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Great post, Jim. It definitely "got" me.

Totally off the subject -- I pulled up your son's "Hay Brigade" album of contemporary Irish music as I was painting today. Totally immersive; really tough to paint as I was bouncing to the tunes, humming along. Couldn't keep my brush straight. Good stuff.

Thanks, Lester. I miss having him playing in the studio as I paint. You've given me perfect chance to plug my son Dan Gurney, who is now living in New York, playing accordion (dangurney.net) and developing a concert streaming site (concertwindow.com).

Aha! I was wondering the relation. Accordion eh? That's something you don't see much anymore. Beautiful instrument though. I only know two people that play one. One of them is in her nineties.

Actually I didn't have much trouble with the second line and might have done it faster, but I might have cheated a little. I think I was using my peripheral vision to identify the colors before I focused on the letter patterns. Might be a little trick.

I tried doing it backwards and didn't do nearly as well.

Jim, I read somewhere that the effect was used at some point to detect spies.

For instance, suppose you had someone who you suspected to be russian but who claimed otherwise. Then you would run this test through him, with the words written in russian. If he was slower on the second sequence or made more mistakes then you'd have evidence that he understood written russian.

Jeffkunze: I also cheated, by unfocusing a bit and losing context (also, looking at the last letter of the word and the space after that). It works, though I think I was still a little bit slower on the second row. It makes me think that once the enemy spies hear of the test they can train to beat it :)

Wow. I've been paying more attention to my art in the past few years. The first time I ran into this test, I noticed how long it took to identify the colors in the second row and did make some mistakes.

This time was almost as fast with no mistakes. I think I've been staring at my palette for too long! Thanks for posting it, this sort of thing is fun!

I have a theory. For the first task, we just have to read off the written series of words, and that is something which we've had lots and lots of practice at. For the second task, we have to say the colors of a series of things, but that is something most of us have had little practice at. (You and other artists might be exceptions.)

Here is something similar. I once thought I might train myself to better recognize aromas, and I took a bunch of identically shaped spice bottles, closed my eyes, shuffled them, chose one at random, opened it and sniffed, then tried to say aloud the name of the spice. I found that I just couldn't do it. I would know the aroma perfectly well, but I couldn't say the name.

Maybe putting names, actual pronunciations, to things is something that requires task-specific practice.

Amazing! It is called peripheral drift illusion.

I did an homage to Akiyoshi Kitaoka's “Rotating Snakes" for my masters thesis "Optical illusions in illustration".

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wJrwJ7Rgb-s/T50q2dDQDQI/AAAAAAAABQA/iBuxLI8G7mA/s1600/Zmija+cuvarkuca.jpg

Love following and reading your blog, always so informative!

I have seen Dragan's optical illusion illustrations and they are totally awesome!

thank you for sharing

nice work

Besides the "peripheral drift" I get a definite optical mixing effect. When I stare at the image defocused, the blue and yellow stripes combine to make a dull green.

This of course is what some of the impressionists and post-impressionists were after, notably Seurat with his pointillism. His colors are never mixed, just dots of pure pigment placed close enough to "mix" in the eye of the viewer.

Thanks for sharing.

Interesting! e

I'm wondering how basic contrast/color also plays into it. IE., I looked at the shadow under the man's head first before anything else.

It's interesting to see what most men and women *don't* look at, especially on the women's side. Not even a blip down *there*! It sort of gives the message about how a lot of us guys place our egos into things that we think/hope others care about (well, both genders do that, really).

this post and that mans bikini make me uncomfortable

Interesting as always. I was wondering if you could say a few things about building up depth. Not so much in a city picture, but somewhere, where it is much more mixed up, like in a thick forest or somewhere wide open, like a desert dune.

.....No way I looked for his wedding ring. (Maybe in the study his jewelry was more apparent), but even then I'd look at this guy's admirable abs first and Heid Montag's pretty face (pre-surgeries) 2nd. Fascinating post!

hahahhahahaha
that's great. I loved it. Thanks for sharing.

who knew!


Mimi Torchia Boothby Watercolors

The man appears to be wearing a pink panty and checking himself out. From the very start I feel like I am thrown off from my normal observation patterns by an uncomfortable feeling.

Not being a bisexual, I can't really claim total objectivity (I'm a straight female), but to me, there is not attractiveness-equivalency to the two people from the get-go. As etc-etc pointed out, the guy is checking himself out so 1) self-absorbed and 2) invisible face, which is the first thing *I* look at. Also, pink Speedo? Really? Who picked those pictures? LOL

I really question the scientific validity of their results. And how much they get out of the lab.

Not being a bisexual, I can't really claim total objectivity (I'm a straight female), but to me, there is not attractiveness-equivalency to the two people from the get-go. As etc-etc pointed out, the guy is checking himself out so 1) self-absorbed and 2) invisible face, which is the first thing *I* look at. Also, pink Speedo? Really? Who picked those pictures? LOL

I really question the scientific validity of their results. And how much they get out of the lab.

Terry, you raise some great points. The experimenters should have chosen a more neutral pose and swimsuit color for the guy.

One has to be really careful about inferring what people were thinking from the eyetracking data.
Were they looking at the shape of the swimsuit, the color of the swimsuit, or the bulge under the swimsuit? It would take more lines of data (such as fMRI scans) to jump to such a conclusion.

One thing I found interesting was that no one (man or woman) looked at the guy's right hand. From a painter's point of view, I have to wonder: why bother rendering the hand with a lot of detail if no one looks at it?

Or maybe he's hanging his head in shame because he realized his man card has just been revoked!

I find curious why no one looked at the man's right hand.

@james:
since the experimenters are based in the UK, one would suspect the photos are from that region. Not to defend this bloke's color choice, but I suspect that pink/fuchsia Speedos are more the norm on British or European beaches than in these parts - so, would he even get a second look over there? yes, over here, he'll be teased.
is he really checking himself out?
he's actually gazing at the beach, perhaps looking at the sand or seashells.

I want to see them test more combinations of images before accepting any of their conclusions.

I'm a guy, so the first real conscious conclusion once I'd summarily processed the images is, beach-goers paired together, people in swimwear ah I see what they're trying to do, I see what they're trying to get me to prove.

Going back one more step, the second thing I saw a chick-in-a-bikini that looks like 99% of girls we're shown in a bikini, nothing interestingly new, and for me personally shameful to dwell upon her for what I've become accustomed to such images purpose which is to show off her beauty and sexuality (typically to sell something to me) at the cost of my desires for romantic partner (that's something that someone can latch onto but I won't be responding to such a debate on this thread). I'm just trying to show what kind of logic there is in the mere milliseconds of processing an image.

Whereas really what I saw first was the biggest block of solid high saturation colour, the guy's pants. Also drawn to it because it appears he's looking at them, so you're wondering what he's looking at? It has a far more interesting story to try to figure out and is an image I'd dwell on longer (seconds still) trying to understand that.

I think you're kind of right though James that there's not much point rendering great detail where people aren't going to look. We just need to know there's an hand there, as are any of it's details (which to me are visual messages) helping tell the story of the image better?

I think it's also what's the image used for. If it's selling me swimwear then who cares about those details whereas it does if it's hanging in a gallery or your Dinotopia books where as a child I looked at everything, fawning over pages for what felt like an age.

It could be that no one looks at the guy's right hand because of the composition of the picture, or the presence of the shiny, sparkly watch. I wonder what the result might be if the mirror image of the picture is shown, with the watch photoshopped out.

im always worried reading postulates like the bit about self-reporting being dishonest.

i am right with you there, james:
what the study measured was the time and place the physical eyeball's lens was pointed at. seeing, though, is a question of consciousness, not of eyeball-pointing.
we could, for example, have our eyeballs pointed at just the right spot in a piece of greenery all day, without seeing the camouflaged person standing in there. if we just "got it" after having our eyes pointed at that very spot for x minutes, we still wont have seen the person for all the minutes of eye focus rest, but just the last few seconds.

seeing is a question of the objects in the consciousness only. (therefore, knowledge influenced seeing: i see a damn annoying fly, the biologist sees a drosophila whateveris. we literally dont see the same thing. gladly, these things are usually easily manageable.)

to give the tracking the authority to say "haha, you dishonest fellow/lass! YOU say you didnt look at his crotch, but we KNOW you really did." is not only bad science, but also the stuff good headlines, and a degree in higher bullshit is made of.

unfortunately, fmri pictures wont bring much illumination to the matter either. same problem of misattributed authority.

those findings are always _useful_. but only that. they are no authority over reality, and cant be, for the very way their method that makes them so useful works. science theory 101, really.

(the best example for us painter dudes is color theories: no arguing that color theories based on newton are the ones we use to facilitate our paint mixing, because they provide us with a continually refinable framework for ordering the world. and we will gladly discard every old concept once a new, better-working one comes around.

to tell _what_color_is_, though, newton just falls flat on his face. no way around goethe and the theories he influenced, there. color happens in consciousness. nowhere else. thats darn useless for mixing paint, but thats what color is: a sensation. sensations of things are always consciousness of said thing.)

or, favorite husserl quote: theories have to conform to reality, not reality to theories.

sorry for the wall fo text. :(

"...I suspect that pink/fuchsia Speedos are more the norm on British or European beaches than in these parts..." They are not the norm in Europe. I agree with what Terry and various anonymous posters said.

My eye-tracking: Noticed some half-naked man wearing something pink. In horror, I immediately focused all attention on the safety and comfort of the woman's breasts. :P

Informative and very amusing, haha!

My husband pointed out something I hadn't noticed: That the women checked out the areas of the woman where she had bones protruding. The hip bone, the ribs, etc. If men are sizing up the competition's crotch, then are women doing the same about a woman's perceived faults?

For our test, I looked at the man's chest and arms, then the boobs and tummy of the woman. He said he immediately looked at the man's crotch and woman's chest too. We match up pretty well in our "remembered" eye tracking. I didn't even think about looking at his crotch, even though it was pink and HE was looking at it!

