Filled to the Outline
A book cover where a figure in profile is filled entirely with a landscape — governed by the one thing that keeps it a figure rather than a stain. Six fields.
Two runs of the same template. A valley of lit windows carried inside one figure beside a winter estuary carried inside another — warm bone against cool grey, indigo against slate, and both times a whole landscape stopping exactly at the edge of a person.
Generated from this template with the fields shown above — the sun sits at the crown, a ridge of roofs crosses the shoulders, a river of lit windows fills the lower body, and the contour holds the whole way round: the indigo interior reads darker than the bone ground at every point, including the crown where hair breaks into separate strands. The reference's baseline is what made the edge the axis rather than the filling. Its interior was lovely and correctly placed — sun at the head, mountains at the shoulders, maple forest below — and it still failed, because the bright sky painted inside the top of the head matched the pale paper outside it and the crown simply dissolved. Its body had also widened into a soft cone below the shoulders, so the thing wearing the landscape had stopped being a person. Both are laws here now. One more came from this run: the subtitle first came back as ESS and AYS, split across two rings, because the template fixed the ring count at two and left the word count free. The words decide the rings now. Run-to-run quirks: the face is the one place the edge goes quiet, and the figure runs off the lower edge rather than ending.
Generated for this library
Input
Figure a person in profile facing left, short hair lifting,
one shoulder and the edge of an arm readable
Landscape a valley at first light - sun low at the crown, a
ridge of rooftops crossing the shoulders, a river of
lit windows through the lower body, mist at the waist
Title BUILT BY DESCRIBING
Subtitle ESSAYS
Side Vibary · a vibe library / vibary.ai
Ground warm bone paper, first light, cool blue into amber
Returned 1 cover · 2:3 · watercolour, soft edges, no outline
figure three quarters of the height, facing left, face left
blank, hair breaking into separate strands at the crown
edge held all the way round by value - the amber interior
reading darker than the bone ground wherever they meet
body shoulder line, one arm's edge and a waist all readable
beneath the head
inside sun at the crown, rooftops across the shoulders, lit
windows and water filling the lower body
type three ringed bubbles down the right, two filled ones
beneath, side lines running up the left edgeYou fill in 6 fields — the braced lines at the top. Everything below them is fixed.
- 1The figure, and which way they face
- 2The landscape inside them
- 3The title, one word to a ring
- 4The subtitle, in filled rings
- 5The two side lines
- 6The ground and the season
Filled to the Outline
Produce ONE image: a book cover whose subject is a figure in profile filled entirely with a landscape. Follow every line. Replace only the FIELDS block; everything after it is fixed.
First — do you have the fields?
If any field below still has braces around it, stop and ask. Put all the questions in one short message, and show the example under each one so they can see the shape of a useful answer. Wait for the replies, then draw. Never fill a brace yourself: a value you invented is a value nobody asked for, and it will look exactly as considered as the ones they did give you.
Ask in whatever language they are writing to you in. Translate the questions and the examples; do not make someone read English to tell you what they want.
The examples are only examples. If someone answers a question, use their answer; never fall back to the example because you prefer it.
If the fields are already filled in, ignore this and carry on.
Fields — replace these six lines only
- The figure, and which way they face: {who, in profile} e.g. a person in profile facing left, short hair lifting in the wind, one shoulder and the edge of an arm clearly readable
- The landscape inside them: {what sits at the crown, what crosses the shoulders, what fills the lower body} e.g. a valley at first light — the sun low at the crown of the head, a ridge of rooftops crossing the shoulders, a river of lit windows winding through the lower body, mist gathered at the waist
- The title, one word to a ring: {three or four words} e.g. BUILT BY DESCRIBING
- The subtitle, in filled rings: {one or two words} e.g. ESSAYS
- The two side lines: {a name and a line, and a second line} e.g. Vibary · a vibe library / vibary.ai
- The ground and the season: {the paper, the hour, the colours} e.g. warm bone paper, first light, cool blue into amber
The contour law
The interior is the easy part and it is not what fails. The edge is.
Inside and outside must differ in lightness wherever they meet. Follow the silhouette all the way round — crown, brow, nose, chin, throat, shoulder, arm, waist. At every point along it, the landscape inside has to read clearly darker or clearly lighter than the paper outside. Where the two match, the figure leaks into the ground and stops being a figure: a bright sky painted inside the top of the head against a pale ground erases the crown entirely, which is exactly how this style dies.
This is a value rule, not a colour rule, and it is not solved with an outline. Never draw one. If a passage will not hold, darken the landscape there.
Hair may break into separate strands at the ends, and those strands carry the same requirement — each one legible against the ground, or it is not drawn at all.
The body law
The silhouette stays a body below the neck. A shoulder line, the edge of one arm, and a waist, all readable. Filling a figure with scenery invites the whole lower half to widen into a soft cone with a head on top; a cone is not a person, and the double exposure only means something while the shape is still someone.
