Midjourney can be used to effectively make images in a wide variety of illustration styles. I think this text-to-image model can be of enormous help to designers who are looking for inspiration. For instance, you can make concept art in less than a minute.
You can also greatly benefit from Midjourney prompts for illustration if you're a content creator. Regardless of what type of content you make, there's always a reason to use illustrations in your work. With Midjourney, you can easily create illustrations for your videos, articles, blogs, and so on.
Before I get into the details of how you can write good prompts for illustrations, I feel the need to mention how unregulated this whole AI space is at the time I'm writing this article. It would be best if you were careful about how you use generated illustrations.
There was an instance in which a person from California made a children's book using a combination of Midjourney and ChatGPT and it resulted in extreme criticism.
My advice is that if you're going to use AI generated images in your creative work that you plan on selling, you should make sure that your audience is fully aware of how you made the images. That's the most important thing to do until there is a clear, regulated framework that you should follow.
How to Write Midjourney Prompts for Illustration
The process of writing Midjourney prompts for illustration is pretty straightforward. If you've experimented with text-to-image models like Midjourney before, you'll have no problem coming up with good prompts.
If you're new to this technology, I would advise that you first learn the basics. The good thing is that you won't have to leave this site to do that. You can catch up by reading my beginner's guide to Midjourney.
What I would argue is the most important thing to take into account when writing prompts for illustration is Midjourney is clearly specifying the illustration style you want used. I'll go into more detail about that in the next section of this article.
Another thing you should focus on is simply letting your creativity flow. If you don't have a lot of experience with prompting, you should start with simple ideas that consist of only a few words. After you try out different things, you can gradually start adding more details to your prompts.
It's also important to think about which aspect ratio would be perfect for the illustration you want to create. This will have a huge impact on the quality of the generated results.
Illustration Styles for Midjourney
There are a lot of illustration styles that you can use in Midjourney. It's up to you to choose which ones you want to use for each illustration you generate. I want to keep this article somewhat concise, which is why I've selected only 15 styles to showcase how you can make good illustrations in Midjourney.
Here are the styles that I'll be using in this article:
- Comic book illustration
- Cartoon illustration
- Line art illustration
- Caricature
- Flat illustration
- Children's book illustration
- Pencil illustration
- Woodcut illustration
- Charcoal illustration
- Acrylic illustration
- Freehand digital illustration
- Vector graphics illustration
- Concept art illustration
- Metal etchings illustration
- 3D illustration
Although this list includes various styles, I recommend that you take time to research other illustration styles that you can use in your prompts.
I want to go off on a small tangent here and mention what I really like about AI models in general. What's amazing to me is how these models motivate me to expand my knowledge in areas I wasn't familiar with previously.
The interactive learning experiences AI models provide are truly remarkable. To make the best image possible, I'll spend hours reading to learn about art and design. This is an area I didn't have an interest in at all a few months ago, but now I'm absolutely in love with it.
Oh, that reminds me - I wrote an article about different art styles that can be used in Midjourney. In my opinion, it's a great piece that will introduce you to 33 different art styles and what type of results it can produce in Midjourney and other text-to-image models.
15 Midjourney Prompts for Illustration
Let's get down to the good part now. I'll show you one example for each of the 15 illustration styles mentioned in the previous section of the article. I'll start with a cool comic book style illustration.
Comic Book Style Illustration in Midjourney
/imagine comic book style illustration of a supervillain who uses a fire ant as his symbol and can transform into millions of fire ants at any given time, dark, scary --ar 2:3 --v 5
I once saw a video on YouTube of a person being bitten by a lot of fire ants at the same time and I've been terrified of them ever since. I'm not particularly fond of any insects, but I particularly dislike fire ants. Makes sense that I would turn one into a supervillain.
Cartoon Style Illustration in Midjourney
/imagine cartoon style illustration of a group of young vigilantes who fight crime in the metaverse, traversing the digital realm, kid's cartoon, animated TV show style illustration --ar 16:9 --v 5
The metaverse is going to be a wild place. We need someone that's going to protect us from cyber crimes that we can't even imagine at this point. I really hope there will be various groups of vigilantes in this new digital frontier that will protect us.
Line Art Illustration in Midjourney
/imagine line art illustration of a woman sitting on a beach and looking at the ocean, simple --ar 16:9 --v 5
There is something so calming about line art. The simplicity of it makes it beautiful to me. Since I find these types of illustrations calming, it only made sense to create an image of a calming scene.
Caricature Style Illustration in Midjourney
/imagine caricature style illustration of a person who bases their whole personality on being in the gym and working out all day, funny, gym rat --ar 2:3 --v 5
Physical activity and regular exercise are without a doubt important, but I can't fathom people who base their whole personalities around it. We get it bro, you go to the gym.
