Being Good at Art Is as Hard as You Thought

The squares marked with numbers one and two are the same grey. WHAT? Behold:

Our eyes adjust for the shadow such that we see the square that we think is illuminated (1) as much darker than the one that seems to be in shadow (2). As this illusion demonstrates, this adjustment is almost impossible to override. “Colors don’t exist as an objective reality,” Gurney says. “Color is something that happens in the brain.”

Ingrid Wickelgren shows us a few of the many ways artists’ brains are better than normals’.