I think last week I set this up as a one-to-one comparison of the same color scheme under different drawings. That was too ambitious because I don’t have the time to go back to the old one(left side) and color it in like fashion as the final(right side). BUT I think this will work as a comparison of time, what a page looks like in the middle of coloring and what it does at the end.

On the left side, you see a high contrast of three basic colors, blue, purple, yellow essentially. I usually start off with high contrasts for the whole page, each panel having some touch of each color, this provides uniformity to the page. After which I begin to harmonize certain panels into color families. If you look on the right side you could generalize panels 1-5 and 8 as being blue, 6-7 being green. But within those two families, there are many hues. The impact color in 6-7 is equally yellow and green, and the resting colors that make these pop are warm red-browns. Reds in the other panels become the impact color, the setting sun, the lit cigar, even the flow flakes get the pale red touch, while the resting colors are blue and purple and even a little green, though I’m sure it would look grey when on a blank white paper.

The hero of my journey into coloring this book really has been color holds on what was originally pure black. They allow a depth of field while still being graphic and readable. Graphic subtlety has been my long-standing stylistic goal within comics. The marriage of these two opposing forces has produced a significant way of painting my drawings. A clear mystery is what Joe Death is all about.

Come at me in the comments if you disagree or want to add something from your perspective as a reader or creator. Thank you for reading and sharing!