Art and Colors

“A healthy human eye has three types of cone cells, each of which can register about one hundred different color shades, therefore most researchers ballpark the number of colors we can distinguish at around a million.”¹

Even with MD, art is a big part of my life

I spend a lot of time focusing on my art projects. What will the next creation be? Will I dabble in watercolors or acrylics today? Maybe a simple contrast of black and white would be fun? Colored pencils or ink? Should I use a stretch canvas or flat? Maybe keeping things simple with a mixed media paper would be the way to go.

Yes, a lot of time in my mind is spent on what is next on the art table. Through it all, I am looking to capture another moment with these myopic eyes of mine while I still can.

Leaning on others for help

I am constantly on alert looking for the next idea. The inspirations can be anywhere and everywhere, like on a trip to the neighborhood park or the local coffee shop. As I peer at the next potential subject, I often find myself checking to ensure what I am actually seeing.

I have been known to ask my accompanying husband or friend, "does that color look like red or blue or green to you?" I double-check the shadows and dividing lines to clarify what is actually there. Myopic degeneration may have blurred my subjects, but I continue to work around the challenges to attain my goal of creating art.

Distinguishing colors with my "good" eye

It is the vivid and bold colors that I strive for the most. Their clarity and distinctive hues are what catch my eyes in a subject, probably because I am noticing a subtle shift in my perception of them. I use my “good eye” to focus on the brilliant colors and then with both eyes, I can realize the gentle dumbing down of that same color.

It has been said that the “healthy” eye can distinguish around a million colors. That number is so amazing to me. Knowing that I have one eye that is not exactly “healthy” gives me pause. With one unhealthy eye working alongside a relatively healthy one (so far), where does this put me in the color-seeing world? Am I working at a fifty percent deficit, color-vision-wise?

Happy to have art as an outlet

The human brain is quite interesting to me. As I work to create my art, I am using an eye that is clearly compromised with blurry spots, wavy lines, and muted color perceptions, alongside a “good” eye that thankfully has not been affected.

Through an almost unrealistic process, I am able to paint, draw, sketch, and capture the image that I had set out to do. Captivating the approximate one million different assortments of colors and hues into one display of art, my chosen outlet has been an ongoing quest and I am so glad to see it.