Exercise 2.6: Pareidolia

The face of my art…

I love creating patterns by folding ink in the middle, so I created the above (Course sketchbook) for fun…
Then I asked people on social media “what can you see”?
I got replies such as monkey, predator alien, gorillas, rabbits, ovaries, friendly octopus, snails with pink bodies and green blue shells, a mother protecting her babes, a six headed being and a rams head.
So what do you see?

I didn’t even realise that seeing faces in things was called facial pareidolia, I thought everyone did this but, upon asking my husband he does not (unless I used photography – as below to highlight the “face”.
I see faces often in door handles, patterns in grains of wood, light switches, clouds, the breaks in the tree branches. However, when you sometimes intentionally look for things I find it can make it harder, more so when on lockdown, normally I just day dream which leads me to seeing faces. I needed to find these “new” faces on everyday things around me. I also want to try to be unique to myself, not just see the faces that jump out at me and push myself a little. So I created a little moodboard in pinterest the intention of this is to inspire me, help me think more outside my own box/world more.

While searching for inspiration I came across actually came across Keith Larsen before the exercise asked this of me, He uses his parreidolia to create characters (which can come in handy for the assignment)

My printer currently has a blocked part, meaning I’m unable to print things at the moment and have to work around this, so it limits what I’m able to print at the moment. However it does not limit me within my digital sketchbook so this exercise will be mainly digital.
and
ONCE I started seeing the faces I couldn’t stop, there following me every where !

This was another fun exercise to do. My main challenge was if I could make others see what I see, also sometimes if you look at something hard enough the image starts to fade, more so with clouds and patterns.
I didn’t do much in my course sketchbook for this exercise as was limited by resources to carry out as I would have liked (such as use the photo as reference) but this worked very well digitally.

Maybe should have explored more with the patterns/shapes but I think I held back as I was worried people won’t see what I see.

Credits, references and research
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2017/aug/09/ojbects-people-too-facial-pareidolia-in-pictures
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2017/aug/09/ojbects-people-too-facial-pareidolia-in-pictures
https://www.boredpanda.com/pareidolia-illustrations-faces-in-places-keith-larsen/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic
http://www.thingscreatedbypeople.com/zine/seeing-faces-with-keith-larsen