I went digging through the National Gallery of Art's open-access collection and found four public domain paintings with the same serious, cracked-paint energy: a 2nd-century Egyptian portrait, a 13th-century Byzantine Madonna panel, a c. 1340 Florentine manuscript leaf and Masolino's c. 1423 Annunciation. I turned them into a custom Recraft Style called SOLEMN, then used it to paint new, secular characters who treat everyday stuff (laptops, phones, megaphones, a camera on a tripod) like it's the most important thing in the world. Those characters became playing cards: I made my own chunky lettering and four weird new suit icons, and each card stacks a corner letter, a painted figure and a giant glossy 3D icon.

Then I used the same Style to make ornament patterns for a sofa, rug, coffee table, stacked cups, a knit cardigan and a matchbox, plus a character sheet for a short teaser. The whole joke is the gap between a very solemn old style and very ordinary new things, and there are no halos or religious figures in anything I made.

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National Gallery of Art links: Art 1, Art 2, Art 3, Art 4