The green circles on the image below appear to move in a clockwise direction.

Edit:  This motion illusion was also used on the cover of the book Exceptional Eye Tricks published by Imagine Publishing, an imprint of Charlesbridge Publishing.

The Spinning Dancer illusion is an optical illusion resembling a female dancer (perhaps a ballerina in training) spinning around in circles on one foot.  When you first view this image, you will either see the figure spinning in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction.  If you watch the image rotate long enough, you may see the dancer suddenly start spinning in the opposite direction.  How can the dancer appear to spin one way and then the other?  The illusion derives from an inherent ambiguity from the lack of visual cues for depth.

Which way do you see her spinning initially?  If you watch long enough, can you get her to start spinning in circles in he opposite direction?

Some artists are blessed with a great deal of talent and originality.  Brusspup is one of those artists.  He creates and uploads a lot of optical illusion videos on Youtube.  One of his latest ones, however, was his biggest effort yet.  Using approximately 15,000 push pins (thumb tacks), he created a portrait of a young woman.  In order to get all of the pins he needed in the correct colors, he estimates that he had to order approximately 40,000 pins in total.  Watch as the portrait comes to life in this time-lapse video.

When completed, the cork board and pins weighed around 40 pounds.   I wonder what he did with the other 25,000 pins that he ordered but did not use?

Scott Kim is an American puzzle designer.  His puzzles have appeared in numerous places online, in books, magazines and toys.  He is the author of the books Inversions and NewMedia Puzzle Workout and speaks regularly at conferences.  Inversions, originally published in 1981, features graphic designs from Scott that represent a word or name that can be read in more than one way.  These designs were later called “ambigrams” by Douglas Hofstadter, a professor of cognitive science.  Scott Kim’s signature ambigram can be seen below.  When read one way, it is the title of his book (Inversions).  When rotated 180 degrees, it becomes his name.

More works from Scott Kim can be found after the jump.

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Oscar Reutersvärd, born in Sweden in 1915, is often referred to as “the father of the impossible figure”.  He earned this title by being the first artist to explore impossible figures.  Over his lifetime, he literally drew thousands of impossible figures.  Today, artists are still learning from his works, creating derivatives of his creations and paying homage to him in a variety of ways.

Several more examples of Reutersvärd’s impossible figures can be found after the jump.

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Move your eyes around this image.  Do the arrows appear to be moving left and right?  Do some of them seem to be going to your left and others to your right, or are they all headed in the same direction?

Image courtesy of Anh Pham.

In the 16th century, an Italian painter named Giuseppe Arcimboldo was on the cutting edge of his craft as he painted composite portraits of people using a variety of objects.  Some of his most famous paintings involved creating portraits out of fruits and vegetables.  In his painting below, he uses books to represent the head and torso of a man.

Continue reading this article to see more portraits of Giuseppe Arcimboldo.

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