Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Where's Elmo the Elongated skull?


The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein 1533 with the anomorphic projection of a skull. It took me 37 hours to see it.

10 comments:

Caleb said...

Are you joking about how there is clearly some strange, skull-colored floating shape? I like anamorphic when one of the images isn't intruded by mystery shapes.

Jimbo said...

At the bottom of the painting is a skull elongated into anomorphic so you have to stare at it until you see it as a skull. It looks like gnarly bony thing on the floor.

Caleb said...

I thought it was the kind that depends on where you're standing.

The Quay brothers made a short documentary about anamorphosis here. It's also on their "Phantom Museums DVD".

Caleb said...

This site has some other examples: www.anamorphosis.com

Eric Noble said...

Cool painting.

Mr. Smith, would you mind doing a post on how you lay out and do a caricature?

Jimbo said...

Thanks Caleb, this stuff is fascinating. Have you seen Dali's stereoscopic paintings?
Weirdo I will post something for you on that.

Caleb said...

I just looked up the Dali stereoscopics. Amazing! Just when I thought I'd seen all his stuff.

Jimbo said...

Hey weirdo, hope you find the caricature demo informative. This is my method but sometimes it varies. There are times when it works to just go for the final right away, if the subject won't be there very long.

thisandrewhamilton said...

I rememer when i first saw this painting, it tripped my brain so far out. and some art textbook i have includes the image but doesn't reference the out-of-perspective skull!

My understanding is that originally the painting would be hung high, possibly above the banquet table, such that to someone in the right position the rest of the paiting is distorted but the skull is crystal clear.

Jimbo said...

Thanks Ham. I never knew about it until recently. The nun who talks about painting mentioned it in the book.