Rickshaw Boy

This prompt generates text-free artwork. The title and author are composed separately afterward.

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: Rickshaw Boy (骆驼祥子) by Lao She. Emotional tension: movement with nowhere to arrive. A very narrow ivory lane recedes between two broad muted clay-grey courtyard-wall planes. At the lower side of the lane, a tiny vacant rickshaw is suggested by just one dark circular wheel, a low seat and two spare diagonal shafts; it must belong to the street, not float alone. The long dark slate-blue shadow of the wall fills most of the lower right, compressing the passage and creating quiet pressure. Spare diagonal geometry, no literal camel. No people, signage, skyline, roof ornament, trees, sun, crowded street, decorative props or detailed vehicle drawing. Palette: warm clay-grey and dark desaturated ink blue.

Generated: 2026-10-15
Tool: OpenAI built-in image generation; exact model version not exposed by the tool.