A prehistoric cave painter utilized a bulge on the wall to be the body of an animal, Leonardo da Vinci claimed to see whole battle scenes go down on mold stained walls, tea-leaf readers divine the future based on the shapes created by the leaves found at the bottom of the seeker’s cup, Rorscach based a psychoanalytic tool on the resemblances recognized in inkblots, children the world over point out the resemblances in the skies formed by clouds, international news agencies regularly feature a story of someone who has found a resemblance (both striking and vague) that is either not man-made or inadvertantly man-made found in such media as rocks, clouds, stains, food, etc., and a new field based on resemblances in nature’s patterns at the intersection of science and design is Biomimicry. Hidden inside every peanut is a feature that resembles an old man’s head complete with hood and beard. By carving a body out of the peanut it gave the breath of life to the character I call the Old Man in the Peanut. This quintessential example, along with The Peanut Paradigm, introduces Abstract Extraction and formalizes this way of seeing with terminology, past examples, and practice – by way of staring at scribbles and drip paintings, looking for resemblances and then fleshing out the representational art with color and shading.
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