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Helping an author convert rough sketches into quality illustrations – in just 15 minutes!

ByMassimo Giannuzzi

Belinda Hopkins, the Director of Transforming Conflict, is one of the world’s most published authors in the field of restorative justice.

The challenge

While working on a new book, Belinda had a few hand-drawn sketches that perfectly illustrated some key ideas and processes. Fine for the training room – but not good enough for the book.

Frustratingly, without design skills or a budget for designers, she couldn’t see a way to include them. Until she came on one of our two-hour AI Discovery sessions. Could she use AI to help?

How we worked together

We used our Triple-Loop Intelligence:

  • Belinda: with her vision, sketches and instinct for what would work
  • Us (New Terrain): facilitating the exploration, asking strategic questions, crafting effective prompts
  • AI: opening up possibilities neither of us had imagined at the start

Belinda held the steering wheel throughout, deciding direction, making adjustments, choosing what felt right. 

We drove the technical side, suggesting routes and helping navigate the AI landscape.

The AI itself became our collaborative partner, revealing options and creating outputs.

Each stage built on the last: discovering possible styles, identifying tools that matched her skill level, refining criteria, and ultimately finding multiple solutions she could implement herself.

The results

Within just 15 minutes, Belinda had generated her first usable images AND understood how to continue independently.

Below is one example – “high-quality, printable images that retain the simplicity, emotional clarity, and warmth of the original hand-drawn sketches”.

boat on a river 2 blockages - hand sketch to chatGPT image
A little boat meeting various blockages trees, rocks, broken bridge etc

We could have stopped there, but by going deeper, together we discovered more possibilities:

  • Multiple AI tools she could use at her current skill level
  • Techniques for combining her hand-drawn sketches with AI-generated elements
  • Ways to maintain her authentic style while using AI assistance
  • A clear process she could repeat for future projects

What she left with

Beyond the practical outputs (recording, transcript, key points summary, and all our AI prompts), Belinda left with three crucial things:

  1. Confidence to explore AI independently
  2. Discernment to know when to use her own skills vs. AI assistance  
  3. Autonomy over her creative process

“Thank you so much for the session. I found it really useful and also exciting. I am looking forward to watching the recording and then using the questions you used to get to a similar place with my own searches using ChatGPT – and also plan to see what Copilot comes up with as well.

You helped me in several ways – giving me confidence to carry on by myself to explore how AI can help me, but also affirming the value and appearance of some of my own hand-draw graphics. This meant a great deal to me.

I realised that I do not need to give up my own autonomy and ability and let AI do everything! I can learn discernment and differentiate between what I can already do myself and what AI can do better.”

Belinda Hopkins, Director of Transforming Conflict

Summary

This case study demonstrates what person-centred AI training looks like in practice.

We didn’t teach Belinda about AI features or technical capabilities. We started with her creative vision and authentic purpose, then showed her how AI could amplify what she already brought to the table.

The result? Not dependence on AI, but intelligent collaboration with it.

Interested in discovering how AI can serve your authentic purposes? Contact us at info@newterrain.co.uk

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