Winter is approaching. Here is a geometric construction you can build with your children in your backyard: a perfect pentagonal snowdodecahedron…
Author: Gianni Sarcone
Stunning Vibrant Metallic Gold Color Insects
Nature is truly the mightiest artist itself! This amazing insect is the “Painted Weevil” (Eurhinus magnificus), a splendid species that sports a metallic emerald, gold, copper and ruby exoskeleton that makes it look like a tiny jewel when spotted in the grass.
How To Draw Incredible Illusions, a cook-book for artists and designers
After the success of my book “Drawing Optical Illusions“, I was commissioned by Imagine Publishing for a new tutorial book project titled “How To Draw Incredible Optical Illusions” [You can get this book from Amazon US and Amazon UK]
My book dissects the most fascinating and confounding black and white optical illusions, patterns and tiling, explaining in a concise fashion how they work, how to design and create them, and how to personalize and play with them to your heart’s content. With accessible yet fascinating text and workable samples, this intriguing art ‘cookbook’ is appropriate for graphic designers, teachers, artists, art lovers and the curious who enjoys contemplating how the mind works and how the eye sees. Continue Reading
Super Optical Illusions
The outside world is mediated through our sense organs, so what we perceive and feel are just representations of reality. The only things we cannot doubt are our inner emotions: we cannot doubt that we are happy, sad, in love, or in grief, when such states apply. The only other thing we cannot doubt is… to doubt!
Super Optical Illusions (aka Xtreme Illusions 2) is a children book project I enjoyed to make three years ago for the publishers “Carlton Books” [amazon.co.uk], “National Geographic Kids” [amazon.com] and “Ça m’intéresse” [amazon.fr]. It looks really fantastic and my pictures are large to enjoy the details! It is a family book that will encourage the young reader to explore the mysteries that lie right inside our own minds (including the key scientific concepts of perspective and perception).
Book Cover
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Fibonacci’s dog
Did you know that Fibonacci had a golden retriever who inspired his spiral aptly called “Golden Spiral”? (Hey, I am joking!)
The Fibonacci spiral is frequently regarded as an approximation to the “golden spiral”, which is a logarithmic spiral whose growth factor is ø, the golden ratio.
You Can’t Possibly Color This!
An Impossible Optical Illusion Activity Book
No mere coloring book, You Can’t Possibly Color This! is an eye-spinning experience that will inspire and astound. That’s because you’ll be coloring in optical illusions — things that can only exist on the page. With a just a few tips, you’ll be coloring in things that will bulge, expand, and even rotate. Other objects will leave you confused as you try to figure out the “trick,” while mandalas, complex patterns, and labyrinths will mesmerize you. Also included are fun activities for drawing and creating your own optical illusions.
Reuleaux-triangle intermittent mechanisms
The Reuleaux triangle is a curious geometric shape: it looks like a rounded triangle, yet it has a remarkable property. Each side is an arc drawn from the opposite vertex, and together these arcs form a curve of constant width. In other words, no matter how you measure it—between two parallel lines—the width always remains the same.
Because of this property, a curve of constant width can act as a rotor inside a square. As it turns, the shape remains in contact with all four sides of the square at every moment, tracing a continuous motion while never leaving the boundary.
Mechanisms based on intermittent motion appeared early in mechanical engineering. One of their first practical uses was in sewing machines, where motion had to advance in precise steps rather than continuously. Today similar mechanisms are widely used in devices that move film frame by frame—such as cameras, projectors, and film-processing equipment—where controlled, stop-and-go motion is essential.
Illusive Op Art Skulls
I am currently working on new “neon color spreading” effects. Have a look at the pictures below… Though you perceive fluorescent grinning skulls, the vertical white stripes don’t contain any color at all, they are uniformly white! The trick lies on the fact that some black lines have very thin color edges. This illusory shading effect is also known as “subjective transparency” or “Tron effect”.
The neon color effect was first observed by D. Varin in 1971. The human ability to perceive a neon effect may be a remnant of the development of our power of sight under water at extreme depths, where light is very poor.
My Op Art Skulls are available as prints and t-shirts from my online store.
Strokes of Nostalgia
Urban Butterflies
Mantra is a French muralist and street artist, born in Metz (East of France) in 1987. He is a self-taught artist and currently one of the most important “avant-garde” graffiti artists in Europe.
Having developed over many years a very personal technique and skills, Mantra is able to realize artworks on any surface and of all scales using a great level of detail and realism. Mantra’s artwork bring concrete walls to life around the world, from Zaragoza, to Paris, passing by Vienna, Lima, Seattle, Brussels, Quito and Bogota.
The artist pays tribute to his childhood exotic heroes (butterflies, owls, spiders, birds…) in a realistic and lively style, like a mirror reflecting on the cries of a nature that we don’t hear anymore.
I love butterflies… There is no doubt that they have significant meanings to us. Butterflies are deep and powerful representations of life. Many cultures associate them with our souls. Around the world, people view the butterfly as representing endurance, change, hope, and life.
