Anamorphic Playground Art

I have been up at my children's school today trying my hand out on a large scale anamorphic chalk picture. I went with the Rubic cube design to keep things simple - this is still new territory for me and I have a long way to go before I can produce anything remotely close to the quality of work by Mr Julian Beaver.



I spent the morning planning it all out with miles of string and in the afternoon I had about 25 children (5 at a time) to help me colour it in. Most of the chalk ended up on them and I'm sure their parents cursed me when they saw the state of their school uniforms : )

It didn't take the children long to figure out what the artwork was about - they appreciated that it only worked from one fixed view point and with one eye closed.

I may have some more news soon on the television front. The new series of DIY SOS will hopefully be starting in a few weeks time in which I filmed an episode up in Norfolk. There is also something else in the pipeline but I will say no more just in case.

The National Gallery & Tate Modern

My wife & I took our two children up to London this week to soak up a bit of culture at the National Gallery & the Tate Modern.

They had been studying various works of art at school so to actually see them in the flesh was quite an experience for them.
Their favourite painting was 'The Ambassadors' by Hans Holbein the Younger. My son immediately laid on the floor to the bottom left of the painting so that he could look up to admire the anamorphic skull. It is reckoned that the painting was originally displayed over a staircase so that those climbing the stairs would be able to view the skull from the correct angle.



After climbing the lions on Trafalgar Square we took the tube to St. Pauls and from there made our way to the Tate Modern via the Millennium Bridge that my son fondly recognised from the recent Harry Potter film.

The Tate was a completely different experience for them - we got hold of some of the family activity worksheets and tried our hands sketching some sculptures and making our own with bits of cardboard and string. We also spent what time we had left in the day browsing round the galleries although my son's reaction to some of the pieces probably ruffled a few feathers : )

As for myself I feel that the greatest piece of art at the Tate Modern is the building itself - it is a fantastic example of Art Deco industrial architecture, almost cathedral like as if built to worship the power it would create in its original use.
I also have a soft spot for Battersea Power Station (also one of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott's creations) and whilst I was at art college I photographed the building and produced a series of screen prints.

Optical Illusion

I have been experimenting recently with anamorphic perspective. This is when a picture, when viewed face on, looks very distorted - but when viewed from the correct angle looks perfectly normal.

It can also create some very bizarre optical illusions like this.



Here I have painted a very crude Rubic style cube on a piece of board. By placing the two cup & saucers on the painting it creates the illusion that one cup is greatly larger than the other even though they are both the same size.

The only drawback is that these type of effects can only be viewed properly from the one, very precise, angle. They are great fun though and I will be trying out some more soon.