May 3, 2026
Draw first, flex later
Using "underdrawings" for accurate text and numbers
AI still can’t count, so users are sketching cheat sheets first — and the comments are obsessed
TLDR: A simple two-step trick helps AI image tools get text and numbers right by giving them a correct guide to paint over first. Commenters loved it, joked it was obvious in hindsight, and debated whether it’s a breakthrough or just an old-school workaround with great branding.
The big plot twist here isn’t just that someone found a clever way to make AI images finally stop mangling text and numbers — it’s that the community reacted like they’d witnessed a magician reveal a trick that was somehow both genius and embarrassingly obvious. The method is simple: first make a plain guide image with the numbers laid out correctly, then ask the image AI to “paint over it” in a prettier style. Result: a candy-colored board game with numbers that actually go from 1 to 50 in the right order, which, yes, is apparently still enough to humble today’s fanciest image bots.
The comments quickly split into two camps: the “wow, this is incredibly useful” crowd and the “wait, isn’t this just the old trick with a shiny new name?” crowd. One user basically summed up the mood with a giant internet forehead-slap: this is pure “duh, why didn’t I think of that” energy. Another chimed in saying they’ve already been doing the same thing for charts and slide visuals, which gave the whole thread a fun indie-band-got-mainstream vibe. Then came the deeper hot take: maybe this is actually a reminder that AI is best when it teams up with tools that are good at boring precision, instead of pretending it can freestyle perfect numbers every time.
And yes, there was a deliciously dry summary from gwern that basically translated the excitement into: calm down, this is just giving the machine a skeleton first. Which only made everyone else more entertained.
Key Points
- •The article introduces an "underdrawing method" that improves text and number accuracy in AI-generated images by combining deterministic layouts with image generation.
- •A direct prompt for a 50-step spiral game board reportedly failed in both Gemini 3 Pro and ChatGPT-Images-2 when no underdrawing was used.
- •The method uses a first layer created in SVG, HTML, Python, or Mermaid to place numbers and text precisely before a second generative styling step.
- •The article demonstrates the approach by generating an SVG spiral board numbered 1 to 50 and then asking Gemini Pro to transform it into a claymation-style candy scene.
- •The article says tools such as Claude Code or Codex can automate the workflow, while noting the method is still imperfect on some attempts.