The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
Back to feedPost
We live in a time when accepting other people's perspectives is more important than ever. Especially in our profession, we need to understand and embrace that.
I explored the Public Domain Image Archive and discovered medieval illustrations alongside a piece of art from 1831, featuring beautiful colors and patterns. I used the layered, 2D style of the medieval illustrations to bring my idea to life: having a different perspective shouldn't be something we fear or get angry about. It's something that can enrich our world. After all, the medieval period is often associated with intolerance towards different beliefs and ideas. The more perspectives we embrace, the better we become as a society.
The story is called The Wanderer because that's what we need to do. Instead of blindly following others, we should find our own paths while accepting that others are doing the same.
We need not see alike to stand side by side.
My entry for the Contra x Recraft Archive Style Challenge. 🔥
Link to my social post: My Social Post
Link to my style: My Style
Link to my workfile: My Workfile
The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
Related posts
What if the Old Masters designed sportswear?
While taking part in the Recraft contest, I started thinking about how to mix classical painting with modern brands. I experimented with 18th–19th-century oil painting aesthetics and thought: why not take this idea further and create an entire sportswear brand around it?
Classic art, modern athletes, contemporary fashion. A little unexpected? Maybe. But that's what makes it fun! So, I created a sportswear brand concept that brings these two worlds together. The result is right below 👇
Recraft project: https://www.recraft.ai/project/ae17a521-566c-457e-9482-d4b94157111f
Archive references:
Sick art direction
7:30 a.m. First coffee. Same ritual, every single day.
Some people have a sweet tooth. I have a coffee tooth. And while the kettle boils, I usually catch myself daydreaming about the same place: Japan, a trip I’ve wanted to take for years.
For this challenge, I brought the two together. Digging through public domain archives, I found Japanese woodblock prints with rolling waves, round windows, cherry blossoms and graceful women drawn in a few calm, confident lines. I turned them into a custom Recraft Style and gave it a brief no Edo-era print shop could have imagined: a modern café, with takeaway cups, delivery bags, loyalty cards and an ordering app.
The café is called Mado, “window” in Japanese: a small window to slow down in a busy day. Its barista, also Mado, wears an indigo wave apron, a round-window hairpin and wireless earbuds. She remembers your oat milk order, protects the window seats from video calls, and believes every laptop should close when the cake arrives.
Old prints, new rituals. My entry for the Contra × Recraft Archive Style Challenge.
This is beautiful Sofiia! Love how you turned your daily coffee ritual + Japan daydream into a full brand concept. The MADO packaging with that Japanese illustration style is so warm and nostalgic. Coffee tooth is real! ☕️ Hope you get to Japan soon!
Nocturnes of 2126✨
What if Van Gogh and Whistler had painted the night of 2126? 🌙 Nine nocturnes of a future city (robot hounds, rainy delivery bots, air ferries, a tree wired with light), painted with a custom Recraft style built from public-domain paintings at The Met and the Smithsonian.
I went digging through the open-access collections of The Met and the Smithsonian looking for the night. I found Vincent van Gogh’s 1889 Saint-Rémy paintings (Cypresses, Wheat Field with Cypresses, Olive Trees, Irises) for their swirling impasto, and James McNeill Whistler’s Nocturnes (Bognor, Valparaiso) for their deep blue darkness lit by small points of gold. I blended the two into a Recraft style, then chained a second style from its results to lock in a cobalt-and-amber night palette. Nocturnes of 2126 uses that 1889 brush to paint a future neither artist could imagine: robot hounds, delivery bots in the rain, silent air ferries, AR lenses and glass houses with solar roofs, all at blue hour.
The style is public, so try it yourself 👇
day by the day work you are doing is outstanding man.