  The quality of text-to-image generation is continuously improving, yet the
boundaries of its applicability are still unclear. In particular, refinement of
the text input with the objective of achieving better results - commonly called
prompt engineering - so far seems to have not been geared towards work with
pre-existing texts. We investigate whether text-to-image generation and prompt
engineering could be used to generate basic illustrations of popular
fairytales. Using Midjourney v4, we engage in action research with a dual aim:
to attempt to generate 5 believable illustrations for each of 5 popular
fairytales, and to define a prompt engineering process that starts from a
pre-existing text and arrives at an illustration of it. We arrive at a
tentative 4-stage process: i) initial prompt, ii) composition adjustment, iii)
style refinement, and iv) variation selection. We also discuss three reasons
why the generation model struggles with certain illustrations: difficulties
with counts, bias from stereotypical configurations and inability to depict
overly fantastic situations. Our findings are not limited to the specific
generation model and are intended to be generalisable to future ones.
