Act as a Kalighat patua creating an inexpensive single-sheet bazaar painting near the Kali temple in Kolkata, circa 1880. Adapt the visual language to a modern 16:9 landscape sheet; do not present the wide format as a historical standard.
SUBJECT
[PASTE SUBJECT / IMAGE DESCRIPTION / “the uploaded image”]
TASK
Translate the subject into KALIGHAT BAZAAR-LINE: a recognisable, opinionated image inspired by the nineteenth-century Bengali patua tradition. Preserve the subject's defining identity or, for an abstract theme, its central emotional meaning. Reduce complex scenes to one or two human figures and one principal symbolic handheld object. Express the story through eyes, neck angle, hands, posture and the relationship to that object. Do not miniaturise a busy scene into the background.
PAPER AND COLOUR
Use inexpensive mill-made paper with a warm, lightly chalky off-white appearance, subtle tooth, slight cockling and modest handling wear. Keep the surface recognisably paper, with no textile weave, stitching, canvas or heavy artificial distress.
Use broad, predominantly unmixed watercolour fields with the visual hues of lampblack, vermilion red, indigo and warm yellow, plus one accent of pink or leaf green. These are colour references, not instructions to use historical pigment chemicals. Keep faces slightly warmer than adjacent flesh. Allow subtle pooling and visible brush starts and endings without an all-over grunge overlay.
No ornate border; at most one thin red or black rule.
CONTOUR AND ANATOMY
Build each major form with economical, confident sweeping contours. Let brush pressure swell a line around shoulder or hip, then taper it delicately at wrist and ankle. “One contour” means decisive strokes without sketchy retracing, not a literal unbroken line connecting the entire image.
Give bodies rounded, substantial torsos and tapering limbs, small mouths, elongated almond-shaped eyes (potol-chera chokh), and sharply but elegantly inclined necks. Keep anatomy solid and stylised rather than muscular, academic or miniature-delicate.
Suggest volume with one restrained soft wash near the edge of flesh or cloth. Keep flat colour dominant; exclude full chiaroscuro, photoreal highlights and cinematic lighting.
Render drapery in a few heavy looping colour fields, with minimal folds and no decorative pattern filling.
COMPOSITION AND POINT OF VIEW
Use exactly one or two human figures; no extra faces, crowds or figures within objects. Arrange the figures and principal object across the wide sheet in a strong, legible silhouette. Keep a generous continuous area of blank paper around them. Do not stretch bodies to fill the horizontal format.
Use an empty cream background or one flat dull-yellow or pale-blue wash. No landscape, skyline, interiors, furniture, horizon line or narrative scenery.
Let the image carry a clear attitude appropriate to the subject: concern, vanity, piety, appetite, tenderness, satire or divine force. Convey it through gesture and expression rather than captions. Satire may be pointed but never cruel. For a hopeful subject, permit admiration and care rather than forcing scandal.
The principal symbolic object must remain simply painted and readable. A small working tool is allowed when essential to the depicted action.
FRAMING AND OUTPUT
Generate one landscape image at 16:9. Show the entire landscape paper sheet almost straight on, filling nearly the frame, with only a sliver of neutral material beneath it. Use flat, even daylight and no dramatic cast shadows.
Everything on the sheet must remain visibly painted. Output only the image. No text, letters, numerals, captions, logos, signatures, pseudo-lettering or watermark.
FINAL CHECK
- One or two human figures and one principal symbolic object.
- Thick-to-thin contours and almond eyes do more expressive work than shading.
- Rounded, tapering bodies; spare looping drapery.
- Empty background and visible inexpensive paper.
- A clear emotional or moral attitude, faithful to the subject.
- Landscape 16:9; complete sheet visible; absolutely no lettering.
EXCLUDE
Mughal or Rajput miniature detail, Company School naturalism, photorealistic skin or faces, busy interiors, landscape scenery, crowds, paisley filling, graphic-novel hatching, gold illumination, oil-paint impasto, flour-sack texture, superhero muscles, glossy digital vector smoothness, and photographically copied living-celebrity likenesses.