Limited colour palettes for comics!

nellie_warren 2021-01-04 02:23:56 UTC #1

When starting my comic, I was inspired by Isabel Greenberg's work. Isabel Greenberg is a graphic novelist who uses a limited colour palette in her comics, and so I decided to do the same with my own comic, To the Touch. I use greyscale for the main characters and limited colour for the background and shading. This is the palette I created for myself to use:

and here's a page from my comic for reference:

I'm interested to see if any other comic creators use a limited colour palette with their work - if you do so, comment below with your palette and a link to your comic. Here's mine:

VibrantFox 2021-01-04 03:25:06 UTC #2

I tend to bounce back and forth between "normal" color palettes and limited palettes but for my slice of life series Gekkering I'd pick random palettes that fit the mood of the comic and use that to color

I'll usually pull from sites like these:

but it serves as a fun challenge to figure out how best to use the palette without things feeling muddy or hard to read

Puck 2021-01-04 08:54:26 UTC #3

I really dig comics which are colored in one color and work only with value

jamelin 2021-01-04 16:48:43 UTC #4

For my comic I use only greyscale (actually screentones) which is very limited but I think not what you are thinking about.

For Illustrations however I have used limited colors a lot in traditional artworks. For the most part I just decided to only use like 9 markers or 2-5 colors for one drawing which still gives plenty of room to mix those

I newly discovered using something similar digitally. I take a color palette I found online (mostly those which are generated from photographs) and only use those colors and layer-effects like multiply, add or simple tranparency. This is a lot of fun and I think much easier than with the full colors available. Also, the result looks much more harmonic

Anithia 2021-01-04 22:00:10 UTC #5

I startet with a regular palette but with time i discivered that the colors fight each other, so i changed to a more limited palette.
I'ts still varied but it works very well for me
i dont have any images with me right now but you can see it with this

Check out "Flag thief (9)" from The echo's flower
on Tapas https://tapas.io/episode/1928129

Dialusion 2021-01-04 22:08:26 UTC #6

I prefer to use limited pallets for comics since I tend to not think in color and not having to worry too much about color is a time saver. I'm still experimenting, but I'm pretty set on keeping it limited. My usual plan is Black+White, Some shade of grey for skin tone and a loud color for contrast. Here's my ongoing series as an example.

adderfly 2021-01-06 16:28:50 UTC #7

Isabel Greenberg is one of my very favorite comic artists! I love her style and I love yours as well. I don't use a limited pallet for my whole comic, but certain episodes have a unique/limited pallet. All of my nighttime scenes/episodes are in my "night mode" color pallet, which is mostly purple-scale (not as limited a pallet as you are Greenbergs', but definitely with an intentional color scheme). I have plans for other limited pallet episodes as well, including a blue-scale underwater world and a green/cold/brown limited pallet deep forest sequence.

I've been subscribed to your comic for a while and was excited to see you post here! Here is an episode of my comic that is mostly in 'night mode' (after some daylight scenes at the beginning), and functions as a standalone story, if you're interested!

https://tapas.io/episode/1999972