Solving the Color Problem – Analog or Digital?

Color is its own beast. Regardless of a creator's chosen medium, technique, etc., color really has to be "solved" as its own problem.

I'm currently at something of a fork in the road with this, trying to feel my way into a method for adding color to my drawings that will make sense for me going forward.

Much of the art I enjoy making skews toward darker and more aggressive themes, so I've played with the idea of using muted, nearly monochromatic colors to express that imagery. The problem is, I don't particularly love muted colors, even as much as I've tried to convince myself I do in order to solve my color problem.

The other challenging factor is that I'm rusty as hell with color in physical media, having done virtually none of it since graduating art school almost a decade ago.

Growing up loving the vibrant, silky smooth digital color of Image Comics of the early '90s, most of my recent attempts to color my pen and ink drawings have been digital. But I believe there's value in embracing and executing color on physical media as well, and the results always have a significantly different vibe than when I approach color in Photoshop.

So, for now, I'm exploring both paths.

Here's an early effort combining watercolor with pen and ink, leaning into a color palette that is satisfying to me without worrying too much about whether it feels suitably grim. I suspect in time these colors may become even more saturated, perhaps in a deliberately hard contrast with whatever dark fantasy worlds the lines depict.

I'm also currently working on coloring a new drawing in Photoshop, and I'll share that soon. The goal for now is to develop both approaches simultaneously, allow them to each have their own flavor, and find which one works best for each completed drawing.

Time will tell if one method wins out over the other.