A type of projection that looks distorted when viewed from a standard vantage point or means, but can reveal itself spectacularly from the right point or using the right tool.

This is the technique responsible for making 3D looking ads on rugby fields that players can run over as if they weren’t there; or how they create those amazing street art holes; or how S L O W painted on a road may look just right when driving towards it but weird and long when seen from the side; or how Hans Holbein the younger tucked a skull into his painting The Ambassadors in the National Gallery. But others may require viewing with a mirror or a circular viewer to reveal themselves as intended.

Anamorphic art is therefore referred to as an intimate art as, even in an art gallery, the true picture may only reveal themselves to one person viewing in just the right way.

Also see: one-point perspective, two-point perspective, 3-point perspective, draw what you see, not what you think, atmospheric perspective.

PS you’ll have to tilt your screen or move to quite an angle to see Tilt me look like normal letters in the sketch.

Anamorphosis

The proportions of the golden ratio pop-up in all sorts of places in Nature and man-made things since early times and are a handy shortcut to make something we seem to find pleasingly proportioned. In photography, art, Nature, violins, or the Parthenon, we just keep being drawn to it. It has a pleasing equation too where the ratio of the long over the short dimension is the same as both added together over the long dimension. Why not browse some golden ration examples. Even Trump.

Sketchplanations tagged with art