Scribbles & Pareidolia

An exercise in intuitive surrealism.

I tried a Pareidolia lesson from teacher John Zilewicz from Facebook, on my last full day of class and my students were focused and silent!

Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon that causes people to perceive ambiguous stimuli as meaningful visual objects. For example, people may see faces in landscapes, buildings, and furniture. For example, a house with a pattern that resembles a face can trigger an emotional response.

I told my students that if they needed a point on their final grade to go from 79 to an 80, or an 89 to 90 I could use this as an assessment if they include crosshatching or stippling. (Techniques we have focused on this last semester.) I used a bamboo brush and leftover paint on watercolor paper to make 50 of these in about 20 minutes. Though I made these samples, certainly students could make them one day and then illustrate with them the next. 

I could see this working as well if you needed a quick demo lesson for a job interview. You could come with 4 swatches of color on cards, hand them out to students, and let them reveal what they see using pens to tease out the images.

Here are some helpful examples you can show to get your students primed for this short visual exercise. I encourage students to turn their paper in many directions and stare at the color blotches. Images will eventually emerge. If they get stuck, tell them to work with a peer partner to reveal images. Looking at the negative spaces can help as well.