SUSAN TIPPETT BRAITHWAITE

It’s Friday, and that can only mean it’s time for another Spies, Lies & Digital Skies (SLDS) art challenge. Every Friday, I share a prompt for you to create a spy and romance-themed image. You can use PhotoShop, ArtRage, Procreate, DALL-E, MidJourney, you name it to create your masterpiece.

Last Week’s Glamorous Endeavors

Last week’s prompt, ‘Undercover mission at a glamorous event,’ was yet another tricky prompt that required endless tweaking. As ever, Kevin and Jez met the challenge and nailed it. Thanks guys!

Kevin’s Intrigue at the Gala

Kevin went above and beyond for last week’s challenge and added a story to his final image. It’s pretty amazing, and he’s now expanded the story into the mini-series, The Kovalenko Chronicles. Check out the intriguing first instalment in his response to last week’s post!

Jez’s Secrets Behind the Glamour

Jez gave us some vintage glamour with his marina-inspired image. And, Jez being Jez, he couldn’t help but fast forward time and send us into a future filled with neon and gorgeous boats. Head over to his post to check it out!

This Week’s Challenge: Deciphering a Cryptic Message

This week’s prompt has us “Deciphering a cryptic message.” It’s not the most image-friendly prompt, but let’s see what I can come up with. I’m using DALL-E, OpenAI’s text-to-image generator, again this week.

How to Participate:

1. Create and Share: Craft an artwork depicting “Deciphering a cryptic message.” Use any digital tool that inspires you.
2. Share Your Creation: Post your artwork on your blog and link back to this post, or share it on Instagram/Twitter using the hashtag #SLDSart and tagging me @susbraithwaite. Make sure to do so before next Friday!
3. Engage and Inspire: Join our community of artists and spies. Your work might just be featured in our next intelligence brief (blog post) and possibly in my monthly newsletter.

My Creative Process

I thought I’d start with a basic prompt to start as a jumping-off point. That way, I can work from the base image and make tweaks or sweeping changes as I go along.

Here’s the first prompt: Create a cinematic-style image of an undercover agent deciphering a cryptic message in a server room.

The result looks more like a guy hacking than it does someone decrypting a message. This got me thinking that I should really nail down what decrypting something would look like.

Time for Some Detail

In the same chat, I gave DALL-E a bit more information.

PROMPT: Change the location of the scene to a sumptuous wood-lined office with leather armchair and a polished mahogany desk. Behind the desk is a painting hinged away from the wall, revealing an open safe that has papers, jewels and a gun.

I love the look of the room, but the AI jumbled the details… Then again, I could have taken a bit more care in laying them out for it. I attempted to fix things by telling the AI…

The safe should be in the wall.

Wow. It looks like the safe is a vending machine, a cool one, but not what I was looking for.

Let’s Straighten Things Out

Realising that my jumbled prompt was the issue, I went back to the original prompt—where I changed the location—and beefed it up with straightforward details.

PROMPT: Change the location of the scene to a sumptuous wood-lined office with a leather armchair and a polished mahogany desk. The dashing undercover agent pours over a torn piece of paper with cryptic text on it. He lays a cutout key over the text of an open book, revealing letters–a new message.

The keys weren’t the kind I’d meant, but I’m happy to overlook that because the images are fantastic

Yet I Couldn’t Walk Away

I had to give it one last go.

PROMPT: Remove the keys. Add hints of old-school code-breaking paraphernalia, such as tinted glasses to read invisible ink, various books, and odd-looking instruments.

Here’s the final image, well images. Oh, I love them both! All those code-breaking gadgets make the scene. But I can’t decide which one I love the most! Which one do you like the best Number 1 or Number 2? Or is a different one altogether doing it for you?–drop it in the comments section.

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Well, it’s over to you. Are you ready to take a dive into digital art with us? We have coffee ?? ?

It’s my beloved’s birthday today! So that means it’s time for cake, Halo, and too many spy movies. So, I’m taking a week off to celebrate with him. But don’t worry, SLDS will return on Friday, 1st March.

Till then, stay awesome,

Susan x