Anamorphosis is an unconventional way of viewing an object. The three essentials for viewing this to give a meaningful picture are the eyes by which we see, the object which is to be seen, and the medium (reflecting) in which the meaningful reflection is seen. The object could be any thing in any dimension, the medium could be any thing like a plane surface, a curved surface, opaque or transparent or reflecting medium etc.. In brief, any distortion which gets regular and undistorted figure when seen through an appropriate medium, is an Anamorphosis.

Anamorphosis - a science

Anamorphic art involves a lot of physics and mathematics. A lengthy complex formulae and lot of calculations are done to make a particular picture. When a portrait is to be painted then the application of these formulae and calculation play intensive role. Basically to draw a picture, one needs to find out points pixel by pixel out of billion pixels on the canvas along with the locus of the each pixel from one point to another point. Any geometrical figure can be used as a reflecting surface like cylindrical, spherical, conical etc where the reflection is direct and can be viewed by human eyes from a finite distance and at a particular angle.