What is the first thing you see when you look at this image?  Do you see four white arrows pointing outward or four green arrows pointing inward?  Can you see all eight arrows?  Try to flip-flop back and forth between the two different variations of this ambiguous green and white image.

(via Bob Ausbourne)

Believe it or not, the Sparkle Illusion was inspired by an automobile.  You might not see a car in this image, but the basis of the pattern started with a graphic of the front grill of a Lexus.  Gene then manipulated the grill graphic to create the pattern below.  Finally, he incorporated the stars with the white dots in the middle that appear to pulsate or sparkle.  The end result is a very interesting pattern that plays tricks on your eyes.

(via Gene Levine)

At the top of this painting created by Rob Gonsalves, a lady is napping on a couch under a blanket while enjoying the warm heat being thrown off by the nearby fireplace.  If you look at the bottom of painting, it appears to be a scene from a park with trees, paths, bushes, and a water fountain.  Rob Gonsalves was able to merge these two scenes together where the rug in the room at the top of the painting transitions into the water fountain scene seen below.  The end result is a confusingly ambiguous painting where two different realities co-exist.

(via Huckleberry Fine Art)

I recently came across an interesting coffee mug that is available for sale on Zazzle.  As a fan of optical illusions, I thought it was a very clever design for an otherwise ordinary drinking vessel.  The spatial geometric design gives the illusion that the mug is concave rather than having a truly cylindrical design.

If you’d like to order your very own optical illusion coffee mug, you can find it here.

This huge anamorphic work of sand art was created on the Pléneuf Val André beach in Northern France with the intention of eliciting the curiosity of people on vacation.  It should go without saying that it accomplished its goal.

With the help of some advanced calculation and several people with shovels, this “cube” slowly came to life over a very large span of sand during low tide.  This “Sand Cube” impressed onlookers and beach-goers for a few days until the ocean’s high tides finally destroyed this work of art forever.  The town’s Office of Tourism was pleasantly surprised and impressed as it attracted many people to the beach who wanted to witness it for themselves before it was completely reclaimed by the sea.

More photographs of the “Sand Cube” from various angles can be seen below.  It is enjoyable to see how the general public reacts to this unique beach optical illusion.

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The six thin strips within this circle, created by Professor Akiyoshi Kitaoka, appear to tilt alternately.  In reality, each of the strips are all parallel with one another.  It certainly does not appear that way, but if you hold up a straight edge to the side of each of them, you will see that they are all perfectly straight and parallel.

(via Akiyoshi Kitaoka)

I originally saw this series of images on the homepage of  Optical Spy while searching for new optical illusions to post on this blog.  I wasn’t sure if this was something that they created internally, or if they were something that they had found elsewhere on the Internet.  It looked like a series of professionally-shot photographs, so I figured that it might be part of some larger advertising campaign.  Upon further digging, I quickly discovered that the three photographs in this post were used as part of an awareness campaign for “World For All”, an organization that finds loving homes from stray animals in Mubai, India.

The photographs themselves are credited to Amol Jadhav and in each of them, a series of people are interacting with one another.  Take a look, however, at the white space between these people and see if you notice anything else hidden within each picture.

Two additional images from this advertising campaign can be found below.

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