Amazing 3-D Art – Julian Beever, The Chalk Guy

Julian Beever is an English, Belgium-based chalk artist who has been creating trompe-l’Å“il chalk drawings on pavement surfaces since the mid-1990s. His works are created using a projection called anamorphosis, and create the illusion of three dimensions when viewed from the correct angle.

Beever works as a freelance artist and creates murals for companies. He has worked in the UK, Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Spain, the U.S., Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Russia and Portugal.

Besides this pavement art, Beever also paints murals with acrylic paints and replicas of the works of masters and oil paintings, and creates collages. Amongst his other work are wood paneled drawings, usually themed around music, measuring 7 meters long by 1.5 meters high.

In reality, there is just pavement in front of him, and the street below together with the expectant crowd, plus the blazing building below him, are all tricks played on the eye (a modern example of trompe l’oeil – a French term that means literally ‘trick the eye’).

There seems to be a common chain email letter depicting his art. This in fact is what inspired me to create this squidoo page. He used to work in Punch & Judy show and that’s where he saw other pavement artists that inspired him to try it. The 3D aspect came later: “I decided to get into 3D after seeing the effect of tiles being removed from the street, and later trying to recreate the sense of depth in a drawing.

Julian’s art is created with chalk. First, like a skillful architect, he first designs his creations on paper. Once he starts, Julian places a camera at a distance of the art and keeps observing it through the lens of the eye. The reason is simple: the camera has a wide angled lens that can create an optical illusion that can distort the actual size of objects. “I think because the camera limits what your brain can do,” he said, “it limits the brain’s ability to judge distance, it makes you only use one eye. And therefore you can make the brain believe stuff that otherwise it wouldn’t believe.”

This is what is known as anamorphism. Once he gets started on his creation, he goes back and forth from his art to the camera a few hundred times to gain perspective. Once it’s created, the results will appear extraordinary as evidenced in the photos on this lens. it will slowly disappear due to nature. He is not worried about it disappearing, since he and millions of others are able to capture photographs of his creation that will forever live in the internet.

There is not much more about Julian’s life, when confronted with private questions such as “how much do you make from this?”, he will not respond or ignore you, he would rather discuss questions about his art. Overall, Julian is very thankful to the internet because otherwise he would not have had the chance to show all his art to millions of people and gain the notoriety he well deserves. “It’s that photograph that goes on the Internet. Then thousands of people will see it. It will be there forever. It doesn’t vanish, really. The drawing on the ground is just a vehicle. ”

Here are some of the videos how Julian draw his art.

reference from : wikipedia, grand-illusions