Are we outsourcing our creativity when we use ai to generate images? Or are we extending it? Because it’s possible to do either or both. And it may be half a dozen of one and six of the other.
What does this new symbiosis look like? Is there skill involved? Let’s tackle these two questions.
Sure, skill is involved when there’s intentionality. But, one can create interesting things too with just serendipity and luck: “create an image of a unicorn.”
This is outsourcing creativity.
Whether we get something we like depends on the assumptions the model makes, how well it can take a simple concept and run with it (midjourney is good at this) and the aesthetic taste of the prompter reviewing and selecting the results to keep.
Often the sloppiest of ai slop impresses the noob —until they learn to distinguish what is mediocre or poor generative art from what stands apart. A refinement in perception that comes from generating 10,000 images. This practice delves into understanding the parameters of what can be evoked through what can be described.
Prompts, incantations, cantrips… learning the differences between art styles, color palettes, lighting options, framing, and compositional rules, once implicit, now become tools of expression. A good generative artist is always expanding their vocabulary, and thus the discriminations they can make visually. They notice through experimentation the impact of these “trade secrets” and invisible architecture in visual design by making the rules explicit. An intermediate prompt, for example, may be something like:
A luminous white unicorn standing ankle-deep in a shallow black-water forest pool at dawn, shown in a three-quarter profile facing left, its horn angled toward a narrow opening in the trees. The unicorn has a subtle pearlescent coat with individual hairs visible along the mane and shoulders; its mane drifts in a gentle breeze and catches the light in faint lavender, rose-gold, and icy-blue highlights.
Composition: cinematic vertical portrait, full body visible, unicorn placed on the right third of the frame, with the horn leading the viewer’s eye diagonally upward toward a bright break in the canopy; foreground reeds slightly out of focus at lower left, layered trunks receding into mist for depth; generous negative space in the upper-left quadrant. Low camera angle, approximately chest height, creating quiet monumentality without exaggerating anatomy.
Lighting: cool pre-sunrise ambient light fills the forest; a narrow warm golden sunbeam enters from the upper left and rims the unicorn’s back, mane, ears, and horn; soft reflected cyan light rises from the water beneath its legs; gentle volumetric rays visible in the mist; high dynamic range but no blown-out whites.
Color palette: restrained and harmonious—deep blue-green shadows, charcoal water, desaturated violet mist, muted moss, then selective accents of warm amber sunlight and opalescent lavender in the mane. Avoid saturated rainbow colors; retain a dark, contemplative overall value structure.
Art direction: painterly magical realism, combining the atmospheric depth and luminous brushwork of late-19th-century Symbolist painting with contemporary high-detail fantasy concept art. Delicate visible brush texture, refined anatomical realism, elegant proportions, emotionally quiet rather than cute or ornamental.
Mood and atmosphere: ancient, sacred, solitary, slightly uncanny; drifting mist, a few floating pollen-like motes, barely visible ripples spreading from its hooves.
Render constraints: crisp focal detail on the unicorn’s eye, horn, and shoulder; progressively softer focus toward the foreground reeds and distant forest; no rider, no castle, no text, no jewelry, no wings, no extra limbs, no cartoon styling, no oversaturated neon glow.
And, of course, we can use ai to help level up the visual and design constructs available for us to explore. Learning to write these types of prompts is a creativity and skill multiplier. We can ask ai:
“From a visual design standpoint, what is working in this image and what is not, and how could it be improved?”
Response
“Keep the dawn forest, cool mist, warm rim light, and pale unicorn. Make the unicorn’s eye the sharpest and most contrast-rich point in the frame. Reduce highlight intensity in the tail, lower mane, water glitter, and right-side tree trunk. Shift the unicorn into a subtle three-quarter stance with one forehoof gently breaking the water. Place the horn against a darker band of forest rather than the brightest sun opening. Make the mane slightly damp and clumped near the neck and legs, with restrained lavender-gold sheen rather than uniformly luminous strands.”
To make this understanding our own, we can ask “why is this better?”
And the response may be:
“The core issue: hierarchy, In the original, several bright, high-contrast elements compete for first attention:
- The sun and beam cluster at upper left.
- The horn, which aims toward that bright cluster.
- The bright rim-lit mane around the neck and tail.
- Sparkling water in the lower frame.
- Bright, textured bark along the right-side tree. All of them are individually attractive. But images are generally easier to read when the viewer can perceive an intended order:
Primary focal point→secondary accent→environmental discovery”
This isn’t meant to be a tutorial on making better images; it’s exploring the processes of working with ai in a way that teaches us new ways to perceive and thus describe our intentions.
Writers once honed a discipline called wordsmithing, and with the rise of ai, a new audience for writing appears, making it a crucial skill for shaping outcomes through both structure and vocabulary. Being able to describe these shapes is the new literacy and a new opportunity to expand both our own creativity and extend our perceptions in collaboration with ai.