescribe the subject itself — appearance, age or material, what it is doing, what expression it wears.
  3. +Style / mediumCinematic painting, inferred from the intent.
  4. +Composition / framingMedium shot, eye-level, subject slightly off-center.
  5. +Lighting + moodSoft golden-hour light.
  6. +Setting / backgroundA simple fitting environment.
  7. +Color paletteHarmonious, slightly muted, unless the subject implies otherwise.
  8. +Aspect ratio16:9.
  9. +Detail / render cuesHighly detailed, sharp focus — a couple of cues, not a keyword pile-up.
  10. +Negatives / exclusionsNo text, no watermark, no extra limbs, no distortion.

Left out for this type: role prompting — the persona leaks into the scene as a token; prose-format instructions; politeness and meta words, which get parsed as content; narrative explanation of why you want it.

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