Birding and creating comics while colorblind

At my favorite birding spot.

My love of bird watching has always been paired with my desire to illustrate them. Not to brag, but I grew up in a family that owned multiple birding guides and reference books. So when not being called over to the porch window to witness a massive flocking of Evening Grosbeaks (my Dad still talks about this), I'd often be drawing my favorite birds from these books. Birds I saw in my central New York backyard like chickadees and nuthatches, to birds I'd hope to see one day like the Painted Bunting and Steller's Jay. In fact, in my mid 10's I began a side-hustle (I also was shoveling driveways) where I'd draw my neighbor's favorite birds for a crisp $5. I was drawing bills to pay the bills. But since I didn't have any bills I just bought X-MEN comics.

Speaking of genetic mutations (please note: amazing segue), behind my love of birds was always the pestering problem of my color blindness. As a whole, "color blindness" is a pretty vague term to a not uncommon condition. Worldwide about 7% of men and .05% of women have some form of colorblindness. Simply put it's "it's the inability to distinguish certain colors." Most people who are colorblind have difficulty distinguishing between red and green. This makes greens, yellows, oranges, reds, and browns all appear similar (American GOLDfinch? No. American ORANGEfinch!) Others like myself also have difficulty distinguishing between blues and purples, pinks and greys, and reds and blacks. My colorblindness has made both properly identifying birds and illustrating them a challenge. BUT, there are workarounds.

Even though the color of a bird is such a huge indicator of its species, I've learned there are plenty of other ways to place them when color is a challenge. Body shape and size, sound and song (is it singing chickadee-dee-deeeeeee? It's probably a Chickadee), location and habitat, beak size, how they eat, what they eat, personality, and in-flight silhouette. For example, look at ravens and crows - two of my favorite birds that people often mix up. On the surface, they both look like big black birds. Color isn't helpful here. But there are still so many ways to tell them apart. Crows are big, ravens are BIG. Crows have smooth neck feathers, raven neck feathers are having a party. Crows are social birds, ravens are not. In-flight, crows have fan-shaped tails while ravens have wedge-shaped tails. Crows wear their beak, ravens are worn by their beaks. Crows go "caw caw caw", ravens look directly at you and go "CROAK!" and you pee a little bit. So even without color, we can still tell them apart. :)

Illustration-wise, when I'm working as a digital artist on my weekly animal-fact webcomic Zoodraws, I'm fortunate to be able to sample any color on my desktop and immediately know the RGB values (or the intensity of the color as an integer between 0 and 255 for Red, Green, and Blue). I do this by selecting the invaluable Eye-Drop tool and then simply clicking on any part of the image that I need to know the true color of. Nearly every image editing software program has the Eye-Drop tool (it's even included in good ol' Microsoft Paint), and that includes my program of choice, Photoshop. As you can imagine it's incredibly helpful: What color is the Indigo Bunting? Well, it's 24, 104, 210. Scarlet Tanager? A beautiful 234, 51, 9. Painted Bunting? Ughh... I want to keep this story under 1,000 characters.

Even for artists who aren't using a digital medium, there are ways to instantly know the exact color values of the world around you. Free smartphone apps like Color Grab by Loomatix or Pixolor by Hanping will give you the true color value and name of anything you point them at. (Bonus: you get to learn some really fancy color names.) Technology has been a big factor in helping me create the art I want to see and helping me properly use and identify colors for those who might enjoy it.

And there's always option 2: I ask my wife.

A field guide (or even a Christmas tree ornament) help me figure out what colors to use in my comics.

I love Painted Buntings because every color is a winner!

A screen shot of the Color Grab app, with the RGV values at the top (and some fancy color names too, sometimes!).