New paintings and regular art updates.
Glass bottles on a windowsill, crinkled glass window panes behind.
Seen last night at the Greyhound inn at Penkhull. Such a simple idea but effective. Now I’m seeing colours better, I’m noticing things like this. Everything seems to sparkle and shine. I’m so lucky to have had cataract surgery. I hope people who need it get it too.
Eye sheild
Shield safety
Safely keep
Keep eye safe
Can’t see much
But what I see
Is better
A little exhibition is coming up in September and I am not sure what, if anything, I can paint. My vision is quite odd now, a bit doubled, a bit blurred.
I’m thinking of possibly painting cats. Just some simple and gentle and nice! With a bit of character. Not a generic cat… Not a pretty cat, a growl tiger, curmugeonly, interesting cat… I don’t know, golden eyes? But first I need to fish some paints out!
I could see the window was blurry through my eye with my worst cataract and I wondered how to create an image of what it looks like? I took a photo through my bed sheet and it sort of worked. I also put it through a black and white filter because my sheet was pink. My eyesight isn’t as bad as this, but it does give an impression of what I imagine a really bad cataract would look like.
Have you ever noticed how eyes look behind glasses and how the glass catches the light?
I just watched an old film called “flight of the phoenix”. The actor playing an engineer wears glasses, but as it’s a desert location the sun is very bright. Every so often his glasses glint. But you can see it’s a flat surface, no curve on the glass. That means they are not assisting his vision. Also his eyes are a normal size behind the glass. He is clearly using them as a prop to indicate his intelligence.
You can tell how short or long sighted people are by looking at the faces through the glasses. Short sighted people’s eyes look smaller behind their glasses. Also if you look where the edge of their face sits behind the lens the face will appear to go inwards and not line up with the face edge above and below the glasses frame.
Long sighted people’s glasses look different. Their eyes look larger. The side of there face is wider behind the glasses. Almost extending out beyond the spectacles lens.
These amounts vary depending on how good or bad their eyesight is. I don’t know when I noticed all of this, but I think it goes back to seeing flat lenses in a film…
Blue seems turquoise these days. My cataracts have shifted my colour vision. I see it in every television programme. I noticed it a few months ago. I had thought it was because a special new colour had been chosen on fashion grounds. But now I’m pretty certain it’s me. Hope it will be sorted out if and when I have an operation. At least I am in good company with the famous impressionist Claude Monet.
Today I had a check up to see if I was suitable for cataract surgery. I went to a clean, bright, smart clinic. I had to have transport because I was not allowed to drive.
After a short wait and having read the booklet about cataract surgery I went to see the technician to have eye drops put in and then photos taken of my lenses. She also did a check of my eyes looking at an eye chart with and without a small grid that you had to try and focus through. I found I could see the chart better with it, less fuzzy. Finally they checked my blood pressure which was a bit high but the bottom figure was OK as I managed to relax.
A short wait and then I saw the optometrist. This time she checked my retina and also the pressures within my eyes that would indicate glaucoma. Everything was OK. Now I just have to choose when I have the operation as I have other things to deal with before I can get the first eye done.
Wish me luck. X
Had a ‘retinal migraine’ last night, an unnerving experience. I was reading subtitles on TV when they started to go blurry, then the edge of my vision started to sparkle and look jagged, hard to explain, so I’ve tried to draw it. Apparently according to my optician it’s not unusual, I should have covered one eye then the other. If it happens in both it’s an effect in my brain. It cleared up after 20 mins. (if just in one eye, then it may be a problem in one of my eyes).
Something caught her eye
Startled, she looked
Cat treats,
Her favourite
There on the screen
In front of her
Then gone, in a flash!
Disappointed
She washes and settles.
It’s not sound that gets her interest,
But vision.
If you see the face you might be experiencing Pareidolia. It’s one of my favourite things, I love finding faces or animals in or on other objects.
That’s what people did with the stars in the skies… They could see people or creatures and called them constellations. Some constellations are the basis of the signs of the Zodiac. Different civilisations had different myths and legends, so the combinations of stars creating them will be different depending on what part of the world you live in. Even the moon is seen as a boat when it is viewed from the equator and is waxing or waning, because it looks horizontal, not vertical. And what about the man in the moon? A face seen in the moons surface made up of the different craters and seas on it.
I think Pareidolia is really interesting. I read that it helped early people notice animals that might have been camouflaged without that skill. It’s more redundant now. But still there. So if you see faces in wallpaper or bunches of flowers Pareidolia is happening!
Mallaband-Brown