A week spent in rainy Raleigh, a journal of AI training on brutalist textures

Monday morning, I opened my laptop while watching the rain pick up outside the window. The texture work for the client rebranding project needed to take real shape by the end of the week. The direction was already set: pulling concrete textures and geometric patterns from Brutalist architecture and working them into the brand's visual system. The problem was that reference photos alone couldn't produce textures at the density I was after.

Mon–Tue: Wrestling with Prompts

When I fed prompts for concrete wall textures into an AI image generator, seven times out of ten the results came back either too smooth or looking like a fantasy game backdrop. Even with specifics like "exposed aggregate concrete, overcast daylight, no people," fine details—tiny air bubbles, formwork marks on the surface—never quite came through. By Tuesday afternoon I had generated roughly 200 images, of which only about fifteen were usable. With an acceptance rate that low, I needed to rethink my prompts from scratch.

The rain kept falling through Tuesday. Puddles were collecting on the parking lot asphalt outside my studio window, forming a subtle texture that, ironically enough, looked a lot like what I'd been chasing on my monitor.

Wednesday: Switching Tools

I had nearly burned through all my credits on the paid generator I'd been using. I wasn't ready to pay for more while the project was still in the experimental stage. So I switched to a locally run, open-source tool. An hour and a half to install, another hour to configure the model. At first, generation wouldn't even start—insufficient VRAM—so I went through rounds of lowering the resolution and reducing the batch size. But once it was up and running, I could experiment freely without worrying about credits. Hundreds of images for $0.

Wednesday night, I tried feeding formwork patterns directly as reference images, and the results changed dramatically. Wood-grain impressions pressed into the concrete surface, hairline cracks, color bleeding. I let out a small yelp staring at my monitor.

Thursday Evening: A Short Break

I wrapped up work early on Thursday and headed to a small arthouse theater in downtown Raleigh. They were screening a collection of experimental animated shorts, and one of them captured the changing textures of building exteriors in time-lapse. Weathering, cracking, moss creeping in—all edited into something abstract. The very materiality I'd been trying to recreate digitally all week was simply moving on the screen. When I stepped out of the theater, the rain had stopped and the air was damp.

Friday: Wrapping Up

On Friday, I selected a final shortlist of 30 textures from the generated images and arranged them on the client presentation board. I placed the original concrete photos alongside the AI-generated textures, with a simple application mockup attached to each. A week of rain had meant fewer reasons to go outside, which actually gave me more time to stay focused. The client meeting is next Monday. I'm not sure they'll like the results, but I believe I've at least prepared enough material for them to judge whether this direction is the right one.

As I closed my laptop, I looked out the window. Friday evening, and sunlight was finally breaking through over Raleigh.