Watercolor style / vintage illustrations
Hi, ELH community! I'd like to share a preview of my newest Storyline project, currently still a work in progress. The Secret Life of Food is an interactive learning experience that explores how everyday foods such as chocolate, potatoes, tea, coffee, and spices have influenced trade, exploration, culture, and world history. For this project, I wanted to move away from a traditional corporate look and experiment with a more immersive visual approach. I chose an old explorer's atlas aesthetic, combining watercolor botanical illustrations, vintage maps, and historically inspired characters to create the feeling of traveling through a living journal of discoveries. Learners are guided by Catarina de Silva, a fictional naturalist and explorer, as they uncover the surprising journeys behind some of the world's most familiar foods. The project is still under development, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on the visual style and overall direction. Thanks for taking a look! PROMPTS: (used for creating images in Chat GPT, Storyline AI) General style: "Vintage explorer journal aesthetic, watercolor and gouache illustration, warm parchment textures, hand-painted botanical details, historical cartography elements, museum exhibit quality, Age of Exploration atmosphere, elegant educational artwork, rich earthy palette, antique paper, subtle ink sketches, highly detailed, soft painterly rendering, casual realistic character design, storybook realism, professional educational illustration, Articulate Storyline course artwork, clean composition, high quality digital painting, National Geographic educational style, transparent background when applicable" Characters: "Full-body character illustration, casual realistic style, hand-painted digital artwork, realistic proportions, expressive face, educational museum-quality illustration, inspired by historical exploration journals, detailed clothing and accessories, subtle watercolor textures, soft brushwork, warm natural lighting, elegant pose, believable anatomy, high level of detail, not cartoon, not anime, not photorealistic, transparent background PNG." Backgrounds: "Vintage illustrated background, explorer journal aesthetic, watercolor map textures, antique parchment, botanical details, warm earthy colors, educational exhibit design, historical atmosphere, hand-painted digital artwork, highly detailed environment, immersive storytelling scene, suitable for eLearning course background, subtle depth, readable composition."Prompting with Pressed Plants: Exploring Botanical AI Image Styles
I’m new to the eLearning community, so I don’t yet have a set of go-to AI image prompts. This challenge inspired me to start experimenting with visual styles that connect to my background and design interests. I’m a botanist, and I also enjoy making art with pressed flowers and leaves, so I tested a prompt style in ChatGPT that imagines an instructional scene made from dried plant materials. I started with a realistic field-photo prompt, then tried variations using magazine-paper collage and pressed-plant collage effects. I’m interested in whether this kind of nature-based visual style could work in a future digital course, especially for botany, field identification, or environmental learning. I’d welcome any feedback or suggestions. AI prompt: Create a high-resolution color photographic image of a 50-year-old woman, active body-type, in field clothes (light tan and light olive color), light brown hair with a few gray streaks, hair in a ponytail, looking at a sunflower plant that is 6" taller than she is. There are other sunflowers in the scene. She's wearing a backpack and is carrying a slr camera. The setting is a Great Plains prairie in August. There are small rolling hills in the distant background and medium-height native forbs and grasses in the foreground. Blue skies. The woman's female black tri, Australian shepherd with brown eyes and a white stripe down the middle of its face is standing nearby. AI prompt: In the style of a collage made from very small pieces of paper from magazines, Create a high-resolution color photographic image… AI prompt: Made completely from pressed and dried plant parts (flowers, leaves, stems, roots, petals, etc.), Create a high-resolution image of a 50-year-old woman, active body-type, in field clothes, hair in a ponytail, looking at a sunflower plant that is 6" taller than she is. There are other sunflowers in the scene. She's wearing a backpack and is carrying a slr camera. The setting is a Great Plains prairie in August. There are small rolling hills in the distant background and medium-height native forbs and grasses in the foreground. Clear skies. The woman's female black tri, Australian shepherd with brown eyes and a white stripe down the middle of its face is standing nearby.
