Oleg Shupliak analysis

I've never done an analysis of a piece that has been turned to illusion but this one by Oleg Shupliak really caught my eye. For one he suggests the contours of the head by the shape of the clouds on the left and the bush on the right but I noticed that this image not only has Leonardo Da Vinci in the image but also the Mona Lisa itself positioned almost like a third eye of Leonardo.

There seems to be some sort of story behind this as a monk or a man in a black cloak lectures or points us to a young man or woman sitting alone on a stump while a second Leonardo watches from the bottom right. I honestly dont get what the characters on the screen should be representing outside of the illusionary forms of da vinci and mona lisa, however I do notice that it is near a river bank and perhaps this is a reference to something else da vinci related since he did often work as a civil engineer as well as a painter.

The figure on the right also composes the darkest value in the image and adds a hard contour to the face, but I would assume these are all irrelevant figures, but they do offer a dream like interpretation. Da vinci may be looking at his muse who is pointing the way to the pineal glad represented as Mona Lisa. The darks of his eyes are suggested by the negative space created between the buildings of the city and the mountain ranges that overlap.

He also makes effective use of  the darker green values on the bottom left of the composition.
It looks like there are also other figures perhaps these are da vinci himself meditating on top of the mountains at various times in his life as they recede to the right. The rocks are pink flesh like tones, which blend in well with the figure in the bottom right. If they were dramatically different colors or values for that matter they would be taking attention off the illusion.

Here is the self portrait that he does this from and we see that he pretty much sticks to the contours of the face in many areas to make sure it looks like him. For example the mountain range and tree lines creates a similar shape around the eye as the contours under his eye do. We also see the lines on his face are represented as the rock the person sits on.

The person's butt and the shadow it creates on the cushion underneath is the proper way to show the lighting and the shadow shapes present on the face of da vinci. Since it creates the shadow shape but also leaves enough space to create the light shape that gives his nose definition and dimension.

Color wise it looks like green is used almost as a transitional color between the different colors used in the mountain ranges of the face. Without these touches of green it would feel flat in terms of color and it would also lose a lot of color variety and these colors are sometimes looser in their edges so they are a great transition. For example you see some of the green carry over into the mountain range and the winding road in front of the man sitting.

The Mona Lisa itself sits in the middle of the image like an epiphany.  The green of the bushes box her head in perfectly while the negative space created by the mountain carves out the facial features of the Mona Lisa. Overall a great piece with a lot of nice touches, but it doesn't feel as intentional in its elements as it could be.