They also appear during a vitreous detachment. It's something I've experienced, and the event itself is quite remarkable - colorful lights at the edge of vision. (Not to be confused with a painless optical migraine, which can offer a stunning lightshow not unlike the aurora borealis.)

Er, not "optical" migraine but "ocular" migraine.

In 3rd grade I pointed this phenomenon out to a fellow 3rd grader. We were sent inside from recess because we were standing in the outfield staring at these "worms" instead of playing kickball. :)

The worst is on sunny days when there's lots of snow on the ground.

Love this... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I7_al4mrfg

I have a few too many floaters which can be very annoying. I find myself going all shifty eyed sometimes when trying to get them to drift out of my field of vision. The worst is when I am reading. Feel luck if you just have a few.

Michael, I love ocular migraines. I call them "mystic floating donuts."

David, my son had your style for playing soccer. He kicked at the dirt to watch the cool dust effects, as the ball rolled by.

Jason, loved that Family Guy clip.

Greg, I know the feeling.

Don't underestimate how bad floaters can be. After my vitreous detachment ( and retinal tear) I had such nasty big black floaters that I could see them with my eyes shut. They can block your vision. Fortunately they improved with time...

OMG! Thank you so much James! Since I was a child I always got mad seeing them, as I wasn't sure about what I was looking at, plus no one else seemed to see them...
But now I know.

Great blog. Great books. Great artworks.

Thanks.

Near-sighted folks will find them to be more pronounced... according to my opthomolgists.

I brought this up once when talking to a friend of mine a while back. I wondered if others had noticed what I did...He said "Yeah, but I guess it's just something people don't talk about."

No one ever did so it's amusing that you are actually bloggin about this haha.

Good stuff.

YES!
I agree with Rachele and Alex.
I saw/see them and have tried describing it to others a couple times over the years.

People don't talk about it.
I was always afraid people would think I'm crazy or had abnormal vision so I kept my mouth shut.
THANK YOU!

While you might not like to see these floaters, there is something you can choose to look at within your eyes and which is quite fascinating!

We are actually able to see the network of little veins we have in front of our retina.

To do so, look at a light colored wall through a little hole formed by your index finger you have bent. If you keep making little circular movements with your hand, you should see luminous dots appearing, gradually forming a network of tiny wires. These are your veins! An empty circle should remain in the middle, which if I remember well corresponds to your blind spot.

I keep telling people to try it and how amazing it is but for some reason they often want to try that in private...

I used to think I was seeing bacteria or something.

Nice to know our eyes are like little snow globes.

I've had several eye surgeries, so I have a few more than most. They're great to watch, though. :D

Something that has happened to me a couple of times is what looks like a small lightning strike that gets bigger and peripheral vision is gone. I see the floaters every so often, too.

It seems to me that people are really just attracted to the areas of detail. I would assume with a cityscape the eyes will linger in the area of the buildings that have the most detail and spend little time in the sky and clouds. To me I would think as a viewer you're trying to absorb all the information in a picture to understand it. I'm sure if the picture were abstract scribbles with more concentrated areas a person would spend time in the concentrated areas even if they don't depict a physical identifiable object. At least that is what I'm taking away from these experiments.

That's interesting - my own eyes were far more attracted to the planes of shadow on the cheek and neck, though the person observed here barely glanced at those areas.

Reminds me of a 2007 study comparing eye movements of laypersons and artists while looking at paintings. Non-artists tended to focus on areas of more detail (like people and faces), while artists were more likely to take in the entire picture, including negative space and the less-detailed areas.

http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/03/artists_look_different.php

I wonder if the person studied in this picture was trained as an artist? It doesn't seem to say in the source link.

i was wondering if they were an artist aswell, if that would account for the contour following

I'd be interested to learn about the correlation between eye movement and the subjective apprehension of the gathered information too.
I mean, these are the points the physical eye dwells on, the cognitive 'eye' may well take that data, process it and present it to the concious mind in a slightly different manner.
Disparities between the two might contribute insights to our understanding of the whole process.

Runninghead, I think you've brought up a very important point, one that interests me, too. Put another way, these eye tracking experiments track foveal movement, but don't really measure how we perceive of larger shapes or contours through peripheral vision, or whether we're looking at the color or texture or thinking about something else entirely. I would suspect that one approach would be to correlate scanpath data with real-time brain scans. I've asked scientists in this arena how much we can deduce of cognitive experience from scanpath data, and they admit it's still somewhat limited.

@runninghead - Exactly what I was thinking; well said.

Hear, hear to runninghead.
One way that might help here is to let
artists view the image.
The different pathway suggest different apprehension and cognitive processing.

Other factor is not only how often we focus on a detail but also how long we stay on it, and how slow we move to a next part, as is illustrated in
these more complex infographics. Staying longer on an item or moving slower to the next, might reveal more heavy cognitive processing.

This is pretty fascinating, but what will happen to our cabbies and truck drivers when robotic cars do their jobs for them? Those people need jobs just like any of us do. Artificially intelligent machines could put a lot of people out of work in many industries. It may be appropriate to remember a line from Jurassic Park at this time: "...scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, that they didn't stop to think if they should."

Then people just have to find something else to do. ;) Perhaps people in general will have more spare time. It's not like there are loads of hunter/gatherers sitting around with nothing to do these days ever since farming was invented...

Yeah this is a real interesting video. I saw it a few days ago, but in reading about the experiment I wondered if it wasn't slightly misleading.

The way I understood it, the subjects watched videos and the corresponding cerebral activity was matched up to that footage. Then when they were played completely new footage the brain activities were measured. The program then goes back to the images it previously associated most closely with that signature of brain activity and creates an average of them. So it is not in any way 'reconstructing' the image you are currently viewing as claimed by some of the headlines. It is simply recalling a past reference library of associations made when studying you and your stimulus.

The important difference being that it would not work without the specific calibration for each person to build a dictionary (as everyones brain works differently). If you extrapolate that it means it would be very hard for the program to reconstruct images from a blind person as claimed in the newscenter article. And it creates doubts in my mind about reconstructing dreams and imagination as that would require the assumption that these very different activities activate the brain in precisely the same way as seeing.

Still a cool video and cool area of study though, and the technology will improve. Just sensational reporting I'm sure.

Here is a Ted Talk from July 2010, that seems to me to be demonstrating the same principle. The ability to recognise individual thoughts by their measurable signature in the brain and build a library of them.

http://www.ted.com/talks/tan_le_a_headset_that_reads_your_brainwaves.html

The guy in the wheelchair at the end really demonstrates the point. His action of "smile" causes the wheelchair to go straight. Amazing technology, but the actual meaning of the brain signature is irrelevant. "Smile" essentially has nothing to do with "wheelchair proceed directly forward". It is simply a brain signature that can be identified, and therefore tagged to something else.

Similarly in the "Constructing images of Brain Activity" experiment, it seems to me that they are building these associations beforehand. They are indexing brainwaves whose correlating stimulus they already know, not actually deciphering the brain signatures themselves.

Still amazing tho. Go science!

Fascinating.

I wonder when it will be possible to create artwork by just thinking of the image in your brain.

That's an interesting system. It doesn't know exactly what the subject is seeing. It doesn't know what are the visual stimuli reaching the brain. What it does know is that some things trigger specific responses from the brain.

So, instead of trying to decipher what the person is actually seeing in visual terms, they guess it by comparing the reactions. It doesn't know whose face it is the subject is seeing, but it does know it is a face because that's the pattern that matches its database the best. Then it's just a matter of compositing the most relevant "hits", Google-style.

Maybe it could be useful for recovering at least some information from hazy memories? Probably not reliably, since memories at actually rather treacherous the longer they last. Well, at least it's yet another interesting scientific curio that could serve as a springboard for something more interesting in the future.

Science marches on!

And here I thought the only people whose veins appeared blue - were Bluebloods!

Ive read that Bouguereau, painted veins with straight Viridian, and then scumbled translucent layers of the local skin tone over the Viridian to recreate the effect of blue veins. Ive tried it myself, and the effect is very believable. Ive tried other colors with bad results. The Viridian seems to work best.

Has anyone else tried this?

Don't feel bad about the mis-information I was told this by a biology teacher of all people :)

I'll correct my copy immediately =:o)

My veins appear more green, is that related to my skin tone?

This is funny to me. I've seen a lot of venous blood, and it's a dark, dull red immediately on leaving the body. Yet for some reason I still believed the deoxygenated blood thing. In fact, if I remember correctly, we were even told this in nursing school. So despite the clear evidence of my eyes, I believed what I had been taught. I find that so typical of so many things. It's easy to deceive ourselves, isn't it?

I suppose, relatively speaking, venous blood is "bluer" than arterial blood (which is astonishingly and sometimes alarmingly red -- alarming when you weren't expecting to see it!).

That said, even venous blood in a living person's veins contains a LOT of oxygen. I have noticed, though, that if the blood is from a corpse (on removing an IV, for example), it can be so dark as to appear almost (though not quite) blue.

Thanks, Cindy, We're benefiting from your experience with corpses, which is way beyond mine. And what you say is true. I remember when I was a kid someone told me that all clouds came from factory smokestacks, and it took me many years to say, "Hey, wait a minute!"

Liz, Bouguereau must have gotten the color right, at least for your veins.

Lovely pictures amazing..
pnr status

Wow, this is pretty amazing. The rate at which all of these 3d-like technologies are advancing makes me think we will see the holodeck in our lifetime :)

That's cool. like combining two hyperfocal interferomeric stereo images.

All that technology and they couldn't get a decent tripod for the interview... :P No, but it really looks amazing. I think someone will think of more interesting applications than just refocusing a bad photo though.

I love you. eye LUB U! i LOVE you man! Oh, wait, nooooo ... it's the art that I love.

Okay, you knew posting this that some smart alek would come up with the lame blog comment?! Right?! Yeah, you did.

So, as I'm the first to post a comment then the honour goes to me. (I added the 'u' to honor, to go along with that Brit accent from the footage ... raised in K.L., Malaysia at a Brit school ... so I can legitimately use it?!)

