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THE BREATHING CITY — An Atlas of Living Infrastructure
I found Ernst Haeckel and Adolf Giltsch’s 1904 Discomedusae plate in the Biodiversity Heritage Library’s public-domain collection. I built a Recraft V4 Style from its translucent bells and branching fibres, then imagined a city grown around that anatomy. Six scenes turn the same visual language into air filtration, transit, water, food, repair and shared shelter.
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Project Title: Surreal World 🌀✨
Description: Hey everyone! Here is my submission for the Recraft Challenge — a poster series called "Surreal World"! 🎨
For this project, I dove deep into the Public Domain Image Archive and gathered vintage 18th and 19th-century illustrations from various talented artists of that era — think old-school book engravings, scientific botanical plates, and classical etchings.
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I wanted to give these historical artworks a fresh, weird, and fun twist by mixing them with modern surrealism, bold colors, and psychedelic vibes. With Recraft, I blended classic cross-hatching textures and aged paper looks with funky symbols, neon contrasts, and dreamlike patterns.
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Hope you enjoy this little trip where history meets surreal imagination! Let me know what you think! 👇✨
i love these!
Press-on nails are my modern take 😊
I made one Recraft Style that draws press-on nails as if a mineral painter from 1810 had drawn them.
Many people do their nails now: at home, in minutes, a new set whenever they feel like it. Small brands sell them all over TikTok and Pinterest, and they need designs nobody else has. This Style gives them 200-year-old ones.
I trained it on six of James Sowerby's hand-painted rock prints (1802 to 1817), plus a gold ring and a stone table from the Met.
Try it in 3 steps 👍
1. Open the Style and paste: "Five almond press-on nails on cream paper, red jasper with gold veins, one nail with a small gold cabochon." Change "red jasper with gold veins" to try another stone, like "pale pink stone with dark red speckles".
2. Remove the Style, add your drawing as a reference, and paste: "Make these real press-on nails, same colors, white background"
3. Add the set as a reference and paste: "Hands covering the face, wearing these exact nails, red jasper with gold veins, white background"
Specimens of the Future — a field guide to the machines of 2026, drawn in 1899
What if Ernst Haeckel had been handed our century to catalogue?
In the Biodiversity Heritage Library's scans of Kunstformen der Natur (1899) I found the most beautiful filing system ever made: jellyfish, radiolarians and hummingbirds arranged like jewels, every creature centred, symmetrical, and gravely serious. I trained a custom Recraft V4 Style — Machina Naturae — on eight of Haeckel's plates, and used it to catalogue the fauna that actually surrounds us now.
PLATE I · THE SMARTPHONE — the slab that glows back; its charging cable curls like a tentacle.
PLATE II · THE WIRELESS EARBUDS — twin grubs resting in their shell-case nest.
PLATE III · THE CAMERA DRONE — a four-winged insect with a single compound eye.
PLATE IV · THE ELECTRIC SCOOTER — a heron on one long leg, at rest between migrations.
PLATE V · THE VR HEADSET — a blind deep-sea creature, banded where its eyes should be.
PLATE VI · THE ROBOT VACUUM — a disc tortoise, grazing the savannah of the living-room floor.
PLATE VII · THE SMARTWATCH — the wrist-dweller, its dial a single watchful eye.
PLATE VIII · THE FOOD-DELIVERY BOX — a hermit species that carries its insulated home.
The brief: In the stacks of the Biodiversity Heritage Library I found Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur (1899) — plates that arranged jellyfish and radiolarians like jewels in a cabinet. I built one custom Recraft Style from eight of his plates and used it to catalogue the machines that now live alongside us: the smartphone, the drone, the robot vacuum. Each device is drawn as Haeckel drew his specimens — centred, symmetrical, gravely serious — as if a naturalist of 1899 had been handed the year 2026 to document. The result is a field guide to a fauna nobody ordered, but everybody owns.
Full series in the Recraft project: https://www.recraft.ai/project/bb94acd8-7b26-4c8c-9f19-00e7ec676a26
Try the Machina Naturae style: https://www.recraft.ai/styles/30cb7d33-a267-4687-bbbe-852998bcc5b5
Archive references (all public domain, Wikimedia Commons):
· Trachomedusae — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Haeckel_Trachomedusae.jpg
· Tetracoralla — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Haeckel_Tetracoralla.jpg
· Trochilidae — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Haeckel_Trochilidae.jpg
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