How to make easy trippy drawings with pencil or marker

If you have never drawn an optical illusion, start with the traced hand: the outline comes from your own fingers, so the only skill involved is keeping ruled lines parallel and every arch bending the same way. The bulging checkerboard asks for more planning, since each grid line bows by a different amount. The bullseye relies on a compass and careful counting, and the melting drips are the loosest of the set, closer to cartoon drawing than to geometry. Each piece fits on a US Letter sheet (8.5 x 11 in) and takes 30 to 60 minutes.

Every drawing here is built in two passes: a light HB pencil layout, ruled and measured, then ink over the lines worth keeping. The pencil pass is where the illusion is won or lost, because a bulge or a tunnel only reads when the spacing is regular, and spacing is far easier to correct in graphite than in marker.

Pencil, marker and paper for crisp lines

The ruler and compass do more work here than any pen. Each pattern is measured rather than drawn freehand, so a clear 12-inch (30 cm) ruler, black ink that dries crisp, and paper smooth and heavy enough that marker does not bleed through or blur an edge matter more than any specialty product.

Alcohol-based markers blend smoothly but soak through thin paper, so slip a scrap sheet under your page. Michaels, Hobby Lobby, Walmart, Blick and Amazon carry everything in the table.

Pencil or marker: what each tool does to an illusion

Pencil and marker create different illusions. Marker gives flat, solid black against white paper, and that hard contrast is what makes op art patterns seem to shimmer. Pencil gives gradients: a soft shadow along one side of a curve makes the same curve look rounded. Most finished pieces combine them: marker for the pattern, pencil for the shadows.

Add pencil shading last, on top of the dry ink: a marker drawn over graphite drags the gray into the ink and dulls the tip. To check that the ink is dry before erasing the layout, rub a test line drawn in the margin when you started inking; if it stays sharp, the drawing is ready. With one tool only, every technique still works: pencil alone needs several layers of 2B for solid cells, marker alone means drawing slowly without guides.

The 3D hand illusion with wavy lines

The 3D hand illusion is a traced hand covered in parallel lines that stay straight on the background and arch upward wherever they cross the hand. The arches make the fingers look raised off the page. The closer the lines, the smoother the hand looks: 1/2 inch (1.3 cm) is a workable first spacing, 1/4 inch a finer second attempt.

Turn the paper to portrait, with a short edge at the top.

1. Trace your hand. Lay your non-drawing hand in the center of the page, fingers slightly spread and wrist touching the bottom edge, and trace it lightly in HB pencil.
2. Rule the background lines. Draw level lines from the left edge to the right edge, 1/2 inch apart. Stop each line at the hand outline and restart it on the other side; in the gaps between fingers, lines stay straight.
3. Arch the lines across the hand. Inside the outline, join the two ends of each interrupted line with an upward curve, like a low rainbow: small and rounded over a finger, wider and flatter across the palm.
4. Check that every arch bends up. One arch that dips downward makes that spot look dented.
5. Ink the lines in one stroke each where you can, in black or alternating colors.
6. Erase the outline once the ink is dry, so the bent lines alone define the hand.
7. Shade under the arches. With the 2B pencil, add a thin shadow under each arch and a soft band of shadow along the right side of the hand, as if a lamp sat to the upper left.

A checkerboard that bulges off the page

A bulging checkerboard is a grid whose lines bow outward inside a circle, so the squares there look like they sit on a ball pushing up through the paper. Filling alternate squares with black marker makes the bulge pop. A 6-inch (15 cm) square with a circle 4 inches (10 cm) across is a manageable first size.

1. Draw the 6-inch square, then the 4-inch circle centered inside it with a compass or a lid.
2. Mark all four edges of the square every 1/2 inch, which gives 12 columns and 12 rows.
3. Each vertical line runs straight from its top mark to the circle, bows outward inside it (away from the center line), then continues straight to its bottom mark. The center line stays straight; lines farther out bow more.
4. Draw the horizontal lines the same way: above center they bow up inside the circle, below center they bow down.
5. Dot every other cell in pencil, starting at the top left corner: one wrong cell breaks the illusion and cannot be undone in marker.
6. Outline the dotted cells with the fine-liner, then fill them with marker.
7. Shade the white cells lightly along the lower right of the circle, plus a crescent of shadow just outside that edge.

An op art bullseye and tunnel

A bullseye is the easiest op art pattern to draw: concentric rings cut into equal wedges, with alternate cells filled solid black. Seven rings and 16 wedges make 112 cells, so count as you fill. Shift the rings off center and the same pattern becomes a tunnel that seems to recede.