I love your blog, I love that you share so many ideas ... did you post about the Hudson River contest? If so, then you are responsible for getting me to get my man to enter said competition. Will he win? Hmmmmmm, undetermined as of yet.

I would love it if you would now be feeling the LOVE and rush to see what my art blog looks like because you have nothing better to do with your time than to humor me. Okay, I know that it's a pipe dream.

LOVE MEETS ITSELF AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN. ~gangaji, a really cool spiritual personage ...

Jan Olander
www.ivegottadraw.blogspot.com
www.playfulside.blogspot.com*
www.shelflife.blogspot.com

*in hiatus, because my ego was suffering. true, sad, but true.

The beautiful is that which is desirable in itself. (Aristotle)
__________________

« Aristotle famously rejected Plato’s theory of forms, which states that properties such as beauty are abstract universal entities that exist independent of the objects themselves. Instead, he argued that forms are intrinsic to the objects and cannot exist apart from them, and so must be studied in relation to them. However, in discussing art, Aristotle seems to reject this, and instead argues for idealized universal form which artists attempt to capture in their work.
[...]
Painting must not be studied merely to prevent people from being cheated in pictures, but to make them attend to physical beauty. »

by:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/aristotl/


P.S. very good blog, because of beauty :)

I certainly agree with the video although not from a neurological point of view, I'm in no position to verify that. However, I find art the "happiest" activity - making art even more than looking at it. Not as if my stuff was that great but I think it comes with the added bonus of creating something, which always feels great.
As for the National Art Pass, thanks for the reminder, I'll get one tomorrow: for £35 you get into some galleries that are otherwise paying (most of our museums are free anyway) but what's even better, you get to see special exhibitions in places such as Tate half price. Definitely worth it!

As I understand (Harvey) Dunn, it is necessary to have a feeling aside from just the drawing, the color, etc. In you picture. You might call it the picture’s life force. This Life Force does not have to be definitely of the character of the subject of the picture. In fact, the force has no definite character. Dunn has described this force of feeling toward your picture as love. If you have this feeling it surges through your brush on your canvas without effect on your part.

~George Wright class notes 1924-25

What does this mean for artist who are creating art on a day to day biases? Is this why i stay at work so long?

Totally fascinating! Thanks for posting. Hope soon common artist can use this to track our own wandering eyes to help us find a focalpoint/detail to paint?

This is an interesting post. This idea of focus verses unfocused areas is something I struggle with in my own work and I like how you presented it is a logical process. Like you say, if this selectivity can be "taught" to a machine it seems someone like me or anyone might be able to train himself to use this to create better paintings that have a more artistic look.
Again your posts are so relevant and interesting and I thank you once again for your constant intellectual and artistic searches and explorations.

I never noticed before, but this post made me realize that I find most all of John Singer Sargent's compositions to be fairly humdrum and bland once you get beyond his otherwise masterful and expressive painting technique.

This is a subject I'm slowly coming to terms with in my work. I like to add detail to areas of my art that I end up just drowning in shadow or maybe digitally blurring out later on. If I had a better plan going in I could save myself some time.

Thanks for the post. It is very helpful.

I've also heard that term referred to as "Selective Realism".

Even in an image where there's a lot of stuff going on, it's important to concentrate on one or two focuses. As a comic artist, I know that. Humans are creature of order and we look for order in what we see. If we can't find order, then our brain will try to piece together a sense of order. Having pure chaos in an image can lose a reader or viewer - hence why it's necessary to focus on a particular element in an image.

By explaining great line, we have not explained line.- Heinrich Wolfflin

Yet another very interesting "Art Meets Science" article.

What an interesting experiment. The selective focus seems to work best on the city landscape. Maybe that's because there is more depth in the photograph?

I love Al Parker - Do you know of a book that has a collection of his work?

This would be awesome research for game developers to look at - what needs to be rendered and what resources can we cut back on? could create an interesting game experience..

Perhaps future cameras will have this device in them, judging what is relevant and what isn't. They already have face recognition and smile recognition.

Rachael, there's supposed to be a big book on Parker in the works. For now there's just an exhibition catalog from the Norman Rockwell Museum, which is slim but nice.

Chris, I like the city landscape treatment, too, because the editing is hardly noticable.

Olaf and Seren, yes, it would be fun to see this work for cameras, games, and CG animated films. Now, depth of field does a similar thing, but this edits an image with content factors rather than depth cues.

For me, the whole advantage of the photographic medium is its ability to capture "infinite detail". The trick in photography is to choose a subject, compose a subject, or arrange elements of a subject that stimulate the eye everywhere in the picture. This does not mean that every corner of the frame be of equal interest, just that the detail and texture play a role everywhere. To soften details in a photograph just lessons the power and potential of the medium, and when done badly, reduces it to a cheap imitation of painting. Selective focus in photography has its purposes, but the soft regions of a photograph will not hold the interest of the viewer in the same way that that the softened regions of Sargent's painting do. There is still delicious texture in those broad brush stokes, and we admire the economy in which Sargent achieves the effect, serving as a kind of sub-plot to the brilliance of his handling of the primary areas of interest. No such pleasures are found in the out of focus regions of a photograph. So why not play to photography's strengths rather than amplify its weakness?

Incidentally, I adore that painting. It's in the National Gallery in DC.

Walter,
All good points. Your beautiful work with the "Can You See What I See" and "I Spy" books make the case just as eloquently. It's a joy to explore a richly detailed photographic universe. (And I love to paint such images.) And you're right that a Sargent is still textured even in his blurriness.

But I think there are and will be hybrid forms between photography and painting that will be very satisfying new art forms. And I think we've only scratched the surface of the potential to input eye-tracking and other visual perception data into semi-autonomous rendering algorithms, especially for interactive visual environments like video games or architect's renderings. Who knows where it will lead us?

The recent sophisticated "visualizer" programs for generating moving images to music would have blown the mind of Walt Disney.

James,

I agree there will be exciting new hybrid forms of photography, digital art, and painting (I'm exploring that myself), but to scrub the micro details from photography really pushes it into the realm of graphic arts and illustration. When done successfully it will not be photography but photo-based work. It may not even matter what the origins are.

When photography tries to meet the goals of painting it often fails big time. Consider the comparison of the Vermeer's Girl with Pearl Earring with that of Scarlett Johansen in the same pose at the link below. You could pose it better, get a better expression, and scrub the photo till you get a better match, but it's a pointless exercise.

Now consider that terrific 1911 picture of the Emir you posted on your here earlier. It does needs no such corrections. It would be a crime to touch it. It's a perfect example of what photography does best. It needs no idealization. Every crack in the concrete contributes.

http://xiziluo.wordpress.com/2010/10/23/lingering-eyes/

Walter, what a fabulous example and a great link. Food for thought!

It also brings to mind the efforts of the "Pageants of the Masters" in Laguna, where people form group tableaus to simulate paintings. I agree that whatever hybrid art forms emerge, they will do best in becoming more than curiosities by not trying to ape another art form.

Link for the Pageant: http://www.arizonafoothillsmagazine.com/valleygirlblog/travel/laguna-beachs-pageant-of-the-masters

semi off topic, but last night while walking around my condo complex i noticed the flickering lights in all the windows of people watching tv.

i never really noticed it before but 80 to 90 percent of the light was blue.

when i got home that night i tried to see if the majority of color coming on the tv screen was blue, it didnt appear to be but from what i viewed outside from all the window lights 80 to 90 percent of the color coming across a tv screen is blue? not sure what to make of this?

Wow! Very neat observation.

In other words nothing what we see is really real. It's scary how much things become subjective, eyes are very complex mechanism indeed yet they still have a nonchalant way of cheating us.

that's amazing, where do you find this stuff!?

Jake, I was just as surprised by this stuff. I learned about it from reading the book called "The Artist's Eyes," linked at the end of the post. I couldn't find much about it online.

Ivanka and Kev, yes, apparently there's a lot more subjectivity involved here that meets the eye.

I'm delurking after a couple months of reading your blog (and quite a few years of generally being a fan) just to say a big ol' thank you!

Today a patron came into the library where I work and asked for art books. She was going to teach herself to paint and wanted tips and inspiration - so after helping her choose a stack of books I showed her this blog, and she was thrilled!
There's so much fascinating material here, and so much art stuff I probably wouldn't have had found otherwise.

-Ingunn

James, I am completely agree with Flodo. Your blog keeps the highest level, informs, teachs, surprises, presents ideas. Amazing. Thank you so much!
Eyes! How could guess??

Fascinating! Before I read your post, I was speculating that maybe each eye was pointing in a slightly different direction and that was why the overall direction felt ambiguous (like when you're talking to someone with a glass eye or who's blind in one eye).

This is an interesting entry. It's been really buggin me why quite a few drawings and paintings I see seem to have the eyes ever so slightly cross eyed but where if you do a double take they look fine. I've seen it in drawings and oil paintings. I thought that they may have just been mistakes made by the artist, but I see it every so often to think it really might have been done on purpose. One example is Vanderpoel's drawings. I couldn't find the actual drawing online so I scanned it in myself from my copy.

http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/5181/vanderpoel.jpg

Another one is Sargent: http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/8784/sargentstudy.jpg

utterly fascinating, what a great blog! thanks!

Fascinating! Wow...

Thanks for the kind words everyone, and welcome. No such thing as a lurker here--It's totally fine to read without leaving comments.

Here's another weird thing about that second illustration. If you look at the two "faces" with the eyes appearing to look in different directions, and then cover up the bottom part of the face, the two sets of eyes keep on looking in different directions, every with those accessory clues removed. Very strange!

I found this interesting because my own eyes often cross (without my knowledge) and people sometimes ask me what I'm looking at.

I think it has more to do with geometry than psychology. The surface of the eyeball is curved, not flat. The iris is also curved—but inward—which compounds the subtleties. A slight change in the angle between the viewer and the subject's eye will cause the relationship between pupil, iris, and sclera to change. Thus, we should be able to tell which way the eyes are pointed even without context.

For me, when I physically cover the features in the second illustration, I can only see the face as pointing left. I think this may be because of the shading beneath the eyebrows. But the context of the nose pointing the opposite direction must override the subtleties of the eyeball and brows.

