Wednesday, June 12, 2013

The Ishirthara Test

Hi! A quick post today, I think.

Lately I've been super preoccupied with a summer science course that I'm taking. It's really interesting but a real black hole for time since there is a lot of reading and writing involved. But...but there's also illustration involved. Not necessary anatomical illustration (thought it could be for anyone interested), but more of any type of illustration you want to do to help make your research papers more interesting. I've been going with a more digital graphics type of concepts with my pieces. They haven't really been my usual style, but I thought it would be good to try new approaches.

Today I'll be sharing one of the pieces I did for my latest paper which was about colour-blindness, or more accurately "Colour Vision Deficiency" (CVD).

I call this illustration diptych "The Ishirthara Test", playing off the Ishihara test that are used to determine whether a person has CVD. It was inspired by a humorous story I heard from a red-green CVD affected individual who has troubles finding the right shirt out of their green and brown wardrobe. To stay faithful to the metaphor, for my colour palettes I picked out swatches from real Ishihara circles.


 
Left = Regular Vision        Right = What red-green CVD may look
This is simulation of vision with a red-green colour deficiency. Brown, tan and green hues can seen as variations of dull, olive green. But this also depends on the individual because CVD is quite a personal condition, with many potential variables.

And here's the sketch I started off with:
Oh yes, the illustrations are done in Illustrator. Pretty fun to do, though filling in all those circles took longer than I expected. But I think it would be interesting to do a bigger, more elaborate piece to bring attention to CVD.

While working on this essay I also came to wonder how good my colour vision is. It seems like it should be good since I'm an artist, right? So I took this Colour Test to find out. To my relief I had a perfect score! My eyes, though a touch near-sighted are fantastic at discerning hues. Yay!

Happy Wednesday! 

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