This is one of the first set of images I generated with AI and was an experiment. The specific tools I used are MidJourney v3, and Photoshop for touching up the images.

The process was to interact and curate the output from MidJourney, using the prompt:

"a realistic gold horse head on a dark fabric background, low poly. Intricate, leafy, foliate, foliage, fine, textured, regal, white highlights"

except for the last image that was a very simple prompt:

"a horse, art nouveau, gold, black and white".

My prompt structure was inspired by some of the prompts in the MidJourney community feed to create an organic and paper like texture in MidJourney v3 (it does not work as well in the new v4) and get the rendition of a 'gold ground' art piece.

I added an image at the end that shows what curation looks like with a capture of all the 'horses' I generated with MidJourney.

Below a a screen capture of all the prompts I used to generate images of horses to try and direct the AI towards a style, composition and lighting that I was hoping for. There is an element of surprise from what the AI generates, just like sometimes, a water color stroke can surprise you, or a render in a 3D render might if you inadvertently changed lighting and colors and get something that is actually good.

I really value the curation process that AI offers. It allows fast iteration to explore multiple options. So I feel it helps me narrow down what I am looking for faster and getting more 'shots on goal' for what I am trying to create. At least for an ideation / exploration phase, it feels pretty exhilarating to me.