This has an important implication for photoshop painting and, to some extend classic painting.
In photoshop you can easily zoom in on the eyes to work on the details. However, for the direction of the eyes, you really need to zoom out again.
As I said, this is probably also true for fairly large size portrait paintings. Often step back when working on the eyes!

Aha! There's another reason!
For the first example, I noticed that there's something confusing with these eyes anyway. Regardless the face. Couldn't quite nail it down.

But I just played around a little in Photoshop with it and I discovered that the left eye looks to the right, while the right eye looks straight at you.

My guess is that the eye that is closest to you is the one that you use to determine direction of gaze.

So, in the left example, the eye closest to you is the left eye - which is looking to the right.
In the right example the right eye is closest, and this one is looking straight at me.

Problem solved? Or not quite?

Just checked: the same goes for the 2nd example, although not quite as strong.
If you isolate the eyes, make sure to mask or erase the shadow of the nose as well, as it's already enough a hint to be able to guess the direction of the face.

I was just thinking about this recently about the cross-eyed thing in cartoons and why it works so well. I guess it's like the character is focusing on us as if we're close to them. Our eyes get crossed when we focus on things up close.

Even if you put out another book with the knowledge you so generously share with us I still find that a daily dose of James Gurney is just what the doctor ordered!

Thank you amigo!

I don't know, I think I tend to see shapes/blocks of colour rather than lines. Though the GalaxyZoo.org project took advantage of the human ability to recognize stars versus other stellar objects and have processed an amazing amount of data in a fraction of the time it would have taken using traditional methods.

I have a question for you! I'm getting a tattoo of one of Tony DiTerlizzi's mermaids from the last book of Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles and I want to use some of the creatures from The World Beneath. It's going to be a collage of sea creatures from a bunch of books I love. I wanted to make sure you were ok with it first! I will of course send you a picture of the finished piece. :)

Hey James this is totally unrelated to this post but I just need to say i just got my copy of Color and Light and it is one of the best books ever. Thank You!

I have really struggled with the difference between line and shape. Much more than one would think for a person who has painted and drawn for a lifetime. So the idea that the brain processes shapes and lines differently is very real to me. But the difference largely remains a mystery.

As always, very thought provoking ideas.

This sounds suspiciously like a re-incarnation of disegno vs. colore.

The 'lines do not exist in nature' statement may have use as a guide in art, but it implies a restrictive definition of the term 'line'. I see lines in nature all the time.

Thanks for your great blog, and books, James.

Reducing things to purely "line" is a much greater degree of abstraction than creating shapes as the painter usually does. In my mind, this makes a "line drawing" the most difficult artistic task to do well. While I can think of hundreds of great paintings, the number of great line drawings in art seems far less. Abstracting something to the minimal amount of information is a great skill!

Your final image of the girl and the computer generated line image perfectly illustrate how handling line is such a great skill. If you import the line image into photoshop and invert, you get a decent linear interpretation of the photograph. However it's rather confusing because no decisions have been regarding what to emphasise with the linework, what to leave out, or where the focus of our attention should be.
Any artist even using a rapidiograph pen would have unwittingly made those decisions and created an image that projects some of their personality and style.
Line seems to be a universally understood form of abstract art. It's been used since the earliest cave drawings and its use with flourish and skill still seem to be able to move something in us.

Thanks for the post

Your final image of the girl and the computer generated line image perfectly illustrate how handling line is such a great skill. If you import the line image into photoshop and invert, you get a decent linear interpretation of the photograph. However it's rather confusing because no decisions have been regarding what to emphasise with the linework, what to leave out, or where the focus of our attention should be.
Any artist even using a rapidiograph pen would have unwittingly made those decisions and created an image that projects some of their personality and style.
Line seems to be a universally understood form of abstract art. It's been used since the earliest cave drawings and its use with flourish and skill still seem to be able to move something in us.

Thanks for the post

Twilight Cat, A tattoo? Awesome, I'd be honored. Yes, please send a photo when you're done.

David, thanks for the kind words, and I'm glad you enjoy the book.

Etc, It probably is a rehash of stuff we've all thought about before, but that's what most of art learning is from my experience--just relearning the same principles.

Chris, I think the ultimate point of all this is that lines are very real to the brain, and that's what matters most when we do art.

Brad, I agree. By the way, Brad is a painter and comic artist who does a great blog (with lots of video) called "Thick Paint."

Don, I agree. Abstracting is both the simplest and the most difficult task.

Roger, I had the same reaction to that computer-generated line analysis. It couldn't see the forest for the trees. It will be interesting to see how this field of machine vision develops.

> the drawing by Picasso at left >shows that we can distinguish shapes >easily with a few lines, which he >says “taps into our visual system's >predilection for line.”

Jim, I think you meant to say that the Picasso drawing taps into our visual system's predilection for butts :)

Oh, that Pablo!!... Always trying to take credit and make trouble. The 'visual system for butts' has been well documented by anthropologists for years, its called the 'T & A' center (especially sensitive in teenagers and old-farts).-RQ

Paraphrasing another commenter in a recent post:

The question shouldn't be whether lines are real or not, but why students tend (no matter how much you push them in other directions) to use said lines to draw butts! :)

Thank you for this edification – one of the lines drawn in art departments is from folks belittling others works by pointing out “yeah but lines don’t exist in nature.”
Then I usually draw one, point to it and say “there’s one.”

Lines simply don't exist. I think they are a result of our inclination as humans to define objects as we know them as individual objects. Ask a kid to draw some grass and I guarantee you he will draw a few individual blades of it somewhere. I don't understand the statement about colour though? Objects are surely reflecting different wavelengths of light!?!

This is a wonderful explanation of the reason painters of realism have found it more compelling to mimic nature and exclude lines from their work as much as possible, since the act of extracting lines from visual information is so natural (and therefore satisfying) to the brain. Even brilliant line-work depends on weight and rhythm to signify form, involving the brain in supplying information vital to understanding. The involvement of the observer should never be taken for granted when it comes to valuing art.

You want us to argue the opposite, right? Lines are there, the problem is our sense of (acquired knowledge by) touch is stronger than our visual perception, and so we tend to overdo the lines...

One of my favorite teachers once challenged me to draw without using line. At first I thought it was some Yoda-ish trick, but then I realized he meant color and tone.

You can't draw without using line. A professor who tells you to do so is just playing mind games.

Drawing, in its simplest terms, is simply mark making. Even if you erase the lines or hide them with areas of contrasting tone, you always start with line. I think it is an astute observation that our minds are designed to delineate shapes and their boundaries in space. Why anyone would force you to work without line I can't imagine.

Some spilt milk - how to render it?
With just lines or color only?
Or both?

Hen or egg: Which came first?

Whether or not lines really exist in nature is irrelevant. Lines DO exist in art because artists use them. I think the real problem begins when inexperienced artists OVER use them at the expense of other methods that might better describe the subject.I find this to be a significant problem with students as they do not fully understand things like value, contrast, edges and color. The fall back technique is line and therefore is what they use. Lines are merely one tool of expression and should be used judiciously if not sparingly in our effort to capture our subject matter.

I cant agree more with you Greg.
I think there might be a general confusion between edges and lines.
Edges are found at the limit of any physical object, where another object or element start to be visible. The line is a human invention to define boundaries/limits with happen to coincide with edges. I disagree with the color being a human invention. There is various wavelenght and we are sensitive to them. It's helping us defining more shapes and volumes... to more edges.

I have always felt that our brains learn to emphasize boundaries between objects as more important, as well as focusing more on areas of strong contrast. Lines seem to be a graphic representation of our sense of touch and act as a type of symbolic boundary/contrast/tactile sense.

Even "realism" is an illusion. As 2D artists, we are only creating representations of our perceptions that someone else's brain must then
reinterpret to understand.

I remember my father-in-law visited a tribe of people who had little contact with the modern world. He handed a photograph of someone's face to one of the village elders and the man took it from him and continued to hold it upside-down as it had been handed to him and stared at it for a while uncomprehending. Through a translator he discovered that the elder just saw shapes, not a recognizable human face. I wonder if the ability to interpret 2D as 3D, forms in early childhood.

The perception of what is "realistic" may vary much more widely than we even know.

"Perhaps not. But by the same logic there are no colors in nature, either."

Love this remark! :)

Reminds me of your attempt to visualize the way a dino sees the world. Already in your first book you showed a keen interest in perception science.

To those who don't understand the statement that colours only exist in our heads:
we don't see the full range of light wavelenghts that an object reflects. We don't see UV or infrared, nor do we see radiowaves or microwaves, which are all also a form of "light".
Actually, to be more precise: light is just a very tiny subset of electromagnetic radiation.
What we call "light" is thus nothing more than a small fraction of wavelenghts we can perceive.
Thus "light" doesn't really exist in nature. Light is not what an object radiates. It's what are eyes are able to capture.

"Perceiving boundaries is a fundamental aspect of our life as visual creatures."
It's exactly for this reason that line drawing is more interesting to me. "Value/tone drawing" is the way our retina (or a camera) works, while "line drawing" is closer to our brain and the way it works. Lines are a wonderful creation of our brain, and they more easily "interweave" with our thoughts/recollections/dreams. In a sense, we are more human (or at least "living beings"), less machine-like, when we draw with lines.

This may just reflect my own preference, of course...

drawing in line is what you see when you look at your drawing paper
or when the image is transfered from obsrvation to making marks...
its an unconscious event from the eye to the brain to to the tip of the pencil...fretting over lines
existence or not is folly and apt
to cause the eradication of ones
confidence in the creative
process .......

Audran and Michael, let me elaborate on what I meant by "color is a phenomenon that manifests itself in our minds."

You’re right, there’s plenty of light of various wavelengths bouncing around out there in the world around us, but color is not resident in objects; it’s a figment of our visual perception.

As Erik pointed out, some wavelengths we don’t see at all (such as infra red and ultra violet). How we perceive the others as specific colors depends on a lot mechanisms going on in our brains, such as simultaneous contrast, color constancy, successive contrast.

