Color Blind.

One of the reasons I draw in black-and-white is that my brain does not draw in color.  It’s not the only reason.  I love black-and-white art, whether it’s in comics or illustrations or photography.  There’s just something about black-and-white that speaks to me, and I’m the most comfortable expressing myself in that (lack of a) color scheme.  But I’ve also dabbled in color art, and my brain just doesn’t wrap around it.

It’s not that I can’t see color.  I see it just fine.  I’m moved by vibrant colors and expressive use of a color palette.  The great Moebius’s use of color in his comics and illustrations was an art form in and of itself.  But whenever I sit down to think up a color scheme for my own work, my brain just short-circuits.  When I sit down to draw, my brain doesn’t “see” colors.  If it does, it’s only bright primary colors.  I’ve come to embrace my newfound love of yellow.

I used to help Garth with flatting the colors of STAR POWER comic pages, but he eventually asked me to stop.  It was meant to help lighten his workload, but he came to realize that he was spending just as much time correcting my color choices as he was doing it all himself from start to finish.  He also criticized my constant use of yellow (see above), which has since become a running joke between us.

Maybe it’s because I spent much of my childhood and teenage years drawing with only black ballpoint pens in the margins of my school notebooks.  Maybe it’s because my grandfather worked for a photography magazine whose annual collections featured gorgeous black-and-white photography.  Maybe it’s because I discovered manga in the early-to-mid 1990s, before it broke into the mainstream, and that “different” style spoke to me in a way the American comics of the time didn’t.  Or maybe it’s a combination of all those things.

So that’s why my comics here are black-and-white instead of the usual colors you’re used to.  The Star Power Holiday Special and The Heavy Metal Showdown would look very different if I colored them, but probably not for the better.