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
Slow Light & Soft Tide: two styles about light
I built two custom Recraft V4 Styles from public-domain works in museum and archive collections. Both are about light: one splits it through a lattice, the other lets it settle on still water.
1. SLOW LIGHT (Recraft style name: Gitterglitch)
What if the buildings where we wait were wrapped in a lattice that turns sunlight into colour?
References: Koloman Moser's Plant Stand (1904) at the Saint Louis Art Museum, and Michel Eugène Chevreul's colour plate of the solar spectrum (1864) at the Science History Institute.
From Moser I took the square lattice of perforated metal, the Gitterwerk of the Wiener Werkstätte; from Chevreul, the soft spectrum from red to violet. Together they turn sunlight into bands of colour across bus shelters, waiting rooms, libraries and underpasses, then become the posters, illustrations and logos of an imaginary city that runs on light.
2. SOFT TIDE
What if still water could remember everything that ever passed above it?
References: Claude Monet's Water Lilies (1906) at the Art Institute of Chicago, and a Peach Blow vase by Hobbs, Brockunier & Co. (after 1886) at the Walters Art Museum.
From Monet I took the hazy blue water and the reflections breaking apart in the ripples; from the vase, the glossy glass that fades from rose to milky white. A Ferris wheel, a lighthouse, a bridge and a full moon leave pink reflections on periwinkle water, and pale creatures drift through them, shown as a poster series and as photographs.
Two archives, one material: light, split by a lattice and softened by water.
Such a beautiful work
nice
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
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.
Usbong is Tagalog for "bud," the moment a flower first breaks open.
I dug into Flora de Filipinas (1877–1883), a 19th-century botanical atlas of Philippine plants, through the Biodiversity Heritage Library and Wikimedia Commons. I turned its hand-colored plates into a fictional women's football club.
Every native flower became gear:
Dapdap → home kit
Banaba → away kit
Caballero → boots
Santan + gumamela → goalkeeper gloves
Sanggumay → match ball
Makahiya → the supporter's scarf
Makahiya is the "shy" plant, the one that folds when you touch it. It's also covered in thorns, and that's the whole idea: these flowers aren't soft or decorative. They bite. Worn by striker Maya Flores, #29, the collection reclaims flowers as fierce, not fragile.
Bella, this is sooo cool!!!