Social Profiling № 8: All in the Eyes

Well, this was embarrassing.  I'd started prepping for today's Social Profiling post, when I realised I hadn't written the last one! So now this is that and I'll write the new one later.  How did I miss one? Well, I painted it way back at the end of February, and as you may recall March was, well, a little full, so I honestly thought I'd already written the post, when in fact I'd not even prepped the images for it.   It's been that sort of year.

So, anyway, I'm getting to it now, just over 4 months later.  Oh, and I didn't post last week because it was a choice of painting the latest Social Profiling picture (not this one, remember?  I just mentioned that, try and keep up), or writing a post, and painting won.  Then I hurt my back, so that painting took longer than planned (in terms of days from start to finish, not actual hours spent).  OK, all up to speed now?  Good, lets look at this picture then.

A Musing 5b: It's Just an Illusion (Part 2)

Let's talk some more about optical illusions.  If you missed the first part of this series (and this may be the last part, unless I think of something else worth saying) you can catch up here.  That's not required reading to understand this part, but it may be of interest.  So, illusions! Fascinating things.  In the previous part I discussed how illusions help us understand art.  This time I'll be looking at how they can also make the artist's life hell by lying about what we're seeing when we are trying to reproduce it.  This issue doesn't effect all artists - some people just have the natural power to overcome at least some of these illusions, and for others you can either learn tricks to get past them, or use "mechanical" means to do the same.  That is not what this post is about though.  I'm not going to go into every optical illusion that causes problems, just a small number of prevalent ones or I'd be here all week.

A Musing 5: It's just an Illusion (Part 1)

Let's talk about optical illusions.

Usually when you think of optical illusions you're thinking of something that's messing with your brain; "Look all the dots are wobbling!" "Look, that staircase is impossible!" "Look, the candlestick is two faces!" and so on.  But really we rely on optical illusions all day, every day.  Without them could we look at a photograph and make sense of it? Understand a representational illustration? See a movie, without the illusion of motion?  I'm going to say that no, we probably couldn't, and that such art forms are as reliant on illusions that can fool our brains into seeing something that isn't there as novelty videos of dragons who's heads follow you around the room.  Illusions are central to our understanding of art - they make art possible, and yet at the same time they make art very difficult.  We'll get to the why of that in a later post, but first let's look at some common illusions and why I believe they make a case for art, in general, being dependent on them.

Before we continue I should point out that this essay is going to be a bit of a ramble, and will be split into two parts (the next coming soon).  I have a copy of Sketch Book Pro open in one window, and I'm writing this in the other. I am hoping it will all tie up neatly with a nice bow, but I'm not writing it for my English lecturer so I'm just going  to go with the flow and hope for the best (If you're lucky I'll proof read it before publishing).  As usual in these posts there's the caveat that I'm not an expert in this stuff, and I'm definitely not qualified in these areas, so you probably don't want to quote me in case I'm an idiot :)

A Musing 4: Stress and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I've been away for a while. Had you noticed? Poor May, no love for May. Poor blog, missed it's first birthday. Why? Well, therein lies a tale, and I'm limited in how much I can tell you. But it does lead to this current blog entry, and I'll post some speed paints and such in with it as examples, but, as the title may lead you to believe, it's all due to stress. Nothing to do with Motorcycles though - but a more meaningful title would get me in trouble at work...

A Musing

A couple of posts ago I pondered why the small thumbnail I had at the top of the post looked human at all, given that it was just a series of sketched lines (I've included it again for good measure).  I stated that it was now possible to tell that the figure was in her birthday suit, and that this might offend people. So the question remains, why does it look human at all?  How can a series of black lines with minimal light and shade represent so definitively a female form?