The creative aspect of pareidolia became known in the 19th century with the practice of 'klecksography' - the art of making images from inkblots.

Writer Victor Hugo experimented with folded papers and stains by holding his quill upside down to use the feather-end as a brush. Another practitioner of klecksography, German poet Justinus Andreas Christian Kerner, published Kleksographien (1890), a collection of inkblot art with accompanying short poems about the objects that can be noticed in the images.

In 2000, British psychologist Richard Gregory renewed the association between pareidolia and creativity. He suggested that a reversed version of the Rorschach test - the psychological test where subjects' perceptions of inkblots are recorded and analyzed - might reveal creativity principles.

Recent studies found an association between a greater fluency and originality of performance in standard creativity tests and greater fluency and originality of pareidolias. Participants with a stronger interest in arts and music produced more original pareidolic drawings. This suggests that creative processes are involved in producing pareidolias.