Use case: illustration-story.
Create ONE original literary cover illustration. Portrait 2:3, 1024 by 1536 preferred, flat edge-to-edge paper. No book mockup.
Art direction: quiet mid-century printmaking, irregular ink edges, fine restrained natural paper grain, matte warm ivory (#f1ede3). No more than two main muted ink colours plus graphite linework and the ivory paper. Wide, confident forms; very few small details. A lived-in spatial scene with a sense of distance, weather or absence—not a floating icon, logo, object sticker, or decorative emblem.
Reserve the entire top 43% as completely empty warm ivory for separate live typography. The narrative occupies roughly 47%–87% of the canvas; the bottom 9% remains clean ivory for an author line. The scene can reach the side edges. Coherent at 180 pixels wide. Paper is the light, not a bright sun.
No text, letterlike marks, digits, signature, watermark, publisher logo, frame, collage, glossy 3D, photorealism, cute cartoon, ornate ornament, heavy distressed texture or green. Make an original interpretation, not a copy of any published cover.

Work: Dream of the Red Chamber (红楼梦) by Cao Xueqin. Emotional tension: beauty outlives its brief season. A quiet courtyard rendered as one broad dusty-rose wall with an off-centre open moon gate; behind that opening is a single darker oxblood plane suggesting another courtyard. A sparse diagonal trail of only five or six small rose-red petals lies on the unprinted ivory foreground and recedes toward the doorway. The nested empty space, not a flower or decoration, is the subject. Simple architectural perspective, delicate warmth and absence. No people, faces, furniture, roofs, blossoms on branches, lanterns, calligraphy, emblems, ornate garden details or sun. Palette: muted dusty rose and deep faded oxblood.