For the record, I personally have nothing against Damascus.

I was reading this verse from Isaiah, one of my favorite doom prophets, about the fall of Damascus.

“The burden against Damascus.

“Behold, Damascus will cease from being a city,
And it will be a ruinous heap.
The cities of Aroer are forsaken;
They will be for flocks
Which lie down, and no one will make them afraid.”

Isaiah 17 verses 1-2, NKJV.

And I could not get the image of sheep happily lying amidst the ruins of a fallen city out of my head.

So lets see if AI can make it happen.

First step, I tried both verses 1 and 2 in the prompt as they were. Which gave me this.

Which was not at all what I wanted.

The style was far too modern what I had in mind, so lets change the tone of the prompt by tacking on “Fantasy art of:” before the verse.

Which gave me these.

Now these are lovely, but not what I was after at all. It’s focusing far too much on the first verse. I don’t see a single sheep in sight.

So instead, lets try… removing the first verse from the prompt altogether. Leaving us with

“fantasy art of:
The cities of Aroer are forsaken;
They will be for flocks
Which lie down, and no one will make them afraid.”

Lets see what that does. hopefully I see sheep, or I’m going to have take the direct approach.

Technically those could be sheep. But still not the scene I had in mind. Too much city, not enough ruins. But we’ll try and few more and see if we get lucky.

Nope. Very very nope. Not only is that bird terrifying, it is also not a sheep. It did just occur to me that ‘flocks’ can also be birds, but I pictured sheep for this case I’m sticking to my guns, or sheep.

I’ll try another one, just because.

Pretty picture. Too many birds. I think it’s time for a more direct approach.

Let’s change it to “fantasy art of ruins and sheep:” followed by the verse. I could probably remove the verse at this point, but let’s keep it in there and see what happens.

I think that might have been too direct. That is just ruins and sheep.

I’ll try again in case it gets an epiphany.

Okay, that’s closer to what I had in mind. Ruined city, grass, happy sheep. That’s pretty close I suppose. Well done AI.

But I’m still not satisfied.

I had a very specific image in mind and want to see if we can get there.

So… let us fiddle with it a bit more, try to be more subtle, and integrate the words into the original verse somehow.

“fantasy art of:
The cities of Aroer are forsaken ruins;
They will be for flocks of sheep
Which lie down, and no one will make them afraid.”

Now our prompt looks like this. And we’ll see what that does. I’m hoping that it changes the tone a bit, and gives us more of an actual scene, instead of just sheep + ruins. Which is a step up from no sheep at all… Lets try a few.

Mixed bag. Some have sheep, some are still suspiciously absent of sheep and I do see a stray bird or two.

They are better integrated scenes which is nice, but they’re still not quite the flavor I had in mind. I think the “forsaken” might be a big strong.

This one is pretty darn good. Still too dark toned my liking, doesn’t give me the Studio Ghibli vibes I had in mind originally.

Lets throw in the word “peaceful” to the start to see if we can’t get it to change the tone a bit.

Better? The tone is better, the colours are brighter, but something about the angle of this one is… weird.

Lets try again.

Nice, nice, too far away though. Would be a nice relaxing place, unless you don’t like heights.

That one might be the closest so far. I could do without the stream though. Still not quite right, but I’ll do a thing and throw in a few more words like “sunny, idyllic, close up” and see If I can’t get it closer.

Gone too far, we’ve lost the sheep. Might have to cut the word Idyllic.

Better! I see sheep. Or whiteish blobs that could be sheep. The tone is right, the style is nice, but odd, and it’s lacking details. Looks more like a city than a ruin, but I’ll let it slide. We’ll try a few more.

Nope, lost the sheep again. The previous one could be our winner.

Oh my goodness we have a winner! I tried it one more time for luck, and I guess it heard me. We have peaceful grass covered things that are definitely ruins, and we have white things which are definitely sheep. At least some of then are sheep. I would prefer them to be lying down, but we can’t have everything in life. Don’t look too closely at the ones that don’t seem to have heads. Some of them are sheep and that’s what counts.

The more I look at it, the funnier it gets.

That’s enough AI experimenting for one day. I got it pretty close, but I wouldn’t frame it or anything. The picture in my head is still better, but it’s pretty cool that I get to look at something that close without having to paint it myself. Any sheep that I painted would look worse than that, I assure you.