Optical Illusion
Experiment with composition and pictorial space

Ask your students to view and discuss Jasper’s Dilemma, 1962. Have them describe the shapes they see in this work. Explore how the colors and shapes behave. Do the shapes jump out at them or recede into the background?

a. Ask your students to make a square by folding one corner of a sheet of letter size paper to the edge of the paper and removing the excess rectangle that does not form the square.

b. Ask students to experiment with composition and pictorial space by folding their paper squares in different ways. Experiment with grid, diamond, or triangle patterns, and other symmetrical shapes. Have them divide the square into a given fraction such as thirds, fifths, eighths, and so on.

c. Have students use three to six colors or shades of gray to fill in the shapes created by the folded lines in their compositions. What new shapes and forms appear on their square sheet of paper?