Colors with eyes closed

On two occasions, in Croatia but also recently here in DK, I travelled in a bus (train) on a very sunny day. I closed my eyes and sat close to a window, facing the Sun. Heat was on, my lizards silent. On the other hand, the light was so strong that my eyelids were becoming transparent – the background with closed eyes seemed orange. Now and then trees or buildings appeared, shading the Sun, causing the orange to switch to darker, even black background, for shorter or longer time intervals. But when tree branches appeared on the horizon in a quick and random succession, as one can quickly open eyes and check, something remarkable happened. You would think that there would be the corresponding successions of dark-orange blips/twinkles in the closed domain? But no! Beautiful kaleidoscopic symmetrical patterns were appearing akin to high-order two-dimensional vibrational harmonics, like the Gibbs phenomenon in 2D. The back of the eyelids became a membrane of colors, drumming the beat of the branches above into distinctive, highly resolved (with minute features) spatial patterns of discernible lighter and darker spots, the lighter ones sometimes red or bluish, the darker ones always black. I remember noticing, after asking myself first, the change in patterns as shadows differently tickled.