1. Draw nested circles with a compass, adding 1/2 inch to the radius each time, until the outer ring is about 7 inches (18 cm) across. Stacked lids work too.
2. Divide the circle into 16 equal wedges: a vertical and a horizontal line through the center, the two diagonals, then a line halfway between each neighboring pair.
3. Fill every other cell in the outer ring. In the next ring in, shift by one cell so no two filled cells share an edge, and keep alternating to the center.
4. For a tunnel, start a fresh page with a 1-inch (2.5 cm) circle whose center sits about 3 inches (7.5 cm) from the left edge and halfway down. Draw larger circles, adding 1/2 inch to the radius each time as before, but move each new center about 1/4 inch to the right. Stop when the outer circle is about 7 inches across. Rings crowded on the left and spread on the right give the tunnel its depth.
5. Divide the tunnel by drawing 16 lines out from the center of the smallest circle to the outer circle, spaced as for the bullseye, then fill alternate cells.

Fill large cells with the chisel-tip marker, all strokes running one direction, and finish each cell while its edge is wet; a cell completed later shows a darker overlap line.

Melting shapes and drips

A melting drawing turns the lower edge of a solid shape into drips, so the object looks like it is softening and running down the page. It works on almost any subject with a clear outline: a smiley face, a cube, a candle or a word in block letters. Highlights and shadows on each drip do most of the work.

1. Draw your shape lightly in pencil and pick the edge that melts, usually the bottom.
2. Replace that edge with drips: U-shaped tongues hanging down, each with a rounded tip slightly wider than its neck. Vary the lengths; equal drips look like a fringe, not liquid.
3. Add a puddle under the longest drips, a flat oval with a wavy edge, plus one or two loose drops falling toward it.
4. Outline everything with the fine-liner and fill with marker, leaving a narrow curved sliver of white paper on the left side of each drip as a highlight. A white gel pen restores a highlight the marker covered.
5. Shade with pencil along the right side of each drip and under the right edge of the puddle.

Melting letters are among the easy drawing ideas that go straight onto a birthday card or a poster title: write the word in block letters, then let the bottom edge of each letter run.

Why an illusion looks flat, and how to fix it

Prop the finished drawing up and look at it from across the room. At that distance, one line spaced wider than its neighbors, an arch that kinks, a fuzzy marker edge or a leftover pencil mark stands out more than at arm's length, and any one of them can make a bulge or a tunnel read as flat.

Uneven spacing is the most common fault on the hand and the grid, and it makes the surface look lumpy. Mark the spacing on both page edges before drawing, then connect the marks. Fuzzy edges mean the paper is too absorbent for the marker; switch to Bristol.

Frequently asked questions

Who are the best-known op art artists?

Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely are the names most closely tied to op art, the 1960s movement that used geometric forms to create optical effects. The Tate's op art glossary entry credits Vasarely as one of its originators. The Museum of Modern Art's 1965 exhibition The Responsive Eye, which included both, brought the style to a wide American audience.

Why do optical illusion drawings seem to move?

Researchers still discuss the full explanation, but one widely cited factor is that your eyes never hold perfectly still. Small, constant eye movements shift a high-contrast pattern of fine lines across the retina, and the brain reads the shifting edges as shimmer. Thin stripes shimmer more than wide ones.

Can kids make trippy drawings?

Yes. The 3D hand and the melting smiley are popular elementary art class projects. For the youngest children, rule the background lines yourself so they can focus on drawing the arches, and let them trace jar lids instead of using a compass, since its point is sharp.

Can you make trippy drawings with colored pencils?

Yes, though the result is softer than marker. Pair strongly contrasting colors, such as dark blue against yellow, or set complementary colors like red and green side by side so their shared edges appear to vibrate. Press firmly or layer several coats so each cell reads as solid color rather than a grainy tint.

How do you draw a trippy background?

Draw a simple shape, such as a star or a heart, near the center of the page. Trace a second outline about 1/4 inch outside it, then keep echoing the shape outward until the lines reach the page edges. Fill alternate bands with black or a repeating color sequence.

Once the hand works, apply the same rule to lettering. Write your name in tall block letters in pencil, rule lines across the whole page 1/2 inch apart, and arch each line upward wherever it crosses a letter, as you did over the fingers. Ink the lines and erase the outlines, and the name rises off the page. Next, combine two techniques on one sheet, such as a melting smiley at the center of a bullseye: ink the bullseye first, then let the drips hang over its rings.