Optical Illusions & An Argument for Art Education

This past weekend, my significant-something spent two days moving several very large pieces of production equipment.

It should have gone smoothly. He knew the equipment, had the right crew, and had a supposedly accurate floor plan to work from.

The problem was with the “supposedly” bit. It turned out that no one had actually *measured* the equipment or the floor. They’d just guessed at space and sizes, and so the result was your typical “maybe that couch would look better over here? No, lets try it over on that wall….” furniture moving scenario.

Nothing fit where it was supposed to, so it had to be moved three times instead of once.

What’s all this got to do with art and mind tweaks? I’m getting to it, I promise.

All of that extra moving-things meant that the significant-something came home muttering.

One particular bit of his muttering struck me as interesting.

“Why does that equipment take up so much room? ” said George, who had drawn up the floor plans.

“Because its just that big.” said the significant-something.

“But that’s the SMALL one!” said Anna.

“Yes.”

“It wasn’t this big when it was next to the other one!”

“Yes it was. The other one is 3 times its size, ” replied my significant something, who had majored in art.

George just stared at the ill-fitting equipment, as if the machine had somehow magically gone through a growth spurt when it moved across the room.

Now, George is a smart man. He knows a lot of things, and he’s good at his job. But he never formally studied art, or perspective, or optical illusions. If he had, he’d know that even a Really Big Something looks very small, when it is next to a Really Gynormous Something.

You can see the same optical illusion in the image above: The orange circles are both the same size, but they *appear* relatively larger or smaller, according to what they are next to.

If George had studied art, he’d have been familiar with this trick of perspective. He’d know that our eyes *lie* to us. Our our brains fill in information that isn’t there, and distort the information that is there.

If he’d studied art, he’d have had a much better idea of how to guesstimate the size of the machinery, and how to recognize and compensate for the distortion… or at the very least, that he needed to stop guessing and break out the measuring tape.

The traditional visual arts (painting, drawing, sculpture, and the like) aren’t all about creating pretty pictures. They aren’t all about the philosophy, cultural history, or even right-brained creative thinking, either — though all of that can be part of what you learn, the people who move heavy machinery don’t often find that sort of thing very useful.
But Art class can teach very practical skills, applicable to every day life, as well as to moving around Gynormous pieces of equipment, because art teaches and exploits perception.

To draw something, you have to accurately see the object that you’re trying to represent on paper. You also have to accurately see the image you’re creating. You need to be able to compare the two, and make corrections. And you need to be able to see what the viewer will see, in the final image.

Art teaches you to observe and analyze your environment in new ways, as well as how to interpret it and present your observations to others.

But couldn’t George have just seen the optical illusions, like the illustrations in this article? Wouldn’t being familiar with these tricks have avoided the floor plan problem?

Probably not — George likely HAS seen the optical illusions, most of us have. But until those tricks of the eye and mind have a practical application, we just think of them as amusing and well-crafted marvels. It just doesn’t sink in that these illusions happen to us every day.

(Speaking of illusions, which shape above is larger? Would you believe they are actually the same size?)

Learning to draw requires a new perception of the world, and developing new skills of observation. Learning to draw means learning to see.

Learning to see has all sorts of applications in the real world… applications like accurately judging the size of a Very Big Something even when they are dwarfed beside a Very Gynormous Something.

Tweak your mind. Pick up a pencil. Learn to *see* the world around you. Take a basic drawing class.

(You can always just pick up a copy of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, which is probably the best book on developing an artist’s skill of perception. Alternately, there’s Drawing on the Artist Within — which is about applied, practical perception for non-artists)