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: The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. Emotional tension: estrangement inside one's own home. An austere empty room, reduced to two broad warm-grey wall planes and an ivory floor. One narrow closed deep charcoal door sits off-centre; its base leaks a hairline of dim ochre light. A large, hard-edged charcoal shadow extends diagonally from the unseen foreground toward the door. The shadow is an ambiguous rectangle, NOT an insect silhouette. An uncomfortably small door in a quiet enclosed space, with simple geometric perspective. No insect, human, animal, furniture, clocks, eye, symbols, patterned wallpaper, extra windows, sun or surreal collage. Palette: warm mineral grey and charcoal with one tiny muted-ochre glint.