Hand Drawn Data Overlay

Illustration · Data · Chart

Recipe

The style is the recipe. The subject is yours.

A description in plain sentences. This is the version to start with, and it works on any current image model. Settings below are the ones we used on GPT Image; treat them as a starting point.

Make it yours

The recipe is the style, not the picture. Put your own subject in and the highlighted part of the prompt changes.

Prompt

A soft atmospheric painting in muted dusty blue and cream, visible brushwork and paper grain throughout, with a large painted subject filling most of the frame, overlaid with a hand drawn data chart. The painting is the dominant layer and the chart is drawn on top of it, never the other way around. Vertical bar columns in coral and warm orange rise from a low baseline, of varying widths and irregularly spaced rather than an evenly spaced textbook chart, some solid, some only a thin white outline, all semi transparent so the painting reads clearly through them and covering no more than a third of the image. A layer of fine white hand drawn annotation sits on top: tick scales, small arrows, circled numerals, question marks and loose handwritten numbers, none of it legible as real data. The painted subject stays visible behind the chart rather than being covered. Warm coral against cool blue with cream highlights and nothing else. Flat, even, no depth of field.

The prompt gets you close. Feed one of the examples in as a style reference for the rest. Download the images

Use the examples as a reference

Download the examples

Send the example as an input image to the images.edits endpoint alongside the prompt, or attach it in ChatGPT. It follows composition closely, so describe your subject firmly or it will copy the example.

Settings on GPT Image

Size: 1536 x 1024
Quality: High
Background: Opaque
Output: PNG

Tips

1The numbers are decoration, not data. Half formed and garbled numerals are correct here, so never ask for legible labels.
2Say the painting is the dominant layer. Left to itself the model shrinks the subject to a background wash and returns an ordinary bar chart.
3Say semi transparent. Opaque bars turn it into a poster with a picture behind it instead of one image.
4Keep the bars sitting on a shared baseline. Columns floating at random heights lose the sense that something is being measured.

Overview

A quiet atmospheric painting, dusty blue and cream with visible brushwork and paper grain, is covered by a chart somebody drew on top of it. Vertical bar columns in coral and warm orange rise from a baseline across the frame, some solid, some only an outline, all thin enough to let the painting read straight through. Over that sits a layer of white hand drawn annotation: tick scales, small arrows, circled numerals, question marks and loose handwritten figures that never resolve into real data. The pleasure is the mismatch. A measuring instrument has been laid over something that cannot be measured, and neither layer wins.

Category: Illustration
Period: Contemporary
Recipes: GPT Image, Midjourney, Flux
Views: 116
Added: 17 Aug 2026