Lines and Colors art blog

Category: Vision and Optics

  • Andreas Aronsson

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    cparker
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    Whenever we look at a representational drawing or painting that appears to have depth or dimensionality, we are looking at a “projection”, a two-dimensional representation of a three dimensional object or scene. There are several types or projections, the most familiar are “perspective projection” (traditional linear perspective), in which lines drawn from the sides of…

  • Anamorphic Art

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    cparker
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    An anamorphosis is an image that is distorted in such a way that it only assumes the proportions of recognizable forms when viewed from a certain angle, or by reflection in a curved surface. The term comes from the Greek anamorphoun, to transform. Anamorphic images have a long history in art. The earliest examples in…

  • Tilt-Shift Photography

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    cparker
    in

    We have a tendency to think of photography as “realistic” because it often seems to reproduce what we see with reasonable accuracy, but photography and human perception often diverge significantly. You may have noticed when looking at photographs of small objects, models, dioramas or model train layouts, that there is a limited range of the…

  • Illusionistic 3-D painting on sidewalks and walls

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    cparker
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    I’ve written before about the illusionistic 3-D sidewalk “paintings” in chalk by artists like Kurt Wenner and Julian Beever, as well as the large scale illusionistic murals by Eric Grohe. Web Urbanist has posted a nice overview, Amazing 3D Art from the Best Street Artists, with a selection of work by Wenner (image above), Beever,…

  • History of the Color Wheel

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    cparker
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    It’s been the subject of much discussion, some suggesting that it is misleading enough that it should be rethought entirely, but the color wheel remains the most common and convenient method for visually understanding and comparing the relationships of different hues. As part of the Gutenberg-e project by the American Historical Association and Columbia University…

  • Big Spanish Castle and
    e-Chalk color perception

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    cparker
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    Here are a couple of interesting diversions that dramatically illustrate the degree to which color perception is controlled by the effect of previous or adjacent colors. The first, Big Spanish Castle, is a simple, but dramatic and fun, color-based optical illusion. Based on the visual effects of complementary colors and the optical/brain phenomenon known as…