Several weeks ago, I wanted to draw a cowboy hat for a handmade birthday card, so I used ChatGPT to create a drawing tutorial for me. It was impressive how well the image generation was able to break down the end result into a step-by-step lesson, and this led to the idea of creating a daily AI-generated drawing lesson website.

Doodlea.day is that. A fresh drawing lesson published most days.

I've had some challenges keeping the lessons cumulative. For example, in the first few steps, a character's eyes might be looking to the right, but then in the last three steps the eyes swap to looking to the left. I've been tweaking the prompt and guidance to the point where most lessons are one-shot these days. All of the steps are generated together in a single contact sheet rather than one image at a time. Each panel has a controlled job, like silhouette, contour, features, detail, and finish, and there is a validation process that identifies and rejects broken lesson panels.

The project is at a place where I am excited to share it. Taking a little time every day with the family to draw has been a great experience, and I hope others can find the same joy.