Wednesday, April 4, 2012

New Painting on the Brain and the Visual Cortex

Brace yourselves for some eye catching work :)

Focusing on our brain and the visual cortex, I introduce you to:


Yet to be Seen
20" x 24"
Acrylic on Stretched Canvas

Got dots?

Our visual cortex is located at the back of our brains and covers both left and right hemispheres. By knowing just that bit of information, I wanted the the angle of the head to be 3/4 profile from the back. I felt that if it was a full view from the back, it may be hard to know how much area the visual cortex covers. In this detail below, you'll see that the visual cortex area of the brain is highlighted with this dense area of reddish dots.


The idea for how to paint this work seemed pretty straight forward...as a color blind test! I couldn't think of a vision painting without connecting it to a vision test of all things. As you can imagine, the painting became a bit hard at times to look at while creating it. You can view some in progress pics and video below.

While there are different types of color blindness and different types of tests for it, I chose to do the painting in the style of the Ishihara Color Vision Charts common for red-green color blindness. Not only are these tests useful, I personally find them fun to do; it's like exercise for our eyes (or at least how I thought of it).




(c) Michelle Hunter


(c) Michelle Hunter
(c) Michelle Hunter



(c) Michelle Hunter



(c) Michelle Hunter



Want to learn more about how our visual cortex works? Visit the Wikipedia on the topic here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_cortex

How about the Ishihara Color Vision Charts? Read more about them here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_perception_test


-----------------------------------------------------------------------

SEE the whole Brain Series so far!!! Check out this particular page that will be updated with each completed brain painting! http://hunterart.blogspot.com/p/brain-paintings.html

'Til next time!

Regards,
Michelle Hunter 
Contemporary Artist
Tel: (646) 504-5034

 Twitter [@artcoholic]