Chameleon body painting camouflages the model, creating a near invisible effect. These beautiful body art works make it seem as though the artist's model is merging with the background.
Body painting is the practice of using the human body as a canvas. The models are most often nude, or wearing just the bare minimum. Too much clothing and the body art, severed by the hems, can lose its seamlessness. The following body paintings have been painted in such a way that the models seem to fade into the background, as if wearing an invisible cloak. Painstaking attention to details, colors and lighting makes these works possible, with the models staying motionless for hours while the artist is busy.
Wallpaper Camouflage Painting by Emma Hack
In these body painting pieces, body painting artist Emma Hack uses decorative wallpaper as a background. She continues the wallpaper’s patterns on the model’s body, carefully lining up the edges of the designs and keeping the colors consistent. On average, these body paintings take nine hours, but it can take up to 19 hours to complete a piece, depending on the level of detail required and how much of the body she will be painting. Although the model’s skin is visible in many of these pieces, the effect is such that the nude woman seems to be a part of the wallpaper.
Environmental Camouflage Body Painting
These models have been painted in rural and industrial surroundings that would otherwise be quite plain. The artist studies the textures of the model’s background, meticulously painting rotting wood, rusting metal or flaking old paint onto the models’ bare skin.
Painting straight lines onto a body that has curves and hollows can be quite difficult. The artist must be sure to compensate for the shape of the body in order to recreate the straight edges found in architecture. In these works of art, lighting and camera position are very important. If the model casts a shadow against the background, or moves even slightly, the human chameleon optical illusion can be lost.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa painting is famed for having eyes that follow you around the room. The principles used in da Vinci’s paintings can also be applied to sculpture or paper-folding to create a hollow face illusion.
Hollow Face Illusions Videos:
These videos show a variety of hollow face illusions at work. As the camera operators move around the sculptures, the faces (sometimes just the eyes) turn to watch the viewer.
This sculpture is an artist’s rendition of St Francis. Though small, the bust of St Francis is an interesting piece, as no matter where you are in the room, St Francis has his eyes on you.
Even when rendered in 3D animation software, the hollow face illusion still has an essence of magic. The eye is tricked into believing that the heads are turning as the 3D model rotates.
How it Works:
Hollow face illusions are exactly what their name implies. The artist sculpts, carves or in the case of paper or origami art, folds the material to form a “hollow” face. The human eye is trained to see a face as being convex (bulging towards the viewer), that it naturally mistakes a concave face (bulging away from the viewer) as being convex. Small sculptures can be rotated horizontally and vertically to create the impression that the head displayed is turning from side to side or up and down. For large sculptures, the viewer can move around the sculpture, marveling at the supposed manner in which the face turns to follow the viewer around the room.
The face on the left is convex, and the face on the right is concave. From this angle, with the light coming from above, the illusion is easily broken.
Because the light source is apparent; the illusion created by this Buddha hollow face illusion is strong. The contrasting colors between raised and indented surfaces adds to the illusion.
This image of Einstein appears to be popping out of the background, but is it, really?
Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa
The theories used in hollow face illusions and by da Vinci for the “Mona Lisa” are similar, but not exactly the same. Instead of creating a hollow face for Mona, da Vinci used perspective, contrast, shadows and shape to create the illusion that the Mona Lisa’s eyes turn to follow the viewer around the room. Da Vinci created a sketch called Proportions of the Face, which he used as a base for the proportions of the Mona Lisa’s face. The proportions created by da Vinci are based on the same mathematical principles as hollow face illusions, and create a similar effect.
The Mona Lisa is a famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci that uses the hollow face illusion technique to make her eyes follow you around the room. [source]
Above are the working stages of the Mona Lisa painting, showing how da Vinci incorporated his sketch, Proportions of the Face, into the final Mona Lisa masterpiece. The reason why Mona Lisa's eyes seem to follow you around the room is a combination of light and shadows in the piece and layers upon layer of paint that give the painting a slight 3-Dimensional effect.
