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Short Stuff: How Eyes In a Painting Follow You · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey there, Hi, there, ho there, and welcome to the
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: short stuff. I'm Josh, there's chalk, and Jerry's here, which
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: took up an extra couple of seconds mentioning Jerry. So
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: let's get to it because we just wasted some time. Yeah. So,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: if you remember about a year ago, dear listener, we
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: did a podcast, a little shorty on the Mona Lisa
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: and we talked kind of briefly about the fact that
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Mona Lisa's eyes will follow you if you move about
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: the room like a horror movie painting, and that's the thing,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: and we said, I think Josh even said, hey, you know,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: I want to do a show on that. I like
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: a regular shorty on that. That was a great Josh impression. Hello, Love,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: let's do one on that, right, Jimminy crickets Um, So
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: we did. This is what we're doing right now, Chuck.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: That's right. The the the reason why which will come
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: later in the podcast, but the phenomenon of that we've
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: all seen on school be doing in horror movies of
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: moving around a room and the appearance that the eyeballs
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: of the painting are following you. Right, So there's actual
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: like this is actually a thing as anybody who's ever
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: seen it in real life knows um, but you may
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: not have ever understood why. And it turns out that
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: it's one of the easiest things in the world to understand,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: one of the hardest things in the world to explain.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: For some reason, I had a hard time to it
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: makes no sense whatsoever, because once you understand it, you're like, okay, yeah,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: of course that makes total sense. But like I even
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: had to go back and add some to this article
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: that bro this is a Josh Clark jam from the
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: House Stuff Works staff writer days, and I had to
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: go back and and add something from like I think
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: some art site and another site about there was like
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: a forum among painters. There's this one painter's post saying
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: like I can't make the eyes look at the viewer.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Helped me and there, you know, some people kind of
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: swooped in and explained to this one pain or how
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: to do it. But it's actually very, very hard. But
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: the whole thing is based on um perspective, and you
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: would not have been able to make a painting with
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: eyes staring at the viewer um before the four century,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: I believe, and thanks to an Italian architect named Philip.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Chuck, you want to take this one. It's
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: about to say. I mean, I know I'm not sitting
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: in the room with you. But Filippo brunellesco very nice.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: And he was an architect in Italy, like I said,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: and he was um in charge of the Baptiste. Sorry, Chuck,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Baptista and Sanelin very nice. So um. He basically accidentally
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: figured out perspective. Linear perspective in particular, which is in
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: a painting where if you're looking at, say like a
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: painting of railroad tracks, Um, they vanish in the distance,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: but if you'll notice they come together. The reason that
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: they seem very far off, and that the tracks closer
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: to to the wider part closer to you in the
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: tracks closer together further from you is because it's union
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: using linear perspective, which is just all lines in a
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: painting can trace their origin back to a common single point.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: That's the that's the source of linear perspective. Yeah, and
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: it's one of the coolest things in art, the notion
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: that you can draw something on a flat canvas and
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: just have those points kind of come closer to each
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: other at the top, and it gives the impression of distance.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: It's really really cool. It is very cool. So that's
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: one thing that that it's like you said, it gives
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: the impression of distance. And before linear perspective came along,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: um artists had height and width and the only way
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: to make something seem further away is to draw it
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: smaller than the other thing. You want to seem closer together,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: and the whole, the whole jam just seemed very flat.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Like if you think of hieroglyphics Egyptian um paintings on
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: walls of tombs, that's a good example of pre perspective
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: of art, right, very flat and two dimensional. Yeah, you
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: can also do some other things to create the illusion
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: of depth. Obviously, light and shadow. If you use light,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: it will demonstrate something um surfaces closeness to the light
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: source and it's going to protrude out and then then
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: reflect more light. You're going to use that shadow and
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: the darker areas uh to denote something that's more closed off,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: maybe something further away. You combine those two things and
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: you're gonna have another illusion. That illusion of depth basically
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: sort of like a third dimension that's really not there exactly,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: but for all intents and purposes. You have just figured
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: out how to add that third dimension, and it's like
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: you just said, that's really important. It's not actually there
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: using linear perspective, using the interplay of light and shadows
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: to to suggest depth. It's not their height and with
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: they're actually there. Those two dimensions are actually present in
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: the painting. But that third dimension of of depth also
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: known his length, that is nothing but an optical illusion.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: But that optical illusion gives rise to another optical illusion,
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: the eyes and a painting following you around the room.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: That's right, So we're gonna take a break and talk
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: how that actually works right after this. All right, So
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: before we get to how that actually works, we should
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: point out that what you mentioned earlier from that painter's
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: blog or threat or whatever, uh it is, it is
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: a tough thing to do as an artist to paint
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: eyes um on a human being that look like they're
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: looking at the person looking at the painting. It's a
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: hard thing to do. Yeah, like you are based to
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: clear a master of painting if you can do it
