How do I color when I hate coloring?

[elyss]

I used to do nothing but black once upon a time, but weird teen me thought I had to ditch it to 'diversify my style's so I've lost what skills I had in that regard unfortunately. Though as my art is now, I'm not sure if teen me was completely wrong on that account.

[Iris-Grimoire]

I've got one more recomendation for different types of monochrome as an inspiration - Banquet is a webcomic that goes for high constrast black and white. The early pages use very little toning, but even the recent ones are very uniform with the focus being areas of white framed by black, allowing for really cool composition.

BANQUET | Tapas

[azzy-m]

Actually - I think maybe you should go monochromatic? Like, I almost never see monochromatic comics - I usually see black-and-white/grayscale or fully-colored comics - and when I do it looks pretty nice!

(PS I hate the act of coloring too, mostly because it takes me forever.)

Maybe I should go monochromatic too? Hmm....

[potatogirl]

(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)

[revisionstudios]

What about coloring makes you hate it? It's possible you haven't found an efficient way yet or a style that you actually like, or just that you haven't built the skill so it's frustrating. Usually if I'm coming up on something in my comic that I hate or feels tedious, I ask myself "How can I make it fun?" and that can get me through because I've reframed it in my mind.

Like many people said, you don't have to pigeon hole yourself into doing it a certain way, but I also wouldn't avoid it just because it's hard. Hard things get easier the more you do them, and it's worth improving other skill sets. Just don't push yourself so far that you don't feel enjoyment from it anymore.

Also, you don't lose skills. You may be rusty doing B&W but you'd pick it up quickly if you tried again! Besides, those skills should inform your coloring too, you still need values in your colors haha. It's a foundational skill--they're not separate.

[elyss]

I usually follow the 'make it fun/efficient' method as well. I even took a class on 3D modelling to make drawing backgrounds more interesting and easy. You're right that I haven't found a color style I'm head over heels for yet, but that's mostly because I find the act of coloring uninteresting. I'm not bad at coloring; it's just a process I find tedious and repetitive in a way that I don't feel for any of the rest of the comicing process.

[elyss]

Monochrome can be so beautiful when done right!

[Pandastrophic]

I also agree with @revisionstudios
What EXACTLY do you hate about colouring?
Is it filling in the base colours? is it having to pick the colours? etc. When you start to pin point what exact technique you don't like you'll be able to tackle colouring (or even greyscale) from a different angle. There are methods used in colouring that you'll also end up using in monochrome and greyscale too so pinpointing what techniques/methods aren't fun is a good way to start exploring style more even if you don't end up going for a coloured comic.

Like for me, I love colouring but there are types of colouring that I don't like and certain steps that I thought I had to do in order to colour something. Like I thought I had to do flat colours... flat colours have always been the step I hated the most in colouring because it's the most boring, precise and tedious. So I decided to not do it at all, now I do all the colouring aspect of the comic mostly on the same layer (with seperate layers for direct shadows, lighting, lineart, etc) but like the colouring for the background and characters are all on the same layer and it looks kinda painty and a little messy when you zoom in, but the process is much more fun for me.
I only managed to come up with this style because I spent a lot of time testing out all sorts of colouring techniques and timing how long it took me to finish the tester page.

(I have process of colouring a panel so if you'd like to see that let me know)

[Eightfish]

Yeah!

Sometimes being lazy and trying to get rid of things you hate in your process can lead to you developing your own unique style.

Like Panda there's one part of comic making I never really liked- making precise, smooth lineart. So I used a loose, sketchy style for my comic and chose a fuzzy pen so it would look intentional. And people seen to actually like it, saying my art looks calming and unique and fits the tone of the story!

So who knows, maybe you hating coloring will lead to you developing a technique that makes your comic look unique.

[Excessive_sauropod]

For bits I find boring, I do them whilst listening to a podcast or audio book.