Scratchy Ink Caricature

Editorial · Caricature · Scratchy

Recipe

The style is the recipe. The subject is yours.

The examples above were generated with Seedream 4.5 and Nano Banana Pro. The recipes below are written for GPT Image and Flux, so treat the settings as a starting point rather than the exact run.

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

An editorial caricature drawn with a scratchy dry nib in black ink: features pushed hard, brow and jaw enlarged, eyes narrowed, the head built from fast overlapping strokes that leave white gaps everywhere. One flat pink ground behind with no texture, a few crude white highlights scraped into the ink to lift the face. Confident, unflattering, no lettering.

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: 1280 x 1024
Quality: High
Background: Opaque
Output: PNG

Tips

1Push the features further than feels polite. Timid caricature reads as a bad drawing.
2White gaps in the ink are what make it look scratched.
3One flat loud ground. Never a rendered background.