# Scratchboard (スクラッチボード) — image generation prompt
# IndexStyle No.592 — https://indexstyle.org/styles/scratchboard
# Style descriptors only. This prompt names no artist, studio, brand or work.

Produce four original images in the visual language of Scratchboard, a technique from Hand-drawn, 19th century–.

## What to make

Make the kind of thing this style exists for: high-contrast illustration of animals, machines and figures, or giving dark packaging and posters a hard engraved light. Choose one subject and hold it across all four images.

## What has to be visible

- Sharp white lines cut from a black ground
- Contour and highlight joined by the same blade marks
- Crossed lines and dots producing middle values
- Broad retained black with concentrated white detail

Someone who knows this style should be able to point at each of these in the finished image.

## How to build it

- Layout and structure: Begin with black and cut only lit contours and focal detail into white
- Type and lettering: Use bold reversed headlines and keep fine copy in uninterrupted black fields
- Material and surface: Ink a white clay board and scratch varied lines and dots with needles, blades and scrapers
- Colour: #F4F0E5 carries the ground, #6F6458 is the colour the style is remembered by, #090909 holds text and outlines. Read off real works, so treat them as a direction rather than a fixed palette.
- What it should feel like: rebellion, luxury, technique

## What goes wrong

Inverting a black-and-white photograph is not scratchboard. Direction and width of cuts must describe surface and light.

## Across the four

Keep every cue above present in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows the range this style covers rather than four versions of one picture.

## Constraints

- Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work.
- Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work.
- Produce original compositions in the general period language described above.

Full design spec: https://indexstyle.org/styles/scratchboard/design.md