Optical Illusion Cutting Board: Distorted Reality Aesthetic

This idea originated from a wooden toilet seat that my parents have at home

My toilet seat recently broke which sparked my inspiration to make a new wooden one for my apartment. Then I was thinking, how could I make this relate to the chosen aesthetic of reality distortion? I decided that making an optical illusion on the top of the seat similar to what my parents have with the lion (but directly on wood.) After doing research on optical illusions on wood, I found cutting boards with intricate illusions on them. This made me much more excited than the toilet seat and I happen to also need a new cutting board.

For actual Illusions, I want to keep it simple making some sort of illusion out of rectangle pieces on a grid. The illusion can be from different sized rectangles. Here are some images that I am taking inspiration from:

The 2 first images in the gallery represent a bulge and pinch illusion which I really love, The rest are just various illusions that I like the look of.

Alternate aesthetics that I think would be cool is a aesthetic which still might be classified into distorted reality because of the trippy pattern it makes

This might not be suitable for the cutting board but it would be a really cool toilet seat. Making the top of a toilet seat denim would be really cool also and much more feasible for the scope of this class. I am definitely pushing myself with an illusion cutting board but that is my goal, with this much creative freedom I need to take advantage of a fun and challenging learning experience that will come.

Another alternative would be a modern aesthetic cutting board. This would probably be a darker hardwood that is very sleek and simple.

It could be cool to incorporate the routed groove on the top. This cutting board is also pretty trippy with the pattern on top but still fits the modern aesthetic.

For the build process I will need to select 2 or more hard woods, preferably different colors. I can get these from consolidated hardwoods in Broomfield. After I get the wood, I will need to make several cuts on the table saw and lots of gluing till I get the desired illusion. After this I need to palm route the edges and a grove on top. Then I need to sand, and put a nice food safe finish on the whole thing. I also want to cut out a handle so I can hang the board in my kitchen.