Sketching the method for mapping stellar surfaces, part 2: creating the initial guess for stellar surface brightness distribution. Upper row: maps of the spot-free reference stellar surface. The left figure is the original that was used to create the synthetic observations that I_ref was then fitted to. The right figure is the reconstruction of the stellar surface using I_ref. Lower panel: stellar specific intensities. The best-fitting specific intensity to the median-combined light curve (I_ref) is shown as a red line. This function was used to reconstitute the stellar map (upper right figure). The“true” original specific intensity of the star is shown as a blue line.