Venetian Mask - Two images, one prompt

Both images have been created with the same prompt and two different AI Art generators. The image on the left was created with the help of Nightcafe Studio, and the image on the right was created by using Deep Dream Generator. As you can see there's quite a bit of a difference between them. 

I am not sure which of the two is my favorite - there's something interesting in both of them: The serious facial expression and the way the feathers frame the face in the left image; the richly decorated mask and the smile on the face in the right image. 

Coloring with Gouache and Colored pencils

Quite some time ago I did some line drawings of masks. Later on I colored them with alcoholbased markers, but kept the drawings.

Coloring line drawings is a way of getting familiar with your paints; so I decided to color this mask with Gouache paints. Then I applied colored pencils. I noticed that the pencils are doing quite well on the surface created by the gouache paints. 

Getting the result you want step by step with DALL-E2

 The first step you have to do is: Visualize the desired result. You have to have an image in your head - be it a dog running over a green meadow, a vase with tulips, whatsoever. I have been painting a lot of masks, and I am almost obsessed with masks. Masks however is such a general notion that it has to be specified. 

And that is the second step: Be as precise with the image in your head as possible: African masks? Masks from other continents? I wanted an image with Venetian masks - they are so pretty, they are the symbol of carnival in Italy. So I wrote the following prompt in DALL-E2:

Photo of a Venetian mask, medium closeup, photorealism, hiyperdetailed, intricate back lit 4K

And here's the Image:

Mask 1

Well, the image is not bad, but not what I had in mind when I was thinking of Venetian Masks. So I changed the prompt to:

Photo of a Venetian mask, photorealism, hiyperdetailed, intricate, 4K

As you can see when comparing the two prompts I added something and I deleted something.  This resulted in:

Mask 2

Let me add one important information here: I always let DALL-E2 create four images, and up to now I could use one or two out of these four. 

So Step #3 means: try to adapt the digital image to the image in your head by working on the prompts. Generating images with DALL-E2 is not something like hitting the "Create" button and there it is - the beautiful fantastic extraordinary image you had in your mind! It means spending time - and in regard to Nightcafe - credits. It is a process.