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.
DROPLETS’ WHIRL
After rotating, expanding illusory movements, let’s try something different: a continuous ascending/descending movement of droplets… Here we go.
Draw a triangle and its mirror image as depicted in fig. 1.a. Add graduated shading to both triangles: one with black to dark gray, the other with gray to white gradation (fig. 1.b).
Erase the contours of the geometric shapes and form the first cell (fig. 1.c), which will allow you to create this amazing illusory two-way motion.
Starting with the basic cell, prepare now a series of triangle ‘garlands’, each being one diamond-unit larger than the previous one, as shown in fig. 2.a. Resize and arrange then each of these garlands in a imaginary rectangle (fig. 2.b) and set them in equidistant rows (fig. 2.c).
You can decide how many rows to create with this technique; in the example below the pattern contains just 11 rows/columns.
Finally copy the pattern, rotate it and assemble it with the initial one to obtain a much larger pattern that combines descending and ascending illusory motion giving an overall impression of a droplets’ whirl.
Below you will find more excerpts of the book.
This book is available from:
– amazon.co.uk
– amazon.com
“Visual perception is created through the interplay between the eye and the brain. Optic art and optical illusions exploit the boundaries of this interplay to produce confusing, amusing, or discordant results. Visual artist Sarcone explains basic types of optical illusions in this cookbook-style guide including: size distortion; ambiguous figures; hidden or suggested figures within -camouflage; impossible figures; and suggested movement. Readers may use the techniques introduced here to attempt optical illusions in any medium they wish. Most of the illusions presented are geometric, abstract, and black and white, though ambitious readers could try incorporating color into their designs. VERDICT Commercial artists and designers can use this guide as a reference book, but it will be delightful for anyone who has ever wondered how an optical illusion works.”
– Library Journal