Illusions

Drawings can really tell you about the way we see things. Even though artists originally did not know the reasons they painted things the way they did, the way they perceived things when drawing allowed psychologists to lear more about the way we see perceive things. The most prominent cue seen in art is depth perception. Our mind sees things higher up in our vision to be farther away, relative vision. Artists are able to use this information when painting or drawing by positioning things that are supposed to seem farther away, higher up on the page. Sometimes when creating a picture artists can not place things high on the page and must find a different way to make them seem closer or farther away. When this is the case artists use the depth perception of relative size, the idea that larger objects seem closer closer while smaller objects seem farther. The third method an artist uses when trying to achieve a sense of depth in a two demential painting is by using interposition, the idea that objects that cover up parts of other objects seem to be closer. Artists do the same things our retinas have to do, turn a three demential scene into a two demential picture, and amazingly they do it in a very similar way.