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I found Thomas Bewick's A General History of Quadrupeds (1790) in the Internet Archive's Getty Research Institute scan, with a matching public-domain record at The Met. I cropped six wood engravings — goat, horse, bull, sheep, dog and cat — removing captions and borders, and built them into the Recraft V4 Style 'Bewick 1790 Field Guide'. I then used that 18th-century field-guide style to draw the same farm animals with things Bewick could never have imagined: an e-scooter, a delivery bicycle, a smartphone, headphones, a laptop, a delivery bag, a drone and a tablet. The result is one cohesive series where fine black hatching on cream paper meets modern life, exactly as a 1790 natural-history plate would have recorded it. Recraft project: https://www.recraft.ai/project/e84248aa-4d29-4d88-a79a-675592377f74 Recraft Style: https://www.recraft.ai/styles/58e56e65-bcff-4ea3-8bfc-20d21bb4c526 Archive references: Met record https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/371907?who=Bewick%2c — Internet Archive 1790 scan https://archive.org/details/generalhistoryof00beil?view=theater — Goat p.62 https://archive.org/details/generalhistoryof00beil/page/62/mode/1up — Horse p.7 https://archive.org/details/generalhistoryof00beil/page/7/mode/1up — Bull p.23 https://archive.org/details/generalhistoryof00beil/page/23/mode/1up — Sheep p.45 https://archive.org/details/generalhistoryof00beil/page/45/mode/1up — Dog p.286 https://archive.org/details/generalhistoryof00beil/page/286/mode/1up — Cat p.192 https://archive.org/details/generalhistoryof00beil/page/192/mode/1up Social post: https://x.com/Diana_rose121/status/2116245263782453640
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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
THE INTERNET, MECHANICALLY EXPLAINED
An Imaginary Catalogue, 1890
The Internet, Mechanically Explained imagines digital life as a lost catalogue of inventions from 1890. I built a custom Recraft Style from John Emslie’s public-domain, hand-coloured scientific engravings, published in 1850 and preserved by Wellcome Collection. Eight invented mechanisms turn notifications, endless scrolling, cloud storage, search, recommendations, read receipts and passwords into physical cause-and-effect diagrams. The sequence ends with an offline lever: one small movement that gives the viewer their afternoon back.
Archive originals: John Emslie (1813–1875), Motion and Machinery and Mechanical Powers, published by James Reynolds on 10 December 1850. Both source plates are marked Public Domain by Wellcome Collection.
The custom V4 Style and core illustrations were created in Recraft Studio during the challenge. Selected before-and-afters are attached; the full eight-image series and both archive originals are in the public project.
Momoyogusa SS27: A 1909 Pattern Book Art-Directs a 2027 Capsule
In 1909, Kyoto designer Kamisaka Sekka published Momoyogusa ("A World of Things"), three volumes of woodblock-printed patterns so flat and graphic they still look modern a century later.
I trained a Recraft V4 Style on eight plates from the Cleveland Museum of Art's public-domain copy, keeping Sekka's flat colour fields, metallic accents and empty paper grounds.
Then I handed him a 2027 brief: a streetwear capsule. His winter river became a quilted puffer, his cranes climbed onto chunky trainers, his peonies bloomed on headphones, and his dancers came back in matching tracksuits.
A pattern book from 1909, working as a fashion house's design studio.
