New Font: BigBlok
A great many years ago when working in game publishing I had a real fascination with doing titles in a strong, super-bold font called Bolt Bold. The truth is I rather overused it. In doing some research I find it on more than a dozen different game books I wrote in the early 80s, all quite collectable and out of print today.
Optical Illusion Skull Images
Sometimes we stumble on strange backwaters of graphic arts history. One of those is the artistic tradition of creating images which appear normal, but also create a secondary image of a skull, an artistic optical illusion which was very popular it he late 19th and early 20th century, especially in France.
The most famous of these images is C. A. Gilbert’s 1892 sketch “All is Vanity” (see right) which depicts a girl seated at a vanity and admiring herself in a mirror, but if you ignore the details and focus on the whole image the various elements combine to create the appearance of a skull, making a point about the transitory nature of beauty.
Gilbert’s image was sufficiently popular that the design got borrowed and recreated as part of an ad campaign by Christian Dior for the perfume Poison. See image to the right.
As it turns out, Gilbert’s sketch inspired a trend and there are many other images from that period which are done in a similar style and producing a similar illusion, such as “L’Amour de Pierrot” which was produced in France in 1905 (see left). It depicts the characters Pierrot and Columbine and foreshadows a tragic outcome to their love.
When it comes to foreshadowing, none of these images is more on target than the politically motivated French 1894 cartoon “Familie Imperiale de Russie” which shows the Russian royal family inside a skull illusion.
In many cases these skull illusion pictures feature images of children or young lovers, drawing the contrast between youth and life and the inevitability of death, as shown in the examples shown below.
It’s a peculiar artistic sub-genre, but there’s certainly something fascinating about these images and their hidden meanings.
comments
2 Responses to “Optical Illusion Skull Images”
Leave a Reply
Do you have any nautical, boating, shipping or marine fonts? I have Capt Kidd already.
Windlass is actually your best bet. It includes a variety of alternate characters with images of various nautical things, including sailing ships and various flags and nautical equipment.
It’s at: http://www.fontcraft.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=windlassset
Dave