Optical Art by Avery Loeffler

Description: Optical Art or Op Art is a style of visual art that uses optical illusions. These are abstract works that the students created in black and white. This form of art typically gives the viewer the impression of movement, flashing, vibrating patterns, or of swelling or warping.

The students were asked to create their own Op Art using designs that they found from researching other Optical art sites. In order for the illusion to take on movement, the students had to work hard at keeping their lines, boxes or shapes completely straight; however, putting these projects together is harder than it looks.

Art teacher Vickey Belmont chose this month’s featured art and why she chose freshman Avery Loeffler’s example to post on The Feather.

“Avery Loeffler’s is a great artist she is takes her time and puts a lot of thought into each art piece she produces,” Belmont said. “I picked Avery’s project because it met the requirements that I had given the students and her work is clean and tricks the eye as Op Art should.”

Freshman Avery Loeffler

When Mrs. Belmont gave us this project, I was excited. I had always seen pictures of art similar to this, and I was excited to try it. We did a similar project last semester, except it was in pencil, and it had different patterns and shading.

I searched the internet to find designs. I liked four of them, so I decided to try all four. First, I sketched my idea out on a piece of scratch paper to make sure I liked the design. Then I started sketching the actual project. Once I was satisfied with the sketch, I went over all of the lines in marker and colored it in.

A difficult part of this project was getting lines straight. Even though I used a ruler, it did slip a few times. A fun part of this project was when I finished coloring a section, because it was fun to see when a section turned out well. During the project, I was mostly focused on keeping the lines straight and coloring inside the lines. This was a very relaxing project.

For additional information on optical art, art teacher Vickey Belmont said that M C Escher’s tesselations are some of the best examples for budding artists to emulate. For the previous featured art, check out Featured art, No. 4, 2018-19.