Painters and artists alike have been using optical illusions for ages. Think about it, an artist has to use his skills to fool your perception and make you believe that is painting is actually 3D. Artists use perception illusions, color illusions, and many other illusion subcategories to help fool your mind into believing what you see on a canvas.

Even though most artists use optical illusions to make their art more believable, some artists take their art to the next step by creating art with the purpose of fooling others. Take Salvador Dali’s works of art.

Notice that there are more to the images than meets the eye. My first impression of image one was that a woman was near a window. When I stepped back, I also saw the profile of a man! For the second painting I immediately noticed the black and white image of the “old woman”. As I looked closer however, I noticed that the old woman was made up of two individuals dressed in white and black.

Another famous artist known for his optical illusions would have to be M.C. Escher. The widely known illusion below is called Day and Night can you guess why?

There are many interesting features to the image above. First off, in what direction are the birds flying? What are the colors of the birds? There are two answers to that. Looking from the center to the right of the image you see white birds flying off in the darkness. However, when looking from the center to the left of the image you also see that there are black birds that fly in daylight. The birds also merge into sections of the landscape. You see these different perspectives because each bird is outlined by the shapes of other birds. As you look around, your perceptions change!

One of my favorite illusions that encompasses many of the illusions I’ve discussed over these past blog entries would have to be Relativity by Escher.

What makes this illusion so special would have to be the sheer genius and creativity that went into making an illusion of this sort. Coming from a person who has attempted at creating successful optical illusions, this image is no easy feat. View the image from top to bottom. What do you see? Where do the stairs lead? What are the figures doing? Escher tries to make us see this image in new ways of perspective using is intricate shading techniques and perspective skills.

Looking from the bottom, you see that an individual is going up a flight of stairs. To the right of him a woman seems to go down a flight of stairs that are upside down. But how could this be? Escher uses perspective to trick the mind which allows you to see different versions of the picture at once.

Tilt your head to the right. Does the perspective of the image change? you bet! Now we see a view of people eating on an outside porch-an image that was originally turned on its side. The list of illusions used in this image go on and on. Escher’s skills as an artist and an illusionist bear great examples to different illusion types and forms. We notice changes in perspective, impossible objects, and 3D illusions all in one picture. It just goes to show how easy it is to get fooled with information you see, process and try to understand with your own eyes-its mind blowing.

Other images encompass different illusion categories would be:

Do you notice anything strange about this illusion? Do you really think that you can climb a wall like this? This is an example of a perspective and impossible object illusion. Your view on the orientation of the wall changes depending on where you look at the image. The image is also impossible because it seems to be on the ground then high in the sky-which is impossible for a flat surfaced floor.

The famous illusions above are ambiguous illusions meaning that you can interpret them in more than one way. In the first illusion you can see either an old couple or two men playing music. In the second illusion you can see the profile of an old man or the images of two peasants under an arch. It all depends on how you view the images.

Your Optical Illusionist,

Amanda=)

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Op Art uses complicated patterns and pictures to make the viewers feel like the image is moving when it really isn’t. This occurs because as you look at the complicated image, your brain does its best to interpret and make sense of the complicated patterns. When attempting to do this however, your brain interprets the set of patterns differently (or shifting from one assumption to another) which is why the pattern appears to move.

Do you see movement in the pattern?

What I noticed about the illusion above was that if you focus on one segment or part of the image-it doesn’t appear to move. Despite doing this, the space around your focused image continues to move.

OP art is a great example of how individuals interpret visual patterns and information. Its interesting to know that it is really your mind that determines how you interpret the image.

-Amanda

One type of illusion that really demonstrates how you view lines would be broken line illusions. This category of illusions tests your vision and analyzing skills. These illusions also skew your spatial recognition by interrupting lines. To understand what I mean look at the illusion below.

Do the back arches meet up perfectly?

Although it may not seem like it, the arches do meet up! The arches in the front break up the arches in the back which caused your brain to believe that they didn’t meet up.

Another illusion like this is shown below:

Which line connects to the line of the left?

The answer is line b!

One of the most bizarre and confusing optical illusions are impossible figures. Just like their name suggests, these figures are impossible to construct in real life. One unique feature of of impossible figures would be that they tend to flip between two different, logical looks. It is also very hard to identify specific features of these illusions because your mind is flipping and trying to make sense of two different sets of information.

Take the image above for example. How many candles are there?

Initially, when I saw the image, I counted 5 candles but when looking at the base of the candles I saw 7 candles? What happened?

To make this illusion easier to understand I broke it down into two parts.

This strange illusion was created with lines and angles that were purposefully drawn to confuse the brain. The artist attached extra candles at the bottom by connecting the already drawn candles which gave the illusion of “more candles” on the bottom.

In order to show these “angles” I drew over each candle with different colors.

Notice the extra shadows and lines on the bottom of each candle.

Your Optical Illusionist,
Amanda

Like I said before, our mind often analyzes a two dimensional picture and translates it to a mental “3D image”. Often with ambiguous illustrations, individuals can see different mental views of objects because there are various logical images that can occur. Take this picture for example:
How do you view this image? Do you see an “open book” or a “pointed roof”?

Either way is correct because those are both logical ways to reconstruct this 2D figure.

