the art of art...

im at work right now, and mildly wishing i was somewhere slightly more interesting. so i thought to myself, why not share something from psych class with you all?
these are drawings from the dutch graphic artist escher. he is known for his often mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs (a method for printing using a plate or stone with a completely smooth surface) and mezzotints (a printmaking process, technically a drypoint method). these feature impossible constructions, explorations of infinity, architecture and tessellations (to quote from wikipedia, haha). so anyways, his drawings are very strange, and like mentioned above, impossible to real life. so i'll share some with you and you can see if you can find the impossibilities of them...

#1



#2



#3



#4



#5



#6



-now, if you look at #1, you will see that the water leading to the waterfall is going uphill instead of downhill...
-in #2, you don't know if you're looking upwards, downwards, or straight ahead in the picture, and also, the cones hanging in the open spaces are hanging from all different directions...
-looking closely at #4, you will see that the pillars are all mixed up, from where they are connecting from the top to the bottom...
-#6 is a still a mystery today...did escher draw himself holding the ball and being reflected off of it, or is he drawn from inside the ball looking out? his left hand is holding the ball, but in the picture in the ball, his right hand is the one that is outstretched...

of course, there are probably many more things to notice and realize when you study the pictures more closely, but these are some of the ones we discussed in class...

if you want to look at more of escher's art, go to http://www.mcescher.com/...