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: without really having to think about it. But it has
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: everything for years. Are you do you paint? Okay? I
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: can see that being like just something I didn't know that,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: you just kind of did on the side. Um. So
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: if you ever want to try, apparently chuck from what
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: I could tell from this painter forum, we'll call it
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: paint chan um. They if you have the face looking
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: dead on like nine degrees from the canvas, um, it's
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: much easier to paint the eyes looking out that way.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: It gets really hard when the head is tilted or
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: um uh yeah, tilted in one way or another away
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: from that nine degree axis. That's when it gets hard.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Now has everything to do with how much of the
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: white is shown, um, how much of the iris has
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: shown where it sits in the eye. That it's really
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: tough to capture unless the painting is looking or that
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: the subject is looking straight out of the painting. Yeah.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: So another thing we should understand before we move on
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: to how this little trick works with the eyes following
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: you is if you go, if you move yourself around
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: a statue, um, a sculpture, or if you move yourself
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: around a live human being and just tell them to
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: keep their eyes fixed forward and you move around them
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: and you keep your eyeballs on theirs, that that trick
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: is not gonna work. Their eyeballs are not going to
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: be following you around the room, nor would it appear
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: so from a sculpture, because you are changing your perspective.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Their perspective is saying the same, and you're actually you know,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: when you round the corner, you go from seeing iris
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: to the whites of someone's eyes and then the back
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: of their head and then eventually back around again. And
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: not only that, you know you're seeing more iris or
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: less iris, or more right or less white. And this
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: is giving your brain visual cues about this third dimension, um,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: but also the interplay of light and shadow on their face,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: on their eyes wherever, also giving your brain que is
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: two and it's changing. Yes, this the statue your friend
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: who's staring straightforward going like why am I doing this again? Um?
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Those things exist in the actual three third, three dimensions. Um.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: The painting itself again, that third dimension is nothing but
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: tricks of of technique. They don't actually exist in the
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: three dimensions. So when you paint eyes looking a certain way,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: they're going to look that certain way no matter what
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: they're fixed, they're set. Your brain is not going to
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: get any more information moving around the room that you're
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: It's not going You're not going to see more white
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: or less white of the eyes. The irises aren't going
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: to um change position. They are fixed no matter where
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: you stand in relation to that painting. And as a result,
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: that's why the eyes following around, because if they're painted
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: gazing out of the painting to begin with, they're going
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: to seem that way no matter where you stand, they'll
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: the eyes will follow you around the room from the painting.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: That's right. If a person on a painting is painted
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: to where they're looking not looking at you, they're looking
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: away from you, it's not going to allow that allusion
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: to take place. Um and to cap it off, it's
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: even hard to have that poem have that person meet
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: your gaze. Like let's say someone's painted, uh and they're
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: looking sort of off to the side. You can't just
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: walk off to the side to kind of where they
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: seem to be looking and lock eyes with them. There
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: is just this weird illusion of this sort of forever
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: into the distance gaze that happens. Yeah, which really like
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: re re researching this and I think admittedly fully understanding
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: it for the first time has really given me a
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: lot of um of more respect for the craft of
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: painting portraits than I had to for yeah, because I've
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: never been into portraiture that much, so for me to yeah,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: I like a good rembrand. Yeah so, But but I
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: mean the idea that it's it's really hard to paint
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: the eyes a certain way. And then the fact that
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: when you are painting eyes one way or the other,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: you're you're locking them in through tricks of perspective, using
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: shadow and light and all that. That's I mean, hats
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: off to all of you painters out there. Yeah. One
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: thing I truly did not understand was this experiment in
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: two thousand four from a group of researchers to try
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: and prove this using a mannequin and math. I read
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: this ten times and I have no idea what they mean.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: So they didn't use an actual mannequin. They used an
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: image of a mannequin, so it's in two dimensions, but
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: they used they used, um, you know, perspective to to
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: make it seem like a three dimensional mannequin's Torso well,
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: that makes more sense. But then they plotted out the
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: different dots, so the dots that should seem further away
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: because the mannequin itself, that part of the mannequin was
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: further away. Um seemed further away no matter where you
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: stood in when you were viewing this image of the mannequin.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: And they may just to basically capture this digitally to
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: prove once and for all, this isn't The eyes following
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: you in a painting aren't a trick like it actually
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: is the way that that you're perceiving it, they do
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: seem to be following you around the room. It's not
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: like you're going nuts amazing, it really is. So now
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: everybody knows the eyes in a painting follow you around,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: because if they're painted looking that way, you're not going
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: to get any other visual cues suggesting that they're looking
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: any other direction than that way. I think we've explained
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: to Chuck thinks, And since Chuck breathlessly said, I think so,
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: that means short stuff is apt. Stuff you should know
• 11:41
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