The Sprout

Pavement Picasso

Posted by Faymondo:) from Cardiff - Published on 06/12/2009 at 11:51
2 comments » - Tagged as Art, People

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Julian Beever is a 3D chalk artist, who has worked all over the world, producing these remarkable pieces of art for over ten years. He has often been called the ‘Pavement Picasso’. Most of his drawings are anamorphic illusions drawn in a special distortion in order to create an impression of 3 dimensions when seen from one particular viewpoint.

An anamorphosis is a deformed image that appears in its true shape when viewed in an alternative way. However anamorphic pictures are stretched, so that while they look fine from one particular viewpoint, they look quite strange and often unrecognisable from any other viewpoint.

For example, his picture of a blonde woman in a pool, outstretching her leg, from one position everything looks normal. Except that the pool isn't really there, of course - Julian's foot is touching the pavement, not the water! But if you were walking towards it, then it looks quite strange, and you can’t really tell what the picture is.

One of his pieces of work takes about three days to complete and lasts until it rains. If you look at some of the drawings, you can even see some of the people avoiding the holes in the ground, which is actually quite funny, considering that there isn’t a hole!

I find his work amazing, take a look for yourself. It’s incredible that someone could draw like that, and I’m sure many people would agree!