We are not objective photodetectors. For example, we can’t tell the difference between a pure yellow light and a mixture of red and a green light (which appears to us the same yellow).

This has always been interesting stuff to me. As teachers we often need to simplify. Although there are no colors in reality they are manifested in our brains by our particular way of seeing. So we perceive or "see" those colors. We do not, however, perceive edges in our minds as lines. Line is a graphic construct. So when your teacher says there are no lines in nature believe it, unless you want a whole lecture about light and perception and translation of waves in the brain.

I love line because it is a human construct and yet can have a personality and a beauty all its own.

Lines were the cornerstone of Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres' artwork - he believed line was very important.

Lines are a key part of learning to draw according to Dr. Betty Edwards and her book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. She refers to lines though as "edges" and it's the first basic skill of drawing known as the perception of edges.

As luck would have it, there's a Howard Pyle anecdote on this topic, via illustrator Walter Jack Duncan (see "Speaking of Pen Drawing" in Scribner's Magazine, November 1920):

"I once had the honor of meeting Mr. Howard Pyle, the best of men and illustrators, at a time when he enjoyed, for a brief season, the directorship of the art department at McClure's. One day, when I went to see him with some pen drawings, he confided to me - with a kindness which I could not mistake - that there were no lines in nature, but only mass. Considering that Mr. Pyle's most distinguished work, perhaps, was executed in line, inevitably put me in mind of Elia's paradoxical cousin James who, often declaring there was no such faculty at all in man as reason, 'enforced his negation,' as Lamb says, ‘with all the might of reasoning he was master of.'"

>“yeah but lines don’t exist in >nature.”
>Then I usually draw one, point to it >and say “there’s one.”

I usually enjoy this variation:

"yeah, but lines don't exist in nature - so why are you drawing lines?"

"Fine."-I say-"I won't use lines, then."- (while I keep on drawing lines)

"But...you are still using lines!"

"That can't be! As you said, lines don't exist in nature, hence this thin thing that I have drawn cannot possibly be a line"

>Objects are surely reflecting >different wavelengths of light!?!

They are indeed, but what you see is not the spectral decomposition (so much of this frequency, so much of that, all along the visual specttrum), but an arbitrary and human brain-specific interpretation of that spectral decomposition. Why is color 3-dimensional (whether you choose RGB, hue-sat-val, whatever?). It is not. It is just that our eyes and brain reduce the spectral curve (which is in good approximation a real-valued function over a line segment, hence a member of the infinite-dimensional space of all such functions) to a point in a mere 3-dimensional space.

Hence, if you are going to call that sensation (a complex construct of your brain from the spectral input that hits your eye) an objective thing, then a line is in the exact same way an objective thing.

You could argue it was different if a line was just a sophisticated arbitrary creation of the wider brain - of the imagination, so to speak - but research implies that it is not: lines are patterns automatically highlighted by your visual brain, in the same kind of automatic image tratement that allows you to see colours. In fact, the translation of colours that the brain performs seems to me much much more of a massaging of the raw input data than the highlighting of "lines".

Of course, that actual system of representing the "lines in your brain" by thin marks on paper *is* indeed a sophisticated construct of the wider brain, and a conventional device - but so is the process of translating the 3-d colour in your brain to a specific paint patch on your canvas (full of conventions and abstractions to allow for modifications of gamut, incident light effects, etc, etc)

My eye is instantly drawn to the light colored stone (probably the result of some repair) in the wall and tower things and to the people walking around. I didn't even notice the signs until you pointed them out!

The devil's in the details. I'll leave it at that as a first impression. I was trained from the age of four/five to see edges and shapes that just happened to be characters. I recognize characters right side up, upside down, backwards and forwards and how they relate to the space around them, be it light or dark.

Perhaps the early training as a sign painter skewed my brain to the details and taught it to ignore the large masses of 'impression'. I don't 'like' Monet for that very reason.

To me impressionism was always about focusing the painting on capturing the light and color usually with little effort put into detail or a tight finish. While that usually ends up with distinct brush strokes and large value and color masses I always thought that part was carefully planned and learned. To average a scene that well never came across as an accident or natural way of seeing to me.

Excellent, really insightful post. It exposes a vague, non-descriptive cliché of general art history which was in my opinion brought to existence as a combination of afterthought and misunderstanding. Impressionism got its name from the eponymous Monet's painting, but I very much doubt that he used the word "impression" in that title in its most immediate, physical sense, as in "visual imprint". I suppose the word relates rather to the mood the scene evokes.

It is notable that some photographers are striving to capture the "first glance" quality, and the resulting aesthetic is strikingly different from an impressionist painting.

Some parts of art history/theory have become all too foggy and vague in the hands of some art historians who, not knowing much about actual painting, use a lot of terminology in a confusing or wrong way. I really appreciate articulate writings of real artists like Mr. Gurney on those subjects!

Impressionism is McCulture for women.

etc,etc ~ ain't that the truth.

If you are 'honest' your first impression was that it was an outside daylight scene with buildings. After that, your eyes went to the details you described.

I doubt very much you looked at the stop sign then wondered if it was on a portrait or not.

Therefore the blurry picture without the details you show, would be more accurate to your FIRST impression.

I think I'm somewhat in between. I don't think I see something like the simulation of what you saw, at least not in this particular picture (I think it may be different when the composition has a more singular main point of focus), but rather something that's more like the impressionist take.

The ideal impressionistic painting, to me, would be a cross between the blurriness of the impressionist simulation, but with decreasing "impressionistic-ness" on those focal points. Perhaps not all of them, but something that would make more sense focus-wise.

I don't quite like impressionism, but I'm not happy with some paintings that seem to have crispy detail all around. Somehow, it makes it lose realism and look more like a technical, almost diagram-like illustration.

That applies both to paintings and some special effects, specially visible on CG dinosaurs, mostly post-JP1, but JP1 excluded I guess. They often have a finely detailed texture that does not lose focus as expected by a real object that would be there where it was inserted. For that reason I find even some old stop-motion dinosaur movies (like the ones on that movie/documentary hosted by Christopher Reeve) better than the CG stuff we see in new documentaries or even movies. I think that if they just had some CG technique just to make up for the "missing FPS", make the animation smoother, it would beat 99% of the pure CG stuff.

My 'impression' when first looking at an image is all about contrast. So in this example, it's all on the right side of the image, first the sharp edge of the reflection in the foreground car window; next the windows against the yellow wall in the background. Everything else is just a dark mass, until I look again into the details.

Great post!

True,the understanding of the way we see things have changed dramatically - as I actually learned on this blog or your books.

But let's not forget that Monet had quite some problems with his vision.
I believe that some scientist or doctors have actually evaluated Monet's work and other artists work from a pathological point of view.
Put more simply: these doctors suspected abnormal vision with some artists, based on their work.

You are on the tip of an iceberg with this post. It's great that you're exploring the visual subjects and mentioning fMRI and eye-tracking at the same time. Neuroscience can help us improve many things including our system of government. Artist can be important message makers in conveying these extremely wide advancements in understanding. In order for people to accept and apply these advances they'll need us artists to give them something accessible, at-a-glance. Books like "How We Decide" by by Jonah Lehrer and "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins have important concepts. To really stretch I would check out Chris Alexander's classic essay "A City is Not a Tree". I write a lot about the difference between information processing through a semi-lattice verses a hierarchy. I believe understanding how these two patterns interact will describe many things. Artists will likely do it best.

Very interesting thoughts!
My eyes were attracted to the light bricks in the wall, then the signs and the green windows.

I only did pencil drawings for many years, so I learnt to squint my eyes to be able to see the light and shadows.

I think I read somewhere that the impressionists were influenced by oriental art. They had seen Sumi-e painting and that was how they started to paint with all the tiny strokes and dots.

Yes the influence of Japonism during that period is very important. I've always understood Impressionism to be about painting the light rather than the object. When Monet was working on one of his series paintings he would only work on a canvas until the light changed then he would switch to another canvas. It would take him multiple days of painting during a certain hour of the day to finish up a painting - and doing work back in the studio later was common as well. It was definitely not about a first glance.

Great comments, everyone. Thanks for the links and leads.

I suppose this post raises other philosophical issues, such as whether it can or should be the purpose of a painter to try to capture his or her subjective visual experience. In a way, every painting becomes its own reality by virtue of the way it shapes the perceptions of the viewer.

Monet's motives are impossible to fathom, especially since he in particular resisted analyzing his own thinking too much.

It seems to me that art/science/thinking is like anything else and is a product of it's time.

The notion of impressionism, that the eye records in the way the paintings (of Monet and others) show was probably, excuse my pun..., visionary at the time (and fashionable) and minus our modern technology as you mentioned with eye-tracking and fMRI studies. In fact maybe a better way of describing impressionism is it is a (another) way interpreting rather than the actual science of vision.
Science affects art and our way of thinking, art MIGHT even affect science and our way of thinking (sorry scientists).

As for how exactly do our eyes see, perceive and record a scene it is probably true that we all bring 'to the table' our own experiences as MrCachet states. Witness' to the same crime scene all report different 'truths' as lawyers very well know.

The different ways of 'seeing' as art is concerned may better fall into the category of interpretation. I don't necessarily see one way better than another, just different.

I had a drawing class where the instructor taught us that the eye can only focus on one point at a time, the rest is peripheral vision, hence the constant movement of our eyes to take everything in.

So which is truer, look at a scene for only 3 seconds. First, focus on only one point for that 3 seconds, describe what you saw. Next, spend that 3 seconds scanning the entire scene, describe what you saw.
You still only spent 3 seconds looking but probably have slightly different recollections.

So is a 'impressionistic', blurry image more accurate to our way of seeing or a highly detailed image more accurate to our way of seeing?

Maybe both and/or maybe neither. We'll see as science marches on.

Monet had serious eye problems, as did Manet, I've read. I think that also had a lot to do with the appearance of their work, especially their later work. I wonder how many other artists had eye issues that affected the way they painted.

All of are science fiction movies are comeing true.
James, when I am your age the world is going to be drastically defrent.

