How To Draw Incredible Optical Illusions

Here is a new book project I am working on commissioned by Imagine Publishing. The provisional title of the work is "How To Draw Incredible Optical Illusions" [You can get this book from Amazon US or Amazon UK]

This book will dissect the most fascinating and confounding black and white optical illusions, patterns and tiling, explaining in a concise fashion how they work, how to design and create them, and how to personalize and play with them to your heart’s content. With accessible yet fascinating text and workable samples, this intriguing art ‘cookbook’ is appropriate for graphic designers, teachers, artists, art lovers and the curious who enjoys contemplating how the mind works and how the eye sees.

In the excerpt below I explain how to create a self-moving pattern.

DROPLETS' WHIRL

After rotating, expanding illusory movements, let’s try something different: a continuous ascending/descending movement of droplets… Here we go.
Draw a triangle and its mirror image as depicted in fig. 1.a. Add graduated shading to both triangles: one with black to dark gray, the other with gray to white gradation (fig. 1.b).
Erase the contours of the geometric shapes and form the first cell (fig. 1.c), which will allow you to create this amazing illusory two-way motion.

Starting with the basic cell, prepare now a series of triangle ‘garlands’, each being one diamond-unit larger than the previous one, as shown in fig. 2.a. Resize and arrange then each of these garlands in a imaginary rectangle (fig. 2.b) and set them in equidistant rows (fig. 2.c).

You can decide how many rows to create with this technique; in the example below the pattern contains just 11 rows/columns.

Copy the pattern, rotate it, and assemble it with the original to create a larger pattern. This composite design integrates both descending and ascending illusory motion, imparting an overall impression of a whirl of droplets.

You can enhance the visual motion effect by incorporating color or altering the arrangement of the patterned columns. Presently, the black and gray "teardrops" on the left side of the image create an illusion of upward movement, while those on the right side evoke a sense of downward motion..

With this pattern, you can conduct an experiment to assess your dominant side. If the ascendant motion prevails in your visual field, you are right-handed. Conversely, if the descendant motion is dominant, then you are left-handed.