As mentioned in an earlier blog post , I’ve declared that one of my creative goals for 2024 is to create at least 52 AI assisted/inspired artworks this year, where I’ll use AI-generated images as a prompt for actual physical creative pieces. I feel like I’m still only just beginning to learn how to interact with the various AIs, so for now I’m not being too ambitious – which is why I decided to attempt a design for an adult colouring page as my third AI-assisted project.
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Creating a colouring page with Firefly
This project builds on the very first physical object I created with the help of an AI. I used Adobe Firefly to create a letter “J”, and then laser-etched it onto a bullet journal:
I realised that that image might work as a simple design for a colouring page, if I made a couple of alterations. So I uploaded it into Linearity Curve to convert it to an SVG-format illustration and to tweak the image so it would be more suitable as a simple colouring page. Then I actually coloured it in (digitally) to test it:
Success!
I loved that idea of being able to make my own colouring sheets, so I tried Firefly again – but this time the results weren’t as good. I used the prompt “Large serif letter “K” filled with doodle line drawings of art nouveau flowers and leaves, suitable for an adult colouring page,” and this is what I got:
These were completely unsuitable as colouring pages. Especially because the AI has even coloured parts of them already! But with Firefly you can select specific styles, so I wondered if that would make a difference. I applied “Art Nouveau / Bold lines / Ink / Line Drawing / Simple”, and there was definitely an improvement:
Although they were better than the first results, they were still no good for my intended purpose (to create a colouring page). It’s hard to tell from this screenshot, but many of the lines just peter out into nothing, which means that anyone trying to colour them wouldn’t have distinct areas to draw inside. And many parts of the designs were far too small to colour, even if the letter was printed at A4 size.
Unlike DALL-E there is no way to incrementally ‘teach’ the Firefly AI at the moment (February 2024). However, aside from applying the styles as mentioned above, it also lets you upload your own reference images to help it. I uploaded the letter “J” design that Firefly had previously created for me, and again there was a big improvement…
…but again none of them were instantly suitable for use as colouring pages. The one on the left was pretty good for colouring purposes, but I’d been hoping for flowers and leaves so the design was a bit too abstract. The other three had areas that would be really unsatisfying to colour.
Creating a colouring page with DALL-E
At that point I gave up and tried ChatGPT’s DALL-E to see if it was any better. I started with the same prompt (Large serif letter “K” filled with doodle line drawings of art nouveau flowers and leaves, suitable for an adult colouring page), and these are the first two designs it came up with:
The designs were interesting, but again they weren’t suitable as colouring pages. I replied to DALL-E with “Thanks. Could you make them a bit simpler and the lines a bit thicker, please?”, and it tried again:
They still weren’t suitable for colouring, so I typed “The lines of the flowers and leaves need to be thicker”. Unfortunately DALL-E applied its frequent quirk – of fixing the thing that was wrong, but breaking the things that were right. It cut off parts of the “K” in the first design, and then decided to invent a new letter shape:
Considering most AIs only give you a certain number of credits to use for creating designs, I find this sort of thing really frustrating. It’s wasting my credits on creating things that I don’t want! So I got it to start again, by saying “Please try again: A literal design for a serif “K”, decorated with doodle line drawings of art nouveau flowers and leaves, suitable for an adult colouring page. The style should look like thick vector-based lines.”
At last! They’re not perfect as colouring pages (e.g. because there are some diagonal shadow lines, and some sections where the lines are too close to attempt to colour them), but the image on the right is getting somewhere.
Creating a colouring page with Kittl
Finally, I tried with the Kittl AI, to see if it was any good at creating colouring pages. I applied the ‘Anime Vector’ style, and this is what it designed:
Although some of them had elements that wouldn’t be suitable for colouring, a lot of them looked like they could work immediately, without any alteration, if I just printed them. Here is the proof:
I’m not keen on the flower at the top right – it’s a bit fanciful compared to the other design elements. But on the other hand, the design felt like it was just the right size and complexity for colouring. I love the overall style and all of the leaves and vines. A lot of the flowers are lovely, too. This was a fun project – ending up with a physical item (the colouring page) by just printing out the design.
“Adult Coloring Page Creator”!
Only after spending ages exploring the AIs’ colouring-page capabilities, did I realise that ChatGPT offered the “Explore GPTs” feature:
…and I discovered that users of ChatGPT/DALL-E can save specialised versions of the AI, trained to do specific things. One example is “Adult Coloring Page Creator” by Brent Laing. I tried the prompt: “Serif letter ‘K’ decorated with Art Nouveau flowers and leaves”, and this is what came out:
I think it’s lovely, although it still has some sections which might be difficult to colour.
Critique of the different AIs
This is my seventh week of ‘seriously playing’ with AI text-to-image generators, and they seem to be evolving very quickly. In January 2024, Kittl, DALL-E and Firefly were all a bit dodgy when it came to recognising letters. This is weird, because the prompt actually included the letter. How can’t AIs know what ‘K’ looks like, when I’ve just shown right there in the text what ‘K’ is?) Anyway, these were my experiences for this project:
Firefly:
Pretty designs, but not suitable as colouring pages because the lines were too fine and/or the designs were too complex. However, at least it has learned how to create letters in the last few weeks. For now I don’t think Firefly will be my AI of choice if I want to try to create any more decorated letters for colouring, because I’ve had more success with the other AIs. That’s a shame, because Firefly created the original ‘J’ which made me think about creating colouring pages.
ChatGPT/DALL-E:
Incredibly frustrating. Mostly very good shapes of letters, but the AI constantly ignored my instructions and ‘forgot’ to do what I’d asked. However, other people have successfully trained their own specialised versions of GPTs to create colouring pages, so I might persevere. It would save time to have a specialised GPT that already knows what I want.
Kittl:
Produces very good designs that are suitable for colouring. However I think to get a ‘perfect’ design I’d have to tweak the prompt a bit. (E.g. to ask for realistic-looking flowers rather than fantasy flowers). Kittl has also been a lot better at creating recognisable letters in the few weeks that I’ve been using it.
Summary
I really enjoyed creating, printing, and colouring my own colouring page.
Lessons learned
- AIs seem to be especially good or bad at certain tasks, so if I continue using them I’ll probably have to keep subscribing to more than one.
- I’d wondered about creating some colouring books, but AIs are getting so good at designing images that it’s probably not worth it now!
Things I still need to learn or improve
- How to create my own GPT in ChatGPT, so I can create colouring pages in future without all the endless dialogue.
Homework:
- Try to create my own GPT with ChatGPT, for creating colouring pages of letters decorated with flowers and leaves.
Thanks for reading this post. If you’ve got any suggestions of prompts or products – or if you’ve been experimenting yourself with AI-generated images – I’d love to hear about them. You can either comment below or send me a message via the Contact form.