Offers both stunning and creepy features...

Maybe we could utilize the same methodology to gauge the viewer reaction to our art work. ;o) I've noticed especially with the type of ad art I'm incorporating into mine drew positive reactions to begin with, hence the success of the product in the marketplace, and the still-active response to the art.

The market is different than it was back then. If the packaging and ads didn't sell the product, the product didn't sell. Businesses hired good artists to produce good art to sell their products.

Disney needs to lay off with the world domination tactics. We are just lab rats to them, getting us to buy their 'Princess' stories, whitewashed versions of reality, and expensive logo-themed products.

Ha, I am not a fan, could you tell?

I agree with Peggasus - I find this more than a bit creepy. Kind of makes you wonder what's next... mind control technology to make sure we are wistfully dreaming of their "branding" in our sleep?

I'm sure that Disney's just trying to figure out what captures the audience's attention and what doesn't.

With all the modern technology they have at their disposal, It seems the older Disney stuff was so much better. It's hard to quantify, the best I can say is that there was a certain "spark of life" that was present in, say "The Jungle Book" that you just don't find anymore.

The tables have turned:

Mouse makes mantrap.

buchwalderpenn - Just track down the old movie "Looker" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082677/synopsis)

An undervalued work from Michael Crichton, which featured light-based hypnotism to control people using ads... And "digitized" characters scanned from live models to create footage purely in "the computer".

I'm sure other companies besides Disney would kill for something like that. It just took 30+ years for the first steps to become reality. :(

Seems very Phillip K Dick. Slightly disconcerting.

I think this just makes the marketing tactics in creative mediums more precise and may not leave much room for spontaneity or unique qualities...
I read an article that stated most producers of movies have marketing degrees (not film degrees) and if they don't know how they can market something they are reluctant to make it... they are more interested in what can be easily explained and get a knee jerk reaction out of an audience.

There is still something fundamentally wrong here....there is a certain 'sort' of person who would volunteer for such shenanigans, just as a certain 'sort' would answer magazine questionaires or are happy to be interviewed by clip-board toters in the street. Most wouldn't, so the results of such surveys can only be out of balance. The thought of ads suddenly popping up as transparent overlays on movies and TV productions makes me feel queasy. I thought such things had been made illegal...J

Bizarre. Maybe they should concentrate on making good films instead.

Hmm, interesting tech. But seriously Disney, take a break from shoving 'stuff' down our throat.

@ Claire: Excellent point re. the "marketing" view of film making. Recently I saw an interview with an "old school" cinematographer who said exactly what you just said. That in the "old days" there were no formulas to follow, and the result was a creativity and willingness to try anything.

At the D23 Convention a year or so ago, they demonstrated this technology with an Audio-Animatronics figures that would be able to sense the emotions coming from the crowd. The character's speil would change to reflect those emotions.

Sam
www.samlanddisney.blogspot.com

It would be interesting to see these studies done on different cultural groups - Asian and Western, for example. There was a study that showed that those raised in Asian cultures spend considerably more time viewing background detail.

davidmaas, don't even think you'd have to go as far as the orient...
what about, say hunters?
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2009/10/situational-awareness.html
Military researchers have found that two groups of personnel are particularly good at spotting anomalies: those with hunting backgrounds, who traipsed through the woods as youths looking to bag a deer or turkey; and those who grew up in tough urban neighborhoods, where it is often important to know what gang controls which block.

thanks Gurney, looks very interesting, will keep my 'eye' out - so to speak

Thanks for that link MyPenName.
Its amazing how much can learn from stepping down to another level of detail.
For anyone interested, the study I mentioned was:
"Culture and Diverging Views of Social Events" by Hannah Faye Chua,
Janxin Leu & Richard E. Nisbett at the University of Michigan.

閒暇為所有財富中最美好的財富..................................................

Don't cross the streams!

Fascinating. Thank you for your blog and your recent interview on Sidebar. How do you come up with all this stuff? Simply amazing!

Thanks, Sam, The topic today was sent to me by a blog reader, and I apologize to that person for failing to take note of your name.

Well, speaking of blog readers sending you stuff - have you seen this? http://www.vischeck.com/examples/daltArt.php

It's a website that will show you what a picture (or another website) looks like to someone who is colorblind. It's fascinating to see just how much information gets lost. The link above will take you to the page where they "colorblind" and then "correct" several famous paintings - but if you go here: http://www.vischeck.com/vischeck/vischeckImage.php you can run their program on any image you like. I tried it on my website - some paintings changed completely, and others hardly at all.

Interesting Info, Jim. It does make sense when you analyze how you see things as an artist - they really are two different things.

Hi Jim,

Fascinating as usual... You demonstration image could actually show the difference more clearly, since the left side shows only luminance (tone), but the right side shows luminance + colour. A pure luminance vs colour representation looks like this:

http://www.bmc.med.utoronto.ca/wiki/Gurney_colour_demo.jpg

This is closer to what the visual system actually processes, and demonstrates why colour alone is effectively useless for most scene recognition tasks. Luminance contrast is necessary for the recognition of objects, depth, and movement.

Nick (your admirer from Biomedical Communications at the University of Toronto)

My URL got trimmed, here's a shorter one:

http://www.bmc.med.utoronto.ca/wiki/Gurney.jpg

Nick

I think you mistakenly called the dorsal stream the what pathway - it is the where pathway (a typo, I'm sure). The ventral stream is more associated with the temporal region that is responsible for language (defining objects), and the dorsal stream is more associated with the parietal region which is more associated with movement and spatial relationships.

I just took a sensation and perception class as part of my psychology requirements. I really think this class should be made available to all artists, and that all artists should take it. Knowing how the brain perceives the world we live in might change the way an artist represents them in his or her work!

For painting, It'd be handy if we could actually manually switch between the two streams -- first perceiving only values then looking at the color information.

But wait a minute, would that color information stream be devoid of any values? Like a gel or colored glass?

If so that means our perception functions analogously to the grisaille/ glazing method of painting.

I love this type of information. Thanks for your ceaseless (if a little futile) effort to make me smarter!

Nick, your link is awesome - it actually helps explain a problem I've been having in my own paintings. I'm fine with tonal drawings, but when I work in color, I end up with something like the color representation. So I'm obviously having problems figuring out tone when using color.

Now if only I knew how to FIX that problem.

Nick - Thanks for the link. That's what I was trying to say.

I think that is why, while I enjoy a lot of the pure impressionists work, I really prefer paintings that have decent color but also have a full value range -- Les valeurs as Carolus-Duran would say.

Thanks, Nick! I've switched the image for the one you sent.

Cheri, If you mean the dorsal/ventral confusion in Dr. Livingstone's quote, I think you're right. I feel fairly sure she misspoke, but I quoted her reply verbatim.

I should also mention that that the hypothesis as I've stated it is somewhat oversimplified and controversial. Not all agree that the streams are separated all the way along. But I believe the basic principle that there are many tasks of vision and they're managed by different areas of the brain is generally accepted.

This makes sense in that some artists are stronger tonal artists, focusing on mass and form; and some artists are stronger as colorists.

Yet another reason to focus on value over color. Also,I suppose the far distance between the areas of the brain could be seen as beneficial. For example, if they were closer to one another, perhaps those that are colorblind would have problems discerning value as well?

This is fascinating. I took the liberty of combining the separate images in photoshop. I put the Luminosity image above the Value and set it to multiply. I think you'll find the results interesting.

[URL=http://img121.imageshack.us/i/combinedy.jpg/][IMG]http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/6642/combinedy.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

Sorry, here's a proper link.

http://yfrog.com/3dcombinedyj

Phillustrator - For a strict reconstruction you want to put the colour image on to and use 'color'.

(actually I just tried that with another image and it doesn't work perfectly. odd.)

I believe you result would be almost identical to sliding down the levels on the original.

Very interesting topic and some great contributions. I am amazed at the combined image, but I suppose I shouldn't be.

I have found that my best pieces have started with working in graphite to create an interesting design first and then working on the color component second. Perhaps it's because of the split in the brain or maybe it's just the extra planning.

This does not surprise me (but it is still really amazing) since the retina collects tonal and chromatic information separately (via rods and cones), and the retina is actually a little piece of brain tissue in the eye! What is really important about this is to realize that an image works on more than one level (at least two!) in our brains. Since the oldest (more primitive) part is the tonal information, it is vital that the tonal composition is coherent and as strong as possible: ie. interesting shapes (silhouettes and positive/negative relationships etc.) with balanced tonal relationships (shapewelding, rhythm, etc.).
The chromatic information is (relatively) newer and conveys a more emotional and sensual (poetic? musical?) quality.
I think it is important to realize that these two systems are not totally independent of each other: You can create ‘tonal’ relationships with pure color ( yellow is ‘lighter’ than purple, while green and red can both = gray); and the optical sensation of color can be generated by black and white (such as on a spinning disk).
Great post Jimmy G. (and Fantastic interview on Sidebar, but they never even mentioned that upside-down-drawing-with-both-hands-thing that you do! Probably just an omission due to time restrictions and all.) Congratulations on the museum show too. You-the-Man, man! -RQ

I think that should be "three decades" rather than two, as the point is well explained in the 1985 film "Colourful Notions". I mentioned this film before when the topic of relative color came up.

The traditional method of painting (Rubens, Velasquez, Goya, etc etc) in which the forms are first modelled with white and sometimes a dark pigment (such as raw umber), and then coloured with glazes, does relate well to the way the brain works. However, in my experience students find it very hard to grasp: they are used to the idea that each patch of the image can be defined by picking a spot on the Photoshop colour editor, in one operation, or by mixing paint on a palette.

Also, they are used to starting with a white background and adding darkness.

You can simulate red-green blindness in Photoshop by viewing the "channels", and copying the red channel to replace the green (or vice versa), so that red and green are identical.

Or, you can mix them to simulate the more common partial color blindness.

Don, thanks for those clarifications.

Roberto, I agree with your take on the implications for artists.

And thanks, everyone else for your interesting comments.

Hey James,

Fascinating post. I have question about the topic, however.

