Street Portrait Artist

Street Artist

Create a portrait that feels observed and drawn by an artist, not passed through a style filter. Extract the subject's recognizable visual grammar once, then interpret it through one of three modes:

• Street Caricature / Exaggerate: a kind, compact caricature with one relational idea, open-paper facial planes, near-monochrome ink or graphite, and at most a tiny muted spot color.
• Romance Watercolor / Illuminate: a delicate watercolor portrait; choose the optional Editorial Watercolor treatment for a more observational face with loose painted surroundings.
• Paper-Cut Illustration: a simple flat-color cartoon person with a thin paper edge inside the preserved photographic scene.

All modes must preserve the same identity relationships. They differ in how they interpret the subject. Paper-Cut Illustration preserves source proportions and placement.

Required References

Before generating or editing, read these files completely:

• references/impression-map.md — reference roles, identity grammar, primary anchor, and action-reaction redesign.
• references/production-workflow.md — permission, input profiles, capability fallbacks, output sizes, inspection, and revision.

Then read only the selected mode reference:

• references/street-caricature.md for Street Caricature.
• references/romance-watercolor.md for Romance Watercolor; also read references/editorial-watercolor.md when that treatment is requested.
• references/paper-cut-illustration.md for Paper-Cut Illustration.
• references/consistency.md for a series, treatment changes, or edits to accepted results.

If a required reference cannot be read, stop and report that the package is incomplete.

Use When

• The user supplies one or more clear portraits and wants a recognizably similar, visibly authored character portrait.
• The request calls for a street-fair caricature, cute caricature, hand-drawn ink portrait, delicate pen-and-watercolor portrait, lyrical character portrait, or a drawn paper-cut person inside a photographic setting.
• A paired Twin Portrait should show two interpretations of one person from one shared identity analysis.

Do Not Use When

• The task is graffiti, a mural, public-space street art, restoration, colorization, face swapping, beautification, age transformation, photorealistic retouching, or a fictional character without a likeness reference.
• The primary deliverable is a text-heavy poster, infographic, or social card. This skill may create the portrait layer; the host artifact workflow owns typography, layout, file placement, and publication.
• The user asks to infer personality, ethnicity, health, attractiveness, or other sensitive or unverifiable traits from appearance.
• The request asks to copy a named living artist, studio, brand, or existing artwork. Translate it into generic visual qualities or ask for a non-proprietary direction.

Procedure

1. Inspect only the references needed for the task. Confirm likeness permission and choose Quick Sketch for one usable photo or Studio Portrait for two or three complementary photos. Never average faces or combine poses.
2. Write a compact Impression Map: head frame, T-axis, mouth-chin rhythm, outer anchors, expression, and one primary anchor. Separate observations from artistic choices and never infer personality.
3. Choose the mode from the request. If no mode is given, disclose Street Caricature as the default; ask when the choice would materially change the intended result.
4. Redesign relationships coherently. Any amplified feature must create a compensating action elsewhere rather than an isolated enlargement. For Street Caricature, lock the relational construction before the ink finish; for Romance Watercolor, reduce the scene to a few connected color masses and environmental anchors before adding selective linework. For Paper-Cut Illustration, simplify inside the preserved silhouette and keep scene contacts and occlusion. Preserve reference roles and expression unless the user requests a change.
5. Generate the artwork itself with an available reference-image capability. For Paper-Cut Illustration, preserve the source aspect ratio and framing by default. For the other modes, default to social-feed-portrait at 4:5, targeting an exact 1080 x 1350 px export when the current surface can create and verify it. Do not add text, signatures, watermarks, logos, frames, phones, or feed mockups unless requested.
6. Inspect identity, mode adherence, analog physicality, composition, unintended text, actual dimensions, and edge safety separately. Deliver a concise Artist's Note naming the primary anchor and the structural choice it drove.
7. For a series or revision, use the consistency reference to separate identity, treatment, and requested changes. Change the Impression Map or one named rendering defect, restate accepted invariants, and preserve the best accepted result. Do not blindly regenerate after repeated identity drift.

Failure Boundary

• If no accessible portrait is available, request an upload or attachment; never invent the subject or claim a local path was read.
• If image generation or editing is unavailable, provide a structured production prompt and state that no portrait was generated. A prompt is not a finished artwork.
• If exact raster export is unavailable, preserve the requested composition, report actual dimensions, and mark exact export unavailable. Never stretch the image or fabricate dimensions.
• Do not promise guaranteed likeness, deterministic regeneration, cross-product pixel parity, or human authorship.
• Do not reuse a supplied portrait, Impression Map, or output as a public example, persistent character bible, or unrelated fixture without separate permission.