Optical illusions are always fascinating, especially considering the fact that explaining them doesn't usually destroy the effect. There are certainly plenty of pages on the 'net providing examples of such illusions, but I came across two today that absolutely astounded me.

Both illusions work on the same principal: a concave image appearing to be, in fact, convex. Check out both of these pages and be sure to watch the videos on each, they show the illusions in action and just blew me away: Hollow Face Illusion and Dragon Illusion.

Here are a couple of other illusions or puzzles from the same site: Colored X, Triangle Puzzle, The Land Effect, Checker Board Shadow, and Moving Spots.

Finally, if you are interested at all in photography, painting, or both, the site where I found all of the above links has a really interesting article on Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer (1632-75) who may have actually used early photography as the foundation for his paintings. The techniques and observations that were used to prove this theory are fascinating. Give it a read, it's about five pages long.

Oh, and for the gents, here are two very interesting optical illusions from elsewhere on the InterWeb. I had to stare at them a long time to see the hidden pictures: Boat, Ocean.

Update: I printed out the pattern from the Dragon illusion (available here in .pdf form) to try it out. It's very cool! I have the guy sitting on my monitor at work, baffling and delighting coworkers.

Tags: Optical Illusions