Placing the landscape
The scene is placed on the body, not poured into it. Three anchors, named in the fields:
- At the crown — a single bright thing: a sun, a moon, a lamp, a break in cloud.
- Across the shoulders — the landscape's horizontal: a ridge, a wall, a treeline, a shore. It runs shoulder to shoulder and reads as the picture's horizon.
- Through the lower body — the ground of the scene: forest, water, roofs, field, filling to the base of the frame.
Mist or haze gathers at the waist, softening the join between the second and third.
The face
Left blank. A soft, featureless profile — brow, nose and chin as contour only. No eye, no mouth, no brow line. A face with features turns the cover into a portrait, and this is a landscape wearing a person's shape.
The face is the one paler passage in the figure, and it is where the contour law is hardest to keep. It still applies: brow, nose and chin have to stay readable against the paper. If the blank face and the ground come out the same tone, tint the face a shade — never outline it.
The page
- Ground: pale, warm, lightly speckled paper. A few loose petals, leaves or flecks drifting outside the figure — no more than a handful.
- Type: a vertical column of thin-ringed circles down one side, one word to a ring, holding the title. Directly beneath, the subtitle in filled circles of a deeper tone of the same hue, set in white — again one word to a ring, and as many rings as the subtitle has words.
- A word is never split across two rings. Fixing the ring count while leaving the word count free is how a one-word subtitle comes back as ESS and AYS: the rings get filled whatever it costs. The words decide the rings, not the other way round.
- All filled rings share one colour.
- The side lines run vertically up the opposite edge, small. A third small line sits in the lower corner on the type's side.
- All type is a plain sans. No text crosses the figure.
Never
- ✕ an outline, a keyline or a drop shadow on the figure
- ✕ any stretch of the contour where inside and outside match
- ✕ a lower body that has widened into a cone or a cape
- ✕ facial features of any kind
- ✕ text laid over the figure
- ✕ a word broken across two rings, or filled rings in two colours
- ✕ hard edges anywhere — every transition is watercolour
The result
A cover you read twice: a person from across the room, a whole landscape from arm's length, and an edge sharp enough to keep the two from becoming a stain.
The whole template, in one piece. The steps below are the entire workflow.
How to use it
- Copy the whole template with the button above.
- Replace the six FIELDS lines. Write the landscape as three placements — what sits at the crown, what crosses the shoulders, what fills the lower body — rather than as a description of a view.
- Paste it into any image-capable agent or model, in one message. One run returns the cover.
- Check the edge before shipping, not the middle. Follow the outline all the way round: if there is anywhere you cannot tell inside from outside, the figure has leaked and no amount of beautiful interior will fix it.
What you swap
- The figure, and which way they face
- a person in profile facing left, short hair lifting in the wind, one shoulder and the edge of an arm clearly readable
- The landscape inside them
- a valley at first light — the sun low at the crown of the head, a ridge of rooftops crossing the shoulders, a river of lit windows winding through the lower body, mist gathered at the waist
- The title, one word to a ring
- BUILT BY DESCRIBING
- The subtitle, in filled rings
- ESSAYS
- The two side lines
- Vibary · a vibe library / vibary.ai
- The ground and the season
- warm bone paper, first light, cool blue into amber
Before it runs
- A figure with a profile worth cutting. This is a silhouette before it is anything else, and a three-quarter face gives it no edge to be.
- A landscape with a horizontal in it — a ridge, a wall, a treeline, a shore. That line is what crosses the shoulders, and without one the fill has nothing to hang on.
- A short title. Each word gets its own ring down the side, and five rings is a column rather than a title.
When to reach for it
When a cover has to carry a mood rather than a subject: essays, poetry, a memoir, a season's programme. Templates in this style describe the filling in loving detail and say nothing about the edge, which is where the picture actually fails.
What changes
- One watercolour cover: a profile filled with a whole landscape, its face left featureless, on a pale speckled ground.
- The contour is held by a value rule rather than by an outline — inside and outside differ in lightness at every point, so the figure never leaks into the paper.
- The body keeps its anatomy: shoulder, arm and waist stay readable, which is what stops the silhouette collapsing into a cone with a head on it.
- The landscape is placed on the body, not poured into it — a named thing at the crown, a horizontal at the shoulders, the ground filling the lower half.
- Type in a column of ringed bubbles down one side, so the words never sit on the picture.
Pairs with
- A Shape You Can NameA flat illustration held inside one big silhouette, with the scene breaking out through its edge — where the shape has to mean something and the crossings have to be real crossings. Six fields.
- Bent to the TubeA cover that lives on the face of an old television — the artwork painted onto curved glass rather than pasted behind it, and the set filling the sheet instead of floating on black. Six fields.
- Colour Goes Over the LineA deliberately unskilled drawing — the kind someone makes slowly in a paint program — with the clumsiness given as construction and counts instead of adjectives. Five fields.