A deer stands alone in a snow-covered forest.  But is it truly alone?

This is the second most popular print that Florida artist Donald “Rusty” Rust sells.  His most popular print is the Hidden Tiger Illusion which can be found in our archives.  Over the course of his career, Rust has created more than 15,000 paintings.  The themes of his paintings range from wildlife, fantasy and pinups to portraits and optical illusions.

Depending on your viewing distance, this hybrid image can be perceived in one of two different ways.  When you look at the full-size image (see below), you will likely see a picture of a dog.

But if you move away from the screen, or squint your eyes, you will see a completely different image – a kitten.  To make it easier for you, a smaller version of the image is provided below.

Hybrid images are a technique first published by Philippe Schyns & Aude Oliva (1994).  This image was created with a free Android app called Face Mash which allows you to take photographs of two faces, merge them together, and create your own unique optical illusions.

Look into the eyes of this beautiful woman and observe the color of each of her eyes.  Most people will see the left eye appearing to be blue and the right eye appearing to be gray.  Is that what you see?

Would you believe that both eyes are in fact the same color?  Both are the exact same shade of gray.  The red overlay on the left side of the woman’s face gives the impression that her gray eye is blue.

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This animated GIF optical illusion features an infinite loop of a red present with green ribbon under a Christmas tree.  As such, you could consider it the GIF that keeps on giving.  Watching this animation can be somewhat mesmerizing as it continually zooms out to reveal the exact same scene over and over again.  This type of effect is known as a Droste Effect, which is a recursive image where seemingly never-ending smaller versions of an image appears within the image itself.

This animation was created by Sheepfilms based out of Brighton, United Kingdom.

Would like to take the time to wish everyone a Happy New Year!  Based on your feedback, votes and shares on social media sites, here are the ten most popular optical illusions posted on An Optical Illusion during 2013.  The illusions are listed in no particular order whatsoever.  Click each post title to be taken to the full post in our archives.

1.  The Phenomenon of Floating by Rob Gonsalves

Most paintings from “magic realism” artist Rob Gonsalves are deserving of inclusion on any “best of” list.

Read the full post to see the other nine optical illusions.

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Are the two Christmas trees in the image below exactly the same shade of green or does one appear to be darker than the other?

While the upper Christmas tree appears to be significantly darker than the lower tree, they are indeed the same shade of green.  When a color is placed between darker colors (like the vertical stripes in the image above), it has a tendency to look darker.  Conversely, it has a tendency to look lighter when placed between lighter colors.

Patrick Hughes creating paintings using a reverse perspective technique that he calls “reverspectives”.  Looking at one of these paintings from the front (see image below) make it difficult to figure out exactly what makes them so unique.  This painting shows a series of shops in perspective view giving the painting a sense of depth.

The optical illusion, however, is revealed when you move to the left or right and begin to examine the paintings from any angle other than straight on.  The following video will help to demonstrate:

Most people initially assume that the scene is painted on a flat canvas, but is anything but.  Rather, it is constructed from a series of pyramids protruding toward the viewer.  The parts of the painting that appear to be furthest away are actually the closest points when viewed from the front, but our brain tries to make sense of it all and assumes that those parts must be in the background rather than the foreground.  Even when you understand how one of these paradoxical perspective paintings is constructed, it still looks completely normal when viewed from the front.

Many additional reverspective paintings from Patrick Hughes can be viewed on his website at www.patrickhughes.co.uk.