You mentioned that a lot of classical artists plan their values and colors separately, but I've always tried to do them both at the same time, as value and color seem to be inseparable when it comes to the final piece. Also, I've noticed that a strong composition in terms of value isn't necessarily the strongest solution in terms of color. Could you elaborate on that statement, or show some examples of what you meant by the separate color/value studies?

Thanks,

frank

if you invert the colored half of this image, then stare at the center for about half a minute (the telephone pole crossmember, say), and then look at the same point on the black and white side, your brain will conflate the two and you will see the image with both color and value. like magic!

until you move your eyes, that is. then it'll snap back to black and white.

the longer you stare at the color side, the more vibrant and long-lasting the effect will be. gotta invert it, though, for the retinal burn-in to work (otherwise the sky will be orange, the trees blue).

Frank, you raise a very important point. While it's usually true that any good composition should be legible in tone separately from color, there are times when you may want to play areas of equal value but differing hue or chroma against each other.

In fact, the subject of Margaret S. Livingston's study was a Monet sunset effect where the orange disk of the sun and the cool sky background was painted at equal luminance or value. The effect, she suggested, was to confuse the dorsal stream image processing, and only provide information to the ventral stream. It can be a very impressive effect if it's handled right, and a good argument for your way of doing color sketches.

I cut two small windows in a sheet of paper and held them up to the screen, playing off your Color Constancy post of a week ago. It was still startling to have the revealed squares suddenly appear as the same gray value.

Later, looking at Adelson's site, I saw him recommend the cut paper mask as a low tech way to check the values.

For me the queston becomes: How consciously would you keep this kind of information in mind as you paint? Or would it be enough to trust your visual apparatus and paint what "looks right," without analyzing it?

Steve, you raise a good point. No matter how visually experienced an artist might be, the shadow-eliminating mechanism still keeps on working away. No one can switch it off, really.

I guess it's a matter of just knowing and estimating how deep the shadow is, and making the necessary adjustments when you mix a color. And the other thing is using all the color-isolator tricks like you did to see a spot out of context.

It seems one main area where this knowledge might be particularly useful is anticipating the difference between a paint's appearance on the palette and how it will appear in the context of its neighboring elements in a painting.

Working in an opaque medium, you could adjust for "misjudgments" pretty readily. Working in watercolor, if I "go to the dark side" too soon, it's tough to reel it back.

I find this all the time when I put a stroke down on one area and it's too light, I move it slightly and suddenly it's shades darker! I know it's a trick of the eye, but it's still astonishing no matter how many times I see it.

What's interesting here is really that the more of the same grey you delute each respective shadow/light area with the starker the contrast between the same greys become. If you remove all other checkers with the grey: The difference almost seizes to exist. Why is this?

I'm trying to wrap my head around this phenomena (and tried for some time now).. To detect it in nature you really need to have an unbiased source (such as a pure white sheet of paper) you can compare values with. To use it in your painting you need to know that it's relative to the other same tones in your shaow / light.. It's not going to look as bright if you don't spread it throughout the neighbouring colors / values.. Excuse me, I'm thinking out loud.. :)

Also, I've seen an example with this using warm and cool colors. I could dig it up..

Hi hope you dont mind I linked this photo on my blog (with a link back of course)

Crushedoutheavenly.tumblr.com

Great stuff as usual Gurney!

When we were doing cast studies and highly polished figure drawings in Atelier Stockholm, a classical atelier of the Florence school, we used pieces of paper with windows in them when we were keying our drawings. This worked great to show us that even though we thought we had gone dark enough, we could still go much darker. However, I can imagine that slavishly using a color isolator to find values and colours can be detrimental, both because it makes the process mechanical, and because we know we will never be able to match the darkest dark or lightest light of nature anyway.

What's interesting as well is if I remove my glasses. With everything out of focus most of the illusion is lost.

this might be related to how squinting (etc.) helps us see value better?

The thing that seems to most interest me right now is painting images with full light and full shadow intersecting, and I'm encountering a lot of what you're talking about. "It's fascinating, Jim," as that pointy-eared guy would say--the one in the spaceship.....

Looking forward to the new book.

Wow!! This blog is great. If you want check out my blog: http://cyglobe.blogspot.com. Greetings from Greece.

It gets a little confusing. I thought the lightest dark in the shadow should never be as light as the darkest light in the light. (Disregarding reflected light) What you are also saying is if the white square (2) was in shadow and placed next to the black square (1) the edge between the two squares would disappear or be lost right? Which would destroy the checkerboard pattern.

A very short comment this time. I completely agree with the comments of Steve.

This stuff is great! I love when we get back to fundamentals, something I think all of us need from time to time.

My first gut reaction was to squint while looking at it. This helped to a degree, but the distance between the two subject squares was too far apart with too much visual info in between to tell if they were the same tone.

A few questions:
1. If you paint all of the tones by isolating them, would you get the same painting you would if you painted the entire painting at once and adjusted each tone in relation to the other?

2. Would it be best to use the tone isolator only to establish the lightest light and the darkest dark, and then go from there working between those extremes?

3. By not using the isolator would the artist's "flawed" sense of tone translate to the viewer and look natural anyway since their sense of tone would be flawed as well?

Do we paint nature as we see it or paint it how it really?

Whoa, my brain needs a rest after this one... ;0)

Do we paint nature as we see it or paint it how it really is? (Sorry, forgot "is" on the end of that in my last post).

I agree with all of you who say that tone isolator devices can be helpful tools, but their usefulness is limited by the lighting conditions in the scene. I believe you still have to rely on a combination of squinting, comparing.

Tom, about the lightest dark's relationship to the darkest light, it all depends on the relative strength of the secondary light sources. That's a good rule of thumb for a sunny day, but there are many factors: haze, the value of the ground surface, clouds, etc, all of which can raise the shadow value quite a bit.

Again, this demo painting was done out of my head, not from observation.

I’m not going back out on that limb this time!
What I get out of this is not so much the need to become a slave to your handy-dandy value-isolator, because I think indulging one’s intuition and aesthetic sensibilities is vital to the creative process, but a great tool for establishing a common tonal value for an underpainting… similar to Genes coment: <2. Would it be best to use the tone isolator only to establish the lightest light and the darkest dark, and then go from there working between those extremes?>... since the common gray value for the light and dark relationships will harmonize and unite the painting; It’s also a great tool to help get you out of a color mixing jam. Great post Mr. G. -RQ

This is actually really interesting.

There's a TED Talk on this!

http://www.ted.com/talks/beau_lotto_optical_illusions_show_how_we_see.html

I'm going out on a limb here and say this is bogus! I think a special computer FX is at play here… No, No, wait a minute! A TED Lecture! Thanx Natalia!! (That LottoLab must be an amazing place).
Once again Jimmy G., Way Kool Post -RQ

I need some new eyes, I can't trust these ones!

Your cube example made my jaw drop... It's always so hard to imagine how much our color perception is influenced by surrounding colors.

I am so confused. What can be concluded from this?
If I look at Zorn pictures on the computer all day, then walk around will my eyes seek out objects that fit those color schemes or will my mind create those color schemes in objects that dont neccessarily fall into the Zorn mixes?
Dare I say constructed inspiration.

Neato. That crossbar thing is so amazing I had to download the image and check the colors with the eyedropper tool of the gimp. Holy crap, not only are they the same, but they are *gray*.

I've run into this exact problem with multiple paintings and I was having so much trouble understanding why. I was attempting to paint a creature with a grey skin (In multiple different paintings) but the color kept coming out green, yellow, or blue. Now I realize it was due to my underpaintings.
I wonder, then, how one would paint a grey-ish creature with some reds and/or greens in the underpaint to look more like skin, but still having it look grey overall. Would you just use a washed out complimentary color, or would you have to alter the colors of your underpainting altogether?

sir i wish to thank you for this wonderful blog. i can't believe how informative this is! amazing stuff

That's astonishing, I've seen many optical illusions, but these are by far the most impressive. I did exactly the same as stevec, I had to check.
@K. W. Broad: for your object to look gray in a colored background, you have to use the same color, not the complementary (and vary a little around that color).

Edwin Land (the inventor of Polaroid) did a great lecture on this topic. It was broadcast by the BBC in 1985 as part of a film called "Colourful Notions". It doesn't seem to be on Youtube, but Googling "Colourful Notions" will lead you to some torrent sites that have a version of the film.

Without isolating the arrowed cubes in question, it's definitely impossible for my conscious brain to "see" that they are the same colours. Thanks for this mind-exploding post.

I think there can be a lesson here to take into your painting. I know that a lot of artists try to mix the colours on their palette into pretty much all the colour mixes that goes on that painting, to create harmony. If you could learn to control this colour constancy thing (which I guess you can to a certain extent when you develop a good artistic sense of colour), you could use it to further harmonize your paintings. Have the same colour in two places in your painting, but make them look different. (and I have to say that I could not believe any of the examples before i covered them with pieces of paper with holes in them... Amazing!)

also, I think the important thing to remember is that in all these examples, the ambiguous colours are grayish. I guess that is because near-gray colours can really go either way.

Really interesting illusion, I love the first example of the cubes, I wouldn't have thought those to be close let alone the same hue and val.
The second one that is done digitally is wrong though. I know the principle is right, but the visual is wrong. If the colour of the cross piece under the blue filter were to appear as similar to the yellow rings on the bars, the visual of the same scene under the yellow filter on the left cannot be true. The light would have to affect the two pieces in the same way.

Josef Albers would have loved the comments that resulted from this post. The idea of color constancy (a phenomena not a fact..just like the moon illusion) is one of the most important of all lessons for painters because a painter has to see objectively, and witness how a red firetruck is in fact not constant. The red is different in daylight, streetlight, shadow,etc...This is the fundamental lesson of Albers' Interaction of Color, that although we may always recognize the "red" of the truck, it has in fact changed. Color constancy is a phenomena not a fact. If you take a swatch of red and place it on white, it is dark to some degree. On black, the same red will glow and appear to be a different color. If you mix a color on your palette and believe it is what you are after, you may be frustrated by how it appears different when placed in the context of your painting. So how does anyone working with color address this...There is very little fact when dealing with color and when you accept that, you will begin to see objectively and witness how the firetruck is in fact different in every situation. There is no "local" color for a firetruck, only a firetruck against white, a firetruck at night, a firetruck in yellow morning light, and a firetruck in pink dusk light. None are wrong and none are local. Thanks for your post.
Mitchell
www.mitchelljohnson.com

I wonder in what way this effect is related to 'photo-dependency' of images -- If one were to filter a photo to compensate for this effect -- substituting 'perceived' colors for actual colors, would it make an image look less photographic?

