Anamorphic Drawing Fun
Webster states that Anamorphic means:
Producing, relating to, or marked by intentional distortion (as by unequal magnification along perpendicular axes) of an image <an anamorphic lens>
An anamorphic drawing is on that uses forced perspective to distort the image when viewed straight on, in order to give the sense of a full three dimensional quality. To help make this make sense – have you ever created a doodle with your head on the table? It looks good, or maybe not good – but what you expect anyway, from the vantage of your head on the table. But then when you pick your head up? Its all kinds of distorted. Similarly, an anamorphic drawing is usually one that is created from a low, or side angle to the drawing in order to accentuate and give weight to the areas of the drawing elevated above the page. Here is a progression of drawings I did in this theme out on instagram.
This final image is a view of the same banana and coffee drawing but only the photo was taken from directly overhead. When I look at this photo it is hard to force my eye to believe that the table isn’t at an angle. I promise you, the vantage of the camera was DIRECTLY overhead… a perfect 90 degrees overhead.
In that vein, artist Alessandro Diddi took the concept of anamorphicism to a whole different level. It should be noted that by using two different sheets of paper connected at a 90 degree angle and incorporating the skewed perspective on both it really pushes what is possible. You can see more of Alessandro’s drawings out at his Deviant Art profile but here are two of his better efforts:
The next few are just from all over deviant art and the web:
This video is a pretty good primer as to how anamorphic skewing works. These guys use a printer and photoshop to pull off their effects. But otherwise its exactly the same cool trick:
