Even after the first glance, most people will look at the picture above and believe that it is an actual photo of real fish swimming in a barrel. But, aha! They have been deceived by the tricky artist. Using the principle of perception of closure, he was able to create three dimensional art that is incredibly realistic. Closure is when the brain fills in any missing visual information. In this picture, the fish look 3D, but in reality they are two dimensional layers of realistic paintings piled on top of one another and the brain fills in the gaps between the layers to see one 3D image. There is also a sense of motion in the picture even though the fish are stationary because of the way we perceive motion; we can imagine the fish swimming and, therefore, believe that they are, even though we know they are not. In order to make an exquisite painting like the one above, one must pour a form of lacquer in the barrel, paint a rough image of a fish without all of the details, then pour another layer of lacquer and paint another layer of the fish, and repeat the same steps until the fish looks real. It's amazing how the brain can make a 2D image look perfect and 3D.
I love this picture! I think it is a really good example of how we use closure to solve problems and use it as a way of looking at things. I totally first looked at this picture and thought that it was a real picture but once I read the blog post, I soon realized that I filled in the picture with closure and just quickly came to conclusions to figure out the picture. I am amazed by this picture because I totally thought it was 3D but soon realized it's 2D.