I wonder if artists would fare better in this experiment? After all, we are trained to see things other people don't. It would be interesting to find out!

I feel the experiment reveals a common feature of human awareness (unawareness); an unwillingness to truly look into the eyes and faces of strangers. To an extent, I also believe this is a phenomenon that is strengthened with increased population density and busy lives. The ever-increasing tendency to disengage from the present moment, marking time mentally by listening to our own thoughts about where we're headed, rather than being fully engaged with where we are, leads to the blindness demonstrated in the experiment. Unlike the process you and Jeanette went through, comparing the Soda Jerk painting to the published tearsheet, this experiment in noting changes was rooted in a human interaction. Most people have cultivated numerous defenses to avoid truly making contact with "strangers."

There's an excellent earlier version of this experiment as well: http://viscog.beckman.illinois.edu/flashmovie/15.php . The instructions to the experimental subjects were "When viewing the video, try to count the total number of times that the people wearing white pass the basketball. Do not count the passes made by the people wearing black." Most people don't notice anything unusual in the course of the counting...

Jim, I've seen another version of that experiment before, in a television program, and I had to actually rewind and watch it again to make sure they weren't fooling me.

Fascinating. It reminds me of the book Visual Intelligence that was constantly challenging the assumption of what we see (or don't see).

Jim, I watched that basketball video knowing something weird would happen, and it seemed so obvious!

Steve, that's a really profound meditation about how we relate (or don't relate) to strangers. How often at a Target store does the whole transaction take place without any eye contact?

Pete, I don't know if artists would fare better. I'm often looking at the colors of shadows or something and missing something important in the scene.

I agree with Pete. Not only are artists trained to see more than the average person, but many of us (or at least myself and the artists around me) are constantly observing the world around us in scrutinizing detail. It's become habitual. Even if I'm just sitting in a chair daydreaming, my eyes are still soaking in my surroundings, paying attention to light and shadow, texture, color, and the layout of the world around me.

I also agree with Steve, but I think that also depends on the area you live. That was most certainly the case in California. No one looks each other in the eye. But after moving to Oregon, I've noticed people up here DO look strangers in the eye. Makes me wonder if the results of this experiment might change by region as well?

wow...Perception how we see reality. Do you see what I see?

Interesting. I wonder if the results would be different if the experiment were conducted in a rural environment, as opposed to an urban environment. I'm also curious about the results when gender is factored in: women have better color memory than do men. As gathers, women had to remember the color of berries which were safe to eat. Men on the other hand are better at tracking moving objects: the hunters. This is also a reason why color blindness is prevalent in men.

steve is a deep brother..haha

i also wonder if it had to do with man and man intereaction and woman and man interaction. the females seemed to notice far more then the guys, the guys just almost seemed brain dead...but the girls definatly noticed it was a different guy, haha.

but i bet the same is true if you put a girl there the guys would notice a change, and the girls might fade off into brain dead land?

but its interesting.

There's a similar thing done by the great Derren Brown that's quite interesting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBPG_OBgTWg

weird...
1st vid mentioned-do people really not notice it?! I mean they kinda get in the way of counting...
2nd vid mentioned- I kinda didn't notice anything till the second guy cause i was to busy tilting my head to see the painting. At the end I was laughing so hard I almost fell of my chair but that could be cause I'm sitting like L...
Would the out come be different if it was a kid or teenager?
and if they just let them leave i wonder how many would see the change later.....

also i thought of even more profound change blindness going on. i read alot of learning to lucid dream and realizing your in a dream just by questioning things around you during your awake time, simpily reminding yourself to check things around you each hour to see if anything is unusual, such as signs clocks. basically looking at a sign, then looking away, then looking back. if your dreaming the sign words might change.

but basically you do this all day, and eventually it becomes habit. and then you start doing it while your dreaming and if your looking at a sign in your dream or clock, look away and look back you can catch yourself dreaming and awaken in your dream.

so i would say that the mind is much much more "asleep" and "blind" then you may think. how can one catch a man who simply changes face, hair and shirt when most people cant even figure out on a nightly basis all the profound huge differences in the real world and the dreaming world.

i remember a dream where i was mowing the lawn and the mower was shooting out 20ft flames, and i just kept on going about my business mowing, if an average person, artist or not cant catch that then its easy to see why 75% of us wont ever catch a person popping up for a split second from behind a counter

Interesting observations.

I wonder how closely this is tied to familiarity? For example, when traveling in a foreign country, I am mentally exhausted by the end of the day: I have to think carefully about every sign, every spoken word, every landmark.

Perhaps our brains are in cruise control mode in a familiar environment.

Goo Goo, you're right, it seemed to be more often the women who noticed the change in this video and also in that Derren Brown video that James linked to (very clever setup). Don't know why that would be.

Also, that's an interesting link to lucid dreaming. Becoming aware that a dream is a dream (and not reality) means training yourself to look out for absurdities, which is probably a good survival mechanism in this crazy world of ours.

Who noticed that the interviewee also wore different color shirts?

I wonder if being an extravert or introvert could play a part.

All right, okay -- I watched the video, and the video in Jim Ottaviani's comment. Marvelous! Brought much wondering laughter to my wife and son and I. My wife caught the unusual element in Jim's video -- my son and I did not. Amazing!

On a personal note, thank you for posting something that my son and I could share and laugh at. It helped get us through a particularly rough patch in our lives. Thank you both very much.

Very interesting. Anyone know how this is achieved?

Very cool. I just tried to reproduce it in Photoshop and succeeded. It worked when the diamonds had a slight gradient on them, from darker at the top to lighter at the bottom. Very fun trick!

Noticed this wile painting last night... two colors with the same value looked totally different in the painting...

Like many of those optical illusions, they undeniably show that it's absolutely impossible to mix the exact color you need to paint a certain spot.

Typically with opaque paint, you'll bring the brush with your first mixture attempt to the painting and assess - even before applying the paint - that the mixture needs adjusting.
After a couple of itterations you'll apply the paint.

There's a significant difference with painting in transparent layers. There you will assess what kind of wash a certain part of your painting needs: darker, redder,...But the mixture is not imporant - it's just a red wash.

The difference is fundamental in that with opaque paint, you constantly adjust your mixture but your endresult is fairly immediate, while with transparent paint you constantly adjust your endresult and it gradually grows.
The diffence in technique implies a diffent frame of mind: the transparent approach seems more synthetical to me.
...Although I'm not sure about the latter.

nice clip buddy and impressive blog over all.

This is cool. I do know that hard edges are not as hard as we think. There tends to a halo of similar tone that reaches beyond the border of any given shape and tone. What that means is scattered light reflecting off the toned diamonds or any object for that matter. This effect is somewhat subtle but it is additive. Since the diamonds have a gradient that is different from top to bottom, the effect multiplies enough to make the diamonds separate out from each other. Try holding your hand in some light and note the glow that is cast off the surface. This is subtle but is easier to see if you have a light toned hand against a dark background. An aura of light spills in all directions. But a hand is a 3 dimensional form, so the light is scattered in all kinds of directions. Since the diamonds are flat, they are generally scattering the light in one direction, but still spill enough tone to affect diamonds below and above.

Erik, I have come, more or less, to the same conclusion about opaque and trasparent painting (although the mixture is still important with trasparent colors - it's less critical).
However, the opaque approach seems more synthetical to me (gouache), while transparent colors are cumulative. Anyway, it probably all depends on the painter's style and "brain", not only on the technique itself.

The diamond never made it to the bottom row, but I suppose it would have fit in there.

I'm looking at this and writing on Thanksgiving morning. Good time to thank you for all your efforts posting each day, James. It enriches so many lives. Thanks!

Hey Everyone!
Let's pretend we're painting a still life with a print of this illusion lying on a table. How would you do it? Would you paint it with subtly gradated diamonds as it is, or would you paint each row of diamonds lighter and lighter as the mind perceives it?

how is that possible?! surely hen it was printed it would all come out as the same colour! im so confused! let me know if you find anything else like this, its really cool

http://debbienewmanart.blogspot.com/

I'm going out on a limb here and say this is bogus! (or prove me wrong!!) If the diamonds are all the same value, then you could take a sheet of gray paper and draw diamonds on it to create this effect (which you can't),
or
If the illusion was created by contrasting values you should be able to isolate the diamond from it's background and eliminate the illusion, (which it doesn't). I think a special computer FX is at play, or too much tryptophane. This is Thanxgiving day, not April Fools day.
Thanx for the Turkey! -RQ

Debster and Roberto, I believe Lyon (second from top) has the secret: those diamonds are really gradated from dark at the top to light at the bottom. When they're arranged in an array they seem to be getting progressively lighter. It's helped by the row of white triangles at the top.

You are absolutely Right!
I guess I’ll be eating crow instead of turkey sandwiches today!
(I’ll blame it on the tryptophane.)
It appears that the optics aren’t creating the illusion of shaded diamonds, but rather hiding/compensating it on the top row (with the light points appearing darker against the white background) and heightening the value shift in the lower rows (dark points surrounded by light points). The isolated cut out diamonds hides the value shading because the paper is slightly curled and catches the light unevenly.
Way-Kool, Jimmy G!
(one must be vvveerrryy vigilant on The Journey.)
Thanx for the lesson.-RQ

Very cool. But, where's thy great yearning for Heaven in this Finite Existence, the Great Beyond in this lifelong demise that's over in an instant, girl? We cannot become sooo enraptured by the world we lose sight of our TRUE home. God bless you profusely.