I'm colorblind (artistically) (Patreon)

I like to say that I'm colorblind. No not in the literal sense where certain hue's blur together, and not in the racial sense where I act like a twat on the internet, no I mean artistically me and color have never been friends.

I can see color, and I have the capacity to color. However I often find the act of coloring, ruins my pictures because my brain is so hard wired these days to pick out the interplay between linework and contours. -- I tend to avoid texture in my work, hence why through my skilled use of curves, I've able to make characters seem so soft and weighty. Without the added detail of texture or color, your brain tries to make a 3D image out of the 2D it's given, and the result is something smooth. -- This works for me, but its also a major handicap tool-wise and for my engagement. For regrettably, a poorly drawn colored picture will always get more attention than a well drawn black & white picture.

But one other reason I dislike color is due to its reifying effect. To reify means to regard or treat (an abstraction) as if it had concrete or material existence. This is the act of "nailing down" something and eliminating the possibility of it ever being something else.

This is because color is a very important identifier in our brains. If were ever trying to find a car in a parking lot, you may not know the make, model, or its license plate, but most people should be able to pick out the red one. And similarly when you see a character with a color, that part of your memory that stores that information way, will do so with a strong association to the color. This is why you can be given an abstract set of colors and immediately recognize what character they are meant to represent.

With my characters I do have some vague intonations as to how they should be colored. Obviously as Ariana. Carlita is rubber ducky yellow. But then you have other characters of mine that have either never been colored, or have been colored so rarely that they can't be said to have a cannon color scheme at all.  

Once again, this hurts me, but anyone with an eye for detail will also realize how this has forced me to really push the expressiveness of my characters. To date, you can never say that two of my characters have looked the same, or like anyone else's existing characters. They're unique in this regard, which makes my style quite recognizable.

Though with all of this said, I don't hate color. In fact, I love a vibrantly colored pictures. And if I wasn't so under-practiced, you'd be seeing me color things a lot more often. Albeit not in the way that others might expect.

Along with defining characters, color can also invoke moods and emotions. This is is known and widely understood. But when I like to push this idea to the farthest degree by throwing conventional coloring schemes out the window in favor for whatever color invokes the emotion that I'm looking for. A practice that I call Arakism (Pronounced Ah-Roc-ism) named after the mangaka of Jojo's Bizzare Adventure, Hirohiko Araki. An artist who has the exact same outlook on this topic as me.

Obviously I'm a far worse artist, but you can see the same logic at play. Here I've drawn Vouge with pink hair. Does he actually have pink hair? I also gave him blue and green hair, so which is which? And the answer is that we have no way of knowing. However the symbolism for each color does make sense with context.

Pink is a very lively and flamboyant color, often associate with sweet things like fruit or cotton candy. When pink is used, we can very clearly see Vouge is showcasing a very playful demeanor.

Green contrast this, and gets close to being representational for the space policeman who are still trying to enforce the law and assert their dominance over Vouge, even as they sink into his ass to be assimilated. But look at hat happens in the 3rd panel...

Blue is used, and also for this and only this panel I fill in the background with pink. This is a psychological cue to show a turn within the scene. We as an audience can clearly see that the space police do not want to be assimilated, [sic] they don't want to be eaten. Yet after thinking about it briefly, Vouge tells them no. They will be assimilated. They will be eaten. There's no hope for them to escape, and moreover, Vouge doesn't care. -- The background is pink, and his speech bubble is still pink. This is because outwardly, he's still being playful. But in this one panel I colored him blue because situationally he's being very cold, cruel, and callous. He's icing the cops. 

And then in the final panel we see Green again. Not because he's absorbed the green space police, but because now Vouge is the authority figure in the picture. He's asserting his dominance and thus I've given him the color of dominance.

Now that you know all of this, doesn't it make sense as to why I'm reluctant to give my character's any fixed color scheme? For while its true I don't color enough to make this a big issue, I'm always thinking about these things when I draw. -- Those of you who attended the stream the other night and saw me drawing this picture of Jordan and Derrick merging to form Dr. Spiral should know that here I was seeing deep oranges, violets, and indigos, whereas here I was seeing white birthday frosting with tasty pinks and limes. 

But what what do you see?

Given that hardly any of artwork has color, I'd love for you to grab my artwork (or anyone else's if that's easier) and tell me what colors do YOU see within them.