INTRODUCTION

Have you ever seen a magic trick and asked yourself, “How did they do that?” How about an optical illusion? Optical illusions have long held my interest; in fact, it was while trying to create new optical illusions that I developed my spiral drawings. The decorative elements in these drawings create the illusion that they were drawn with curved lines, when in reality, they consist of straight lines.

Spiral drawings may look intimidating, but with just a little guidance, they can easily be achieved! Geared toward the beginning artist, The Art of Spiral Drawing explains how to draw these basic optical illusions. It also includes a few more advanced tutorials for those ready to take their spiral art to the next level. Spiral drawings are impressive to look at, and once you get the hang of the drawing method, there’s no limit to what you as an artist can come up with!

Someone viewing an optical illusion may think they’re seeing one thing, but upon carefully studying the image, the viewer will realize it’s something different. I always say that spiral drawings are created using line illusions, but that’s not a specific type of illusion. The optical illusion that most closely resembles the one used in spiral drawings is actually the Wundt illusion, which is named after German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920).

In Wundt illusions, straight lines appear to be curved. The exact reason why the brain causes the eyes to see the lines as curved is not entirely understood, but it may have to do with the impression of depth created by linear perspective, a form of perspective in which parallel lines appear to converge, creating the illusion of depth. Our eyes want the lines to be curved because that’s what makes the most sense to our brains in that moment.

While the actual Wundt illusion is not drawn in this book, the idea behind this illusion is similar to the concept behind spiral drawings. I use straight lines of different lengths and sometimes add color to make the resulting image appear to consist of curved lines. This makes the image look much more difficult to create than it actually is. You can recreate these images by following the steps and techniques featured in this book.