Sunday, July 18, 2010

Escher's flatworms and wheel creatures

"Flatworms" by M.C. Escher:



Planarians are possibly the single easiest animal in the world to draw. Sure, there are other animals with just as simple a shape, but those don't have little googly eyespots. If you draw a pointy lump without any googly eyespots, nobody is going to think it's much of anything.





I've loved Escher's "curl up" creatures since I saw them in a book as a kid. They look so much like some sort of cambrian lobopod (like Opabinia or Anomalocaris), but they have those delightfully creepy little human feet.

5 Comments:

Blogger Ozark said...

Huh, I had no idea Escher did things like this. I'll have to Google now.

5:30 AM  
Blogger Lee said...

I love Escher, and these are some of my favorite lithographs he made. There's actually a sci-fi novella where Escher's wheel-lizards are A. real, and B. used as riding beasts. : )

4:10 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I have a little picture of the curl up creature maze my friend sent me! I love Escher's work and all of his surreal critters, so happy to see him mentioned down in your blog.

2:14 AM  
Anonymous dodoman1 said...

Not enough people recognize and speak of the genius that is the hammer-headed human-footed lizard centipede monsters from Escher's works.

4:19 PM  
Anonymous Fomalhaut said...

Didn't he call the wheel-critters "Rollpens"? Sure I heard that somewhere.
His planarians are just adorable...

6:16 PM  

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