By Jill Harness on July 3, 2011, with 88 Comments
I don’t know about you guys, but I love top ten lists. When Vurdlak asked me if i could do one, I was really excited and a little surprised to see that there are only two top-tens on the site already. Well, rest assured that if you like posts like this, I’ll be happy to contribute plenty of them to the site -in fact, if you have any ideas for lists you’d like to see, feel free to leave your ideas in the comments here and if Vurdlak and I both like them, you just might see them in an upcoming post!
As for this first top ten list, I thought tattoos would make a great topic -after all, you have to really love an illusion to get one tattooed on you. This first tattoo is my personal favorite because it’s such a classic illusion subject -multiple meaning one. These work really well as arm tattoos because you never know if someone will view it while your arm is raised or not, making it the ideal location for such a piece. This specific design was done by David Page. On the left, you have a queen, but when you flip her upside down, you have a king.
(88 votes)By Jill Harness on July 2, 2011, with 17 Comments
Before you ask, yes… this picture, by Rob at the What Is It? Blog, is Photoshopped; that’s not the illusion here. Instead, it’s the fact that the man on the right, the one that looks so gigantic, is the exact copy of man on the far left. So why does he look so much bigger than the original one, you might ask? Simply because the lines mess with our brain’s perception of size.
If you think this picture somehow looks familiar, sans the illusion part, you’re probably right. It’s actually a famous picture of bridge painters hanging from the wires of the Brooklyn Bridge near the end of the construction phase. You can even see the skyline of Lower Manhattan in the background – can you imagine how different that skyline must look these days? Those of you who live in New York know exactly how true that is.
(33 votes)By Vurdlak on June 30, 2011, with 14 Comments
What I’m about to show you shouldn’t strictly be taken into account as optical illusions. Moreover, here and then exceptions are made, specially when something monumental appears – like this time where we have striking, Banksy-like artwork created by Portuguese artist Alexandre Farto.
As you see Alexandre… or Andy Wall-hole if you will (which is the nickname Alex earned himself), carves incredible face portraits into the bricks and mortar of buildings. DailyMail reports how Alex has peppered the walls and sides of old buildings around his native Lisbon with an impressive selection of portraits, where he hopes his “faces in the city” will inspire people and make them see beyond what meets their eyes.
(29 votes)By Vurdlak on June 28, 2011, with 15 Comments
Thanks to Andreas P. now we have whole new series of Liu Bolin and his “Invisible Man” – Dragon Series installation to showcase. If you lived under the rock for the past year or so, you missed some incredible camouflage body-paintings from mentioned artist. As we already stated once – Liu Bolin, (a master of camouflage) hopes to portray the richness of Chinese culture and history through his work. He achieved some pretty unbelievable results with this one, if you ask me…
(41 votes)By Jill Harness on June 26, 2011, with 15 Comments
So technically this papercraft version of M.C. Escher’s Relativity drawing is not actually origami, but kirigami, whereby paper is made into art through the use of cutting and folding rather than exclusively folding. But let’s be honest, while practically everyone has heard of origami, most people think of it as any type of art involving paper. And it seems no one has really heard of kirigami. So, I stand by my headline here.
Anyway, we’ve seen this same Escher work in LEGO before, but there’s just something about the delicate nature of paper that makes the interpretation of the same original Escher work appear so much more fragile and delicate than the toy brick version. In a way, it’s kind of like hearing a song covered by two different bands who specialize in two different genres. You can recognize that they started out with the same influence, but the end result is drastically different.
(36 votes)By Vurdlak on June 25, 2011, with 15 Comments
Ellen K. Smith found an interesting outdoor illusion painted on the barred-fence located somewhere in the streets of Mannheim. After sharing her find, I did some research and figured out that the artist behind this “constructive vandalism” goes under the name of ZebraThing. I’ve inserted additional gallery where you may find more of his work, as well as some shots of the same installation shot from a different angle. And if all this isn’t enough, be sure to check Zebra’s fb page where he exampled another dozen of similar works. If you remember we had something similar already showcased on our site before. Enjoy!
Photo © by PolyPix Continue Reading …
(32 votes)By Vurdlak on June 23, 2011, with 66 Comments
Suneel Viralam shared this photo with me back in April, yet only now I gave it a second look. As you can see both USA President and Vice President are in it, yet something feels strange about their legs. Can you guess what happened, and to whom does the middle leg belong to? There are also some other important people in this photo, yet I don’t know who they are. If I was an American perhaps I’d know…
BTW, those of you who contacted me about the problem regarding the “Next Random Illusion” button (that it always returns exactly the same illusion), you might try clearing your browser cache, and the problem will disappear. Please report if this helped!
(60 votes)By Vurdlak on June 22, 2011, with 31 Comments
There is this website that specializes in daily T-Shirt deals. Each day one perspective artist is featured, whose design is then put into spotlight. The site I’m talking about is called woot.com, and more often than not I was refereed to it by our loyal illusion-submitting fans.
Recently, artist who goes under the name of bassanimation got his design put into center of attention. Titled “National Pride”, the soft-colored motive depicts a mighty tree standing still in the middle of nowhere. But there is so much more to it than meets the eye! Try and see which animal might be hidden somewhere inside this pic.
I understand this illusion is easier to see than not, yet it somehow reminded me of Chow Hon Lam’s “Feng-shui Dragon” and this is why I chose to share it.
(36 votes)
