Something my daughter used to love doing when she was younger but still today enjoys a bit of colouring in by giving herself challenges and limiting the number of distinct colours she would use. I saw a post by @chaseleantj on X where the creator used Midjourney and Chat-GPT4 to create such images, which challenged me to see if I could create such colouring pages purely using Midjourney alone.
Surely with the right prompt combo Midjourney is capable of creating black and white illustration without colours, I wondered.
In case you were wondering: how to create colouring sheets with Midjourney? You are on the right post.
Prompt Construct
The construction of the prompt needs to enforce a few key concepts so that the images produced comply with our needs:
- Black and white
- White background
- Comical and Cartoon
- Kids colouring sheet/page
Prompt therefore needs to specify what’s required starting with the [main subject], cartoon, kids coloring page, black and white, white background
Starting with a cute cottage with flowers in the garden, cartoon, kids coloring page, black and white, white background we can a half decent result which makes it for an easier start.
Noticeably we can see there are bit more greys in the image and shadows which are okay but typically we want them to be more cleaner image with cleaner lines. This would make for more surface area for the child to colour and let their imagination go wild.
Adding some –no arguments to the prompt will allow us to further finetune and control the images created. So let’s update the prompt to be: a cute cottage with flowers in the garden, cartoon, kids coloring page, black and white, white background –no shading, gradient, colors, saturation, colored, shadow
Now the resulting image is free from any grey areas, shading and any hints of colour. NOTE: in the prompt I use the US spelling of colour but it should achieve the same result if you don’t.
Finally now as I experiment more with different images, I noticed that some results still had hints of colour and some had a 3D feel to the image. Refining further the prompt with some weights and a few additional words the final prompt looks like: [SUBJECT] illustration, cartoon, outlines, kid’s coloring page, black and white:1.5, white png background, flat 2d –no shading, gradient, colors:1.5, saturation:1.2, colored, shadow:1.1, 3d
Adapt further and try with following variations. You can also add more details in the image by using the –stylize argument which you can discover more by reviewing this dedicated post.
a drawing of [SUBJECT] illustration, cartoon, outlines, kid’s coloring page, black and white:1.5, white png background, flat 2d –no shading, gradient, colors:1.5, saturation:1.2, colored, shadow:1.1, 3d
Results
Experimenting with many different kind of images that would interest Kids, I found the prompt to work very well with various different subjects. If you do have access, you might want to let your child have a go at creating their own colouring pages which can be a great fun activity for them. Let them come of their own preferred subject and then paste the remainder of the prompt.
In the meantime take inspiration from the images below, download and print them for your children if you like.
a drawing of a cute princess in front of a castle, illustration, cartoon, outlines, kid’s coloring page, black and white:1.5, white png background, flat 2d –no shading, gradient, colors:1.5, saturation:1.2, colored, shadow:1.1, 3d –ar 2:3
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