off-topic diversion (sidewalk art)
 

Check out this sidewalk artist named Julian Beever - anyone ever seen any of his work? My youngest son is majoring in graphic arts and brought him to my attention.

http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/pave.htm

One of my favorites, where you can walk to a part of the sidewalk and appear to be trapped on top of a building... incredible!!

http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/batman.html

There are also some videos of his work on youtube.

I LOVE sidewalk art. It's fantastic!

Have you ever seen any in person? I'm stunned at what this guy can do and would love to be able to see any of it firsthand. The website doesn't usually tell where the pieces are located (sounds like a lot of them are located "across the pond")... I wonder how long before they wash away??
Apparently you have to approach it from a certain angle or you lose the effect.

As someone without an ounce of artistic ability in my entire body, I am really amazed by people who can do something like this. It's very very cool. I like seeing the girl in the pool from the wrong angle, and you can see that her leg is drawn about 15 feet long.

Thanks for the cool link.

Nice !
Thanks.:)

I would love to see this on a basketball court!

Imagine players reactions when the come down from a rebound and think they are falling beneath the court or into a pool.

LOL!!! :) <! verbage>

Ditto! My fav artwork is Intarsia. When it comes time to place artwork in my house, I'll be looking for a print of sidewalk art.

Or they are being pursued by Batman.

Or as the visitors come upcourt in transition it looks like there are three more defenders in the home team's end.

And for the coaches there could be a guy reaching and another guy over the back. And M&M spraying soda on his monitor.

The technical term for this is anamorphic [never heard of it until today!]... you have to view the art from a unique perspective in order to see the image as it would look without distortion. There are other artists and techniques, and one other way of accomplishing this is to require that the image be viewed through a mirror, as in:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...th_column0.jpg

I would love to have the money to hire Beever to paint a basketball court in a way that complied with the rules, then see what rule changes resulted! :D