Steering the Live Canvas, Not Chasing It

What it is for

A working method for live sketch-driven generation: fix the prompt, block masses instead of drawing lines, isolate one change at a time, and save aggressively. Use it when a real-time session feels productive but produces nothing you can keep. It prevents an hour of continuous adjustment that ends with no usable frame and no idea what worked.

The skill Copy

Live generation updates as you move, which makes it feel like drawing and
behave like a negotiation. The usual failure is changing the sketch and the
prompt in the same minute, so you never learn which one moved the image and you
end up somewhere you did not choose.

Work like this:

1. Write the prompt first, then leave it alone. Subject, medium, light.
   Nothing about composition — the drawing is the composition.
2. Block shapes, do not draw. Flat masses of roughly the right colour in
   the right place beat a careful outline. Position, size and value are what
   get read; your line quality is not.
3. Change one thing, then stop and look. Move the horizon. Enlarge the
   subject. Darken one mass. One change per look is the entire method.
4. Save the instant it is right. It will drift on the next stroke and there
   is no way back to a frame you did not keep. Save more often than feels
   sensible — most of a session's good frames are lost exactly here.

Two levers to understand before touching anything else:

- How strongly your drawing is followed. Too low and your composition dissolves
  into whatever the prompt wants; too high and you get a coloured-in sketch with
  no invention in it. Find the point where the shapes hold and the surface is
  still being generated.
- Colour value. A dark mass becomes shadow, the same shape in the sky becomes
  weather, in mid-grey it becomes a building. Value decides what your shape is
  interpreted AS, more than hue does.

When a session stops improving, stop drawing. Take the best saved frame, start
fresh from it, and change one thing.

How to install it Copy

1. Open the tool and start a new conversation, project or template.
2. Paste the text below wherever the tool keeps standing instructions
   — usually called system prompt, instructions, or persona.
3. Save it so it applies to every run rather than a single message.

Did it work for you?

Where it came from