This is not a disease (and aren’t we all tired of talking about that!) Pareidolia describes what we do when we look at, say, clouds for instance, and see faces, or animals or just about anything that isn’t really there. We let our imagination take us away.

Artists use pareidolia in their work – famous artists like DaVinci, Giotto and Holbein (try Googling “pareidolia and artists” and you’ll be amazed). To be honest, I didn’t realize exactly what I was doing at first. I just liked the idea of taking my paintbrush, doing some random washes and then seeing what I could make out of them. Then I found out it’s kind of a thing, and also very fun. Here’s a few from the Daily Drawings collection.