Hey!
This week Claude broke my heart.
With all due respect and affection, it told me my drawing was terrible. And it’s right. I’m awful at drawing.
So why the heck am I asking Claude about my drawings?
The short answer: I feel bad about generating “AI Slop.” Images 100% made with AI that aren’t interesting anymore. Everything looks the same. Everything feels empty.
As much as I love AI, I believe art and human expression need to remain genuine.
So I asked myself: how can I be creative and use AI to generate images without falling into slop?
And I came up with something kind of crazy.
The experiment: terrible drawings + AI#
This year I committed to a Misogi: a challenge where you’re practically set up to fail. In my case, creating my first ink artwork.
I have a frustrated artist inside me. I love music, art, but I’ve never taken the time to develop it. And I don’t want to keep falling into the “when I have time, I’ll do it.”
So I thought: what if I make my terrible drawings, trying to communicate my ideas, but use AI to make them look “less bad”?
That’s how the collaboration with Nano Banana was born—Gemini’s image generator.
The process is simple: I draw with pen directly on paper, without sketching in pencil first, and then I pass the drawing to Nano Banana to transform it while keeping the essence.
Check out the result:
Show Your Work + What If?
Example 2
Example 3
The result: something unique#
And this is exactly what makes this approach unique: it’s not 100% my art (because I’m terrible), but it’s not generic AI Slop either. It’s something hybrid. Something no one else can replicate because no one else has my particular way of drawing badly.
Look how the Dr. Seuss style emerges from my basic sketch. The colors, the textures, the small fuzzy characters… Nano Banana added all of that, but the composition, the idea, and the imperfect strokes are mine.
Other ways to use this technique#
I’m using it for drawings in my LinkedIn posts, but this goes much further.
Presentations that don’t look like templates. A quick doodle of your idea → Nano Banana → a slide that feels like yours.
Resources for teaching. Especially with kids. The imperfect feels more relatable than a polished stock image.
From sketch to vector in minutes. A drawing on paper → Nano Banana → clean image you can vectorize in Illustrator and turn into ready-to-use SVGs.
Stickers and logos with your style. Your doodle becomes brand assets that no one else has because they came from your stroke.
Custom games. Trivia, cards, boards. Imagine a game for your family or team with illustrations that started on a napkin.
Feedback for improvement. Nano Banana marked with red lines exactly where my mistakes were. 24/7 drawing teacher.
And what all these applications have in common: that little human sketch. Your idea. Your shaky stroke.
That’s what makes the result feel genuine. You save time because AI does the heavy lifting, but it doesn’t become generic because it started with you.
It’s the difference between “this was made by an AI” and “I made this, with help.”
Putting Kleon’s “Show Your Work” to the test#
There’s a book I love: “Show Your Work” by Austin Kleon.
Its premise is simple: you don’t have to be an expert to start sharing your work. Sharing your journey, with all its imperfections, is valuable in itself.
I wish I had put this concept to the test while I was learning to code. But now that I’ve made my promise to create my first ink artwork this year, it clicked.
I’m going to share my terrible drawings publicly. I’m going to show how Nano Banana transforms them. And I’m going to improve (or get worse) in the process.
If Kleon is right, sharing the journey (even if you’re terrible at something) can be a valuable way to connect. And if it doesn’t work… well, I think I could get a very serious call with Austin Kleon to complain.
What this means for you#
If you want to give a unique punch to your blog, presentations, or whatever, this strategy works. And the best part is it becomes ultra unique and not repetitive, unlike the AI Slop that’s flooding everything.
You don’t need to be an artist. You don’t need to draw well. You just need to be willing to try and use AI as a tool that amplifies your creativity instead of replacing it.
Because in the end, what makes your content unique isn’t technical perfection. It’s your perspective, your voice, and your willingness to create something even if it’s not perfect.
And that, no AI can generate alone.
The prompts I used#
If you liked the art style I got, here are the prompts so you can define the style of each image:
Boceto Resultado Transform this hand-drawn pen sketch into a Seussian Surrealism style illustration.
Keep the exact same composition.Transform this cartoon in a watercolor style.
Keep the exact same composition.Transform this cartoon in a modern vector style. Add a blurred office background.
Keep the exact same composition.Want to try this? I’d love to see your results. Share them with me on LinkedIn.