Flat Illustration Style in Midjourney
/imagine flat illustration of a young entrepreneur working from home with dreams of being successful, typing on a laptop, business style illustration, inspirational, motivational --ar 16:9 --v 5
This is how I look when I'm writing an article on a Sunday. The only thing missing is two clocks that show different times. That's because I don't need clocks at all. I don't even look at the time ever because I know it's my time.
Children's Book Illustration in Midjourney
/imagine children's book style illustration of a group of anthropomorphic animals in the forest who are running around and playing games, cute, illustration for children --ar 16:9 --v 5
This is the type of cute image I like to see. I'm still a kid at heart, like I suspect a lot of people are. You can easily bring your inner child out and have fun by making these types of illustrations in Midjourney.
Pencil Style Illustration in Midjourney
/imagine pencil style illustration of a young businessman on Wall Street, business, hard work, stress --ar 16:9 --v 5
It looks like this person is arguing with a piece of paper, which is something I suspect every person on Wall Street does after years of working there.
Woodcut Illustration in Midjourney
/imagine woodcut illustration of a beautiful young woman wearing a sundress, elegant, charming, attractive young woman --ar 2:3 --v 5
If I had a woman's clothing line, I would use an image like this to represent my brand. In fact, I'd argue it can be used to market a variety of products. I can picture a luxury chocolate company using it for its brand image.
Charcoal Illustration in Midjourney
/imagine charcoal illustration of a couple sitting next to a waterfall, nature, adventure, travel, landscape, natural beauty --ar 16:9 --v 5
I love spending time in nature, but I don't do it as much as I should. Every time I generate an image like this in Midjourney I'm reminded that I should take the time to connect with nature more.
Acrylic Illustration Style in Midjourney
/imagine acrylic illustration depicting the life of an old fisherman from a small village, poetic image --ar 3:4 --v 5
This is quite an interesting result from a relatively simple prompt. I could picture this being a book cover. Apart from the simple description, I also included the keyword 'poetic' to give the image a certain flair.
Freehand Digital Illustration in Midjourney
/imagine digital freehand illustration of a young businesswoman giving a presentation about marketing at a company, infographic style art, simple --ar 16:9 --v 5
Let's say that you have a website where you educate people about digital marketing. You're good at writing content but you're wondering what type of images to use in your articles. If you write good Midjourney prompts for illustration, you can generate outstanding images that will be a perfect fit.
Vector Graphics Illustration in Midjourney
/imagine vector graphics illustration depicting a person cooking in the kitchen, making delicious homemade desserts --ar 16:9 --v 5
This is another great example of how you can generate cool images for websites and blogs. If you have a recipe blog, you can use this image in articles. This one is so good that it can even be used as a featured image where you give tips to people who want to learn how to cook.
Concept Art Illustration in Midjourney
/imagine concept art illustration of a video game character wearing an ancient metal armor carved by demigods and enchanted with the power of magic, shining armor, majestic, ethereal, wondrous --ar 3:4 --v 5
Let's say that you're working on a video game and want to describe to an artist what you want your character to look like. You could obviously do it using words, but an even more effective way is to put those words in a prompt and then show your designer the generated output if you feel Midjourney did a good job of creating the right image. This process can save you a ton of time when you're making concept art.
Metal Etching Illustration Style in Midjourney
/imagine metal etching illustration depicting the life during the Great Depression in the United States, factory workers, mass layoffs, hard times --ar 16:9 --v 5
The metal etching illustration style seemed like a perfect fit for this type of scene. That's what I thought when I was writing the prompt and it turns out I was right. This is an outstanding result.
3D Illustration Style in Midjourney
/imagine 3D illustration depicting anthropomorphic raccoons working in a kitchen at a fine dining restaurant --ar 16:9 --v 5
I would never eat food that was made by raccoons, but I wouldn't mind watching a movie with that type of premise. It would be fun to see trash pandas make it in the world of fine dining. I would make it like Ratatouille but strictly for a mature audience.
Final Thoughts
I hope you liked all of the prompts I wrote for this article, as well as the generated results. I can't help but be astounded by the images Midjourney generates on a daily basis, no matter how often I use it.
Let's do a quick recap - the most important thing when you're making an illustration in Midjourney is to clearly specify the style in your prompt. Describing details like this will help you generate better results.
That's not to say you can't write good prompts without specifying an art style. On the contrary, you can get great results that way too. But it will cause the model to randomly pick the style.
There are more illustration styles that I could've included in this article, but it would've made it too long. Instead, I advise that you take the time to learn about additional styles. After all, the interactive learning experiences that come with interacting with AI models are priceless.
