I’ve always loved how much care went into the things Indian royal courts carried into battle. A shield wasn’t just a shield. It was lacquered, painted with flowers, and studded with gold. While digging through The Met and the Cleveland...
200 years ago, local artists painted the everyday people of the subcontinent: barbers, porters, chai wallas, knife sharpeners. Each one got a portrait, flat colours, a fancy border, total respect.
So I asked: what if those same painters time travelled to Lahore today?
I found their work in the Wellcome Collection’s public domain archive, trained a Recraft Style on it, and sent it to paint the new pesha of my city.
The New Book of Beasts
A Medieval Bestiary of Modern Human Nature
What if medieval bestiaries described the habits of modern people instead of mythical creatures?
For the Recraft × Contra Styles Challenge, I created Illuminated Bestiary, a custom Recraft Style inspired by public-domain illustrations from 13th–15th-century manuscripts.
I used historical references from the Public Domain Image Archive to explore medieval animal anatomy, ornamental details, ink drawings, and muted natural pigments.
Then I applied the style to eight imaginary beasts, each representing a familiar modern behavior: overthinking, people-pleasing, doomscrolling, procrastination, ghosting, perfectionism, attention-seeking, and impostor syndrome.
The result is a collection of creatures that look like they belong in a centuries-old manuscript, even though their habits are very much our own.
My project explores the connection between 19th-century French fashion illustration and contemporary fashion accessories.
Inspired by a historical watercolor illustration from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, I created a cohesive visual style using delicate watercolor textures, ornamental details, and a muted palette of antique cream, rose pink, and sage green.
Using Recraft Studio, I applied this style across six fashion-inspired objects, blending archival elegance with a modern editorial aesthetic.