The Magic Behind Spiderman Art

Dear Senserely Yours,

            I was walking around in the city when I noticed this really rad street art. I’m a huge Spiderman fan and I couldn’t believe my eyes. It looked really realistic, ya know what I’m sayin’? How’d they do that? I can’t tell if it’s a photo or just some chalk. Where can I get this chalk? I hope it’s cheap I wanna do one with Spiderman and me as his sidekick! Marvel rocks, man!!

From, peterparker96

Source

 Dear peterparker96, 

Well, Peter. This is definitely not a photograph and most likely made out of chalk. In fact, there are a lot of street art that look extremely realistic. Luckily for you, there is no need for any special material to do this kind. All you need is a little creativity and knowledge about pictorial cues.

Pictorial cues are information in an image that give information about depth (Goldstein, 2010).  Because of these cues, you can say that one object is farther from the other, making scenes appear 3D. What’s even cooler is that people don’t notice that we process information like this!

If you want to create an optical illusion such as this Spiderman art, you need to have at least three distinct levels of pictorial depth. This means that you need to see three pictorial cues before you can interpret a 2D image as 3D (Cook, Yutsudo, Fujimoto, Murata, 2008). 

You're next question might be, what are pictorial cues that I can use in making street art look 3D. First, you can make use of occlusion, or the covering of a nearer object of a farther one. The object covered is perceived as farther (Goldstein, 2010). In the drawing, you can see that Spiderman's body is covering the lower part of the building, which makes Spiderman appear nearer to you. You can also use perspective convergence, when parallel lines extend and become closer as the distance increases (Goldstein, 2010). A classic example of this is Da Vinci's "The Last Supper" where the walls of the room seem to meet towards each other, to a vanishing point. You can see in the drawing that the lines of the building are becoming closer together as the building descends. Third, you can use atmospheric perspective, or the blurring of more distant objects (Goldstein, 2010). This is easily visible in the drawing as the details of the building are not as clear and sharp as the lines on Spiderman's suit. If you are interested in Macro Photography, you'll notice how the background is mostly blurry and the object zoomed in on is very clear. 

An example of perspective convergence

When trying to draw something realistic, you have to make sure that you measure what you draw.(I'm not talking about bring a ruler wherever you are.) Meaning, the sizes of the objects in your scene have to be proportional to how big they really are. Take the spider symbol on Spiderman's suit. The size of the symbol in the movies and comic books doesn't cover his whole torso, but only a part of his chest and you should keep this in mind when drawing Spiderman again. This may seem like common sense, but it's actually another pictorial cue called familiar size. Familiar size is when we judge depth based on our prior knowledge (Goldstein, 2010). You can see how it pays to be observant of your surroundings if you're interested in drawing.

Lastly, make use of shadows in drawing because they give cues regarding the location of objects (Goldstein, 2010). Take a look at the man on the upper left part of the drawing and notice the shadow that is cast below him. This shadow indicates that he is on top of a tightrope and not floating into oblivion.

I hope I helped you with some tips on how to create amazing 3D street art, Peter! I've only discussed common pictorial cues but there are more in existence. Don't forget to use at least three of them. I wish you all the best in your new hobby and don't forget to send me a picture!

Senserely yours, Mika

REFERENCES:

Cook, N. D., Yutsudo, A., Fujimoto, N., & Murata, M. (2008). On the visual cues contributing to pictorial depth perception. Empirical Studies of the Arts, 26(1), 69-92.

Goldstein, E.B. (2010). Sensation and Perception. Belmont, California: Wadsworth Cengage Learning