The Ink-Stained Wormhole
This prompt of the week takes us where no-one has gone before...
From the warmth of beaches and palm trees in last week’s prompt, this week we embrace the cold, sterile beauty of outer-space. With a twist however: rather than a typical digital concept-art or photographic rendition, we’re going to try something a bit less usual - The Japanese inking style of Suminagashi.
Lets break it down!
Key Elements
Style
“a suminagashi (Japanese ink marbling) print”
An exceptionally simple style component to the prompt this week, stating the art style only. Suminagashi involves floating inks in a suspension and placing the paper on to the suspension, picking up the chaotically mixing inks into a print. It produces a particularly beautiful style of marbled abstract patterns, but would be much harder to produce distinct representative imagery with this style. Working digitally (whether with AI or traditional digital painting), we don’t have the same restrictions inherent in the physical process so it will be interesting to see the results we can get.
Subject
“an ethereal wormhole opening, with swirling, abstract patterns of black and deep indigo ink spreading across the cosmic canvas, revealing glimpses of distant galaxies within its depths.”
The idea of an extradimensional wormhole opening in space provides the opportunity for the sort of chaotic but regular patterns suminagashi excels at in a visually pleasing context, along with an opportunity to experiment with a darker, colder colour palette to give that clean, cold, uncaring beauty.
Mood
“A soft, internal luminescence from the wormhole itself should create a mysterious and transformative mood”
Space is a great unknown still for us. Coloured in dark tones and suffused with a soft light, it is a perfect symbol for the mysteries that enchant our souls.
Composition
“captured in a centralized, circular framing, drawing the viewer's eye into the swirling anomaly.”
A wormhole provides a perfect frame in an image, we’re going to eschew complicated framing for this image in favour of keeping the focus on this core element - as a circular, perhaps spiraling pattern within the image it will naturally draw the eye.
Lets bring it all together:
Render a suminagashi (Japanese ink marbling) print of an ethereal wormhole opening, with swirling, abstract patterns of black and deep indigo ink spreading across the cosmic canvas, revealing glimpses of distant galaxies within its depths. A soft, internal luminescence from the wormhole itself should create a mysterious and transformative mood, captured in a centralized, circular framing, drawing the viewer's eye into the swirling anomaly.
Variations
Adding Dynamism and Movement
Our first group certainly sets the stage with some pretty ink patterns, but when I think of a wormhole I have a tendency (for better of worse) to think back to the old days of Deep Space Nine, and the almost explosive movement of the wormhole opening in the background. Lets see if we can inject a bit more movement into the image with our first variation.
Render a suminagashi (Japanese ink marbling) print of an ethereal wormhole opening, with swirling, abstract patterns of black and deep indigo ink spreading across the cosmic canvas, revealing glimpses of distant galaxies within its depths. A soft, internal luminescence from the wormhole itself should create a mysterious and transformative mood, captured in a centralized, circular framing, drawing the viewer's eye into the swirling anomaly and evoking a sense of dynamic movement, as if the wormhole had just exploded open an instant before.
The additional chaos added to the linework around the opening and the streaming tendrils reaching out past the edge of the canvas do evoke more of a sense of movement and contrasts quite well with the calmer vision of a star seen through the portal. The fluidic nature of suminagashi is well highlighted in this variant.
A Human Element
Suminagashi’s strength isn’t in representational imagery, which of course makes me curious to see how well the model can provide us with a respresentation of a man-made structure whilst retaining the elements that make this style so compelling.
Render a suminagashi (Japanese ink marbling) print of an ethereal wormhole opening, with swirling, abstract patterns of black and deep indigo ink spreading across the cosmic canvas, revealing glimpses of distant galaxies and a distant floating space station designed with hard brutalist lines within its depths. A soft, internal luminescence from the wormhole itself should create a mysterious and transformative mood, captured in a centralized, circular framing, drawing the viewer's eye into the swirling anomaly.
A spiraling rendition of a wormhole: is it bringing the station in to our universe, or is it swallowing it, dooming all aboard to never be seen again? The addition of this small piece of constructed technology really adds to the loneliness of the image: it is an uncaring sort of beauty, the vast expanse of space.
An Even More Human Element
There is something about the dark but luminescent ink tones of these images that cries out for the mystical, the occult, the impossible. Lets alter the subject slightly and see how the model adapts to something less logical and a bit more fantastical than a spacescape.
Render a suminagashi (Japanese ink marbling) print of an ethereal wormhole opening, with swirling, abstract patterns of black and deep indigo ink spreading across the cosmic canvas, revealing glimpses of distant galaxies within its depths. Superimposed on top of the wormhole is a translucent face, a stern bearded man staring out at the viewer from the depths of the image. A soft, internal luminescence from the wormhole itself should create a mysterious and transformative mood, captured in a centralized, circular framing, drawing the viewer's eye into the swirling anomaly.
This variation presented us with a beautiful image, somewhat reminiscent of old fantasy book covers from the 80’s, or perhaps video game covers from the same era - when the box art had precious little to do with the game inside. The circular line work imparts a sense of movement, a spinning, one can almost feel it spinning before us as the stern messenger imparts his guidance from across the vast distances of space.
Stepping out of Space
Lets take a step back for a moment and alter the subject entirely, moving us away from space and wormholes but keeping the style and colour palette intact.
Render a suminagashi (Japanese ink marbling) print of
an ethereal wormhole opening, withswirling, abstract patterns of black and deep indigo ink spreading across thecosmiccanvas,revealing glimpses of distant galaxies within its depthsshowing a frontal portrait of a curious looking cat seeming to coalesce from scattered drops of ink. A soft, luminescence from the suffuses the image and creates a mysterious and transformative mood, captured in a centralized, circular framing, drawing the viewer's eye into the swirling anomalyinto the swirling anomalytowards the eyes of the cat, staring out at the viewer.
Swapping the cosmos for the kitten, with the need to represent space removed from the prompt the model is free to offer us a more fluid, watery version of suminagashi that works beautifully as a frame for a remarkably detailed cat portrait staring out at us. The palette remains dark and the tint across the image ties it together very well.
Next Steps
Your turn! Take this prompt, tinker with it, experiment, and see what you can create on your own.
If you enjoy the prompt, hit me up on social media with a picture of what you’ve created, I’d love to see it. Post to Instagram or Bluesky with #HTCWeeklyPrompt and tag me directly, @hightechcreative on Instagram or @hightechcreative.bsky.social on Bluesky.
See you next time!
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