Sidewalk Illusions

I have always wanted to see one of these in real life. The artist is playing mind games with your brain using different shades and shadows. It really does look like it is 3-D and it takes a moment to realize it isn't. Since light and shadows are important to monocular cues I understand how it works. In a way the artist tricks our brain through the use of shadows and light, I find that very cool.

I think this is a perfect illustration of how our perceptions can be easily tricked. I saw one of these when I was in Italy last summer and it really is freaky because it looks so real. The artists' knowledge of how light and shadows as well as size is really astounding. I have always wondered if the same kind of skewed perception could be achieved through a painting on a canvas or if part of the perception comes from the painting being on the ground surround by real life, you know? Part of me thinks that part of the perception comes from the fact that our brain jumps directly to the painting being real because there are actually holes in the ground we walk on sometimes so it is possible that the painting could be really, even if our brains are only tricked for a few seconds. Really cool thing to bring up though and good explanation of the science behind the perception we have of them.

I have always loved looking at these depth perceptions through side walk art. When seeing them in real life, it is rather interesting to analyze. Something you cannot see in this picture but you can see in real life is how different the artwork looks when viewing it from different angles. If you walk around to the other side of the piece or slightly move to the right or left of the picture, you will notice how different it looks. The image looks very long and stretched out, and in reality, the artists who make these pieces need a large amount of sidewalk space to make the depth perception accurate. So, it is a combination of the knowledge of light and shadow, linear perspective, as well as accuracy and precision that these artists need to take into account when drawing these pieces so that we, the viewers, can pick up on the depth cues.

I love pictures like this too. In my high school art class, I also have tried to create 3-D drawing and have learned that it is 3-D in only in one perspective. In other perspectives it is distorted. This reminds me of how in some occasions people make random assortment of shadows and shapes and morph it into something that looks like a nameable shape. For example,there was an occasion when I went camping, I saw a tall black figure and automatically thought it was a shape of a human. Creepy huh... It was actually a cat tail plant in a swamp. But that's just an example of how our mind can interpret things from different perspectives.

This drawing is amazing. I love going to chalk festivals in my home town and seeing just what incredible pieces of art people can draw. It show how images and our perception can be tricked into thinking something is one way, when we know it is not. There are many illusions that are crazy and hard to see, even after you know the trick. Mastering different tactics to trick our brain can be useful to create interesting pictures, like this one, out of chalk. While this one needs to be seen from a specific vantage point, it is intriguing as to the science and the physical process our brain goes through when processing this image.