Another Illusion like the one above is:

View the hexagon. Withing a few moments your brain with construct a figure with a little more depth-a cube. Can you see it? The cube can switch orientations as well. The different cube views are below.

More complicated versions of this type of illusion are:

( illusion taken from Optical Illusion Magic by Michael DiSpezio)

Instead of viewing it as interlocking circles, your brain used your prior knowledge and related the image into something with depth. Instead of remaining flat and 2D your brain makes the image look like a 3D slinky or coil. Which part is the inside of the coil? Which one is the outside?

In actuality, BOTH sides can act as

the inside and outside. To show this I filled in one part of the coil.

Note: the shaded part is the outside of the coil.

As you can see, you can view the coil in two different ways.

Your Optical Illusionist,
Amanda

Perspective comes into play every day of our lives. When you look out the window you see things that are both father away from you and things that overlap them. You use this form of thinking to determine and assume which objects are closer to you and which ones are farther away. Artists also use perspective to give flat surfaces depth and space. If you think about it, all work of art that has space and looks “3D” is an optical illusion because the artist is using perspective to make a two dimensional object look 3D. Perspective is also applied to optical illusions-which trick you into predetermining the size of objects!

An example of a simple perspective illusion can be seen below.

Which line looks longer?

It seems that the top line is longer because your brain assumes that the top line is farther away than the bottom line, so it must be longer. When removing the background however you see that the lines are the same length.

So, your brain interpreted and assumed that the lines were farther away because of the receding background but in essence they really weren’t. Thats why the lines seemed like they weren’t the same length.

Another illusion like this one is pictured below.
Which “monster” looks bigger?

When removing the background, you will see that the “monsters” are the same size! Your brain assumed that one monster was larger because it put things into “perspective”!

-Amanda

As you may know, there are tons of great ambiguous illusions. Many include silhouettes but others include pictures in which you can see more than one image depending on how you look at it.
look at the image at the left. What do you see? (there is more than one answer)

When I first looked at an illusion like this, I said that it was a chef holding a giant cake with a piece missing. When I others though, I also go the answer “a piece of cake on a platter”. Can you see both?

I made it easier to see both images by flipping the original illusion.

On the image at the left, you can see a pink cake with a slice removed (the yellow is the inside of the cake).

On the image at the right, you can see a slice of cake on a pink platter (the top of the slice is black).

The nature of ambiguous images allow viewers to interpret and view the same image in more than one way. When viewing the illusion right side up, it is logical to see that a slice is missing because of the orientation of the baker and his hands. When viewing the illusion turned around however, the whole cake becomes a platter that only holds one slice. Because the orientation of the image has changed, you now see another logical explanation for the image.

Other examples of these illusions are:

What do you see in this image?

If you flip the image around you get a whole new interpretation:

Which image did you see first?

Thats all for now,

Amanda

The second (bird/boat illusion) was taken from The Little Giant Book of Optical Illusions by Keith Kay.

One of the most interesting illusions would be Silhouette Illusions. Silhouettes in nature are ambiguous images and can easily be interpreted in different ways. This occurs because we are trying to reconstruct the flat 2D image and make it 3D. By doing this we usually make assumptions that are relevant towards the figure but aren’t really there. Thats why you can interpret a silhouette or “see” an image in different ways. Take this silhouette as an example:

You can view these images in more than one way. To help you understand, I tried to show how you can view the images below.

As you can see, you can view the image where the individuals are facing forward of backward.

Another great example of this type of illusion would be with the “Dancing Silhouette”

In what direction is the girl turning? clockwise or counterclockwise?

Initially I saw the girl turning clockwise but then after looking at the image for a while, I saw her spinning counterclockwise as well! (yes it is possible). Like I said before, there are multiple interpretations for silhouettes, just like this one. If you cant see the dancer spinning another way (either clockwise or counterclockwise) I found some useful images that can help you see how the silhouette can spin both ways.

I got two spinning silhouette images (above) from this website

Thats all for now,

-Amanda

One example of a famous illusion would have to be a representation of how your mind adapts to information. If you don’t get what i mean, just look at the illusion below.

Read the text left to right section first. Now read the vertical section.

When I tested this illusion on others the most common responses were horizontal: A B C, and vertical: 12, 13, 14

So we come to a question, what does it say in the center? 13 or B? The fact is, it’s both. When you read the horizontal text your mind notices that you are reading letters so you assume that it is A, B, C. When you read the text vertically, your mind realizes that you are looking at numbers, so you assume that the image in the center is of the number 13.

Your Optical Illusionist,

-Amanda

Often when we view a drawing it is quite possible that we can see two very different things. Sometimes extra information in illustrations can fool you into seeing an image or another. The illusion below shows two pictures of a person. Each person seems to have a different line or direction of vision…

(sketches of men taken from Now You See It-Now You Don’t By Seymour Simon)

Their direction of vision is different. I tried to represent their line of vision using lines

As you can see, the man in portrait one seems to be looking off to the side while the man in portrait two seems to be looking straight at you. The interesting thing about this illusion is that their eyes are exactly the same. There are no additional changes that were done to the eyes of both men. To prove this, I removed the bottom half of each portrait.

In essence, the features of the faces make you believe that the eyes were different.

Just goes to show, you can’t always trust what you see=)

-Amanda