What's the best way to color a dark/evening scene?

[ButterflyEmpress]

I have a few scenes in my comic that take place in evening/night. I prefer to darken the colors to fit the lighting instead of adding an opaque layer of black. Like here (top two panels are early evening, while bottom is day).
The first time I tried I didn't get the colors dark enough so I ended up adding a black overlay anyways. Seen here

I usually try to stick with creating dark colors. Is it considered cheating to add a black opaque overlay? Does it make it look weird to do so or does it not matter?

[Daknight]

Instead of just a opaque layer of black try duplicating the color layer (if they are more than one, make a combine one duplicate) and play with the HUE there to make the colors darker and so on. I don't think any method use is cheating at all. They all offer different result is all.

[AVXP]

Try using blue instead of black.

There's a trick in movies called "day for night" where you shoot the scene in daylight and use filters to make it appear to be night time. Movies shot at night tend to have tons of grain and it's hard to get a (crushed) totally black color and still maintain enough detail to see what's going on.

In your case, you're basically adding a 'filter' on top of your normal work.
I would try blues and purples and finally lower the contrast on the overall image.
And if not contrast, the saturation. You don't see vibrant colors in the near-dark.

[indigodrawing]

Try using a colour other than black. Dark blue, purple, etc are quite popular for creating a night-time mood without obliterating all the detail. Also, try reducing the saturation. Colour vision doesn't work in the dark so you'd expect a dark scene to be a lot less colourful.

[droidmonkey1]

Try to put a blue/dark blue color layer and play with blending mode and opacity, also try to chose dull colors.
try to add a little bit of grey to your base colors.

[ButterflyEmpress]

That sounds pretty cool. I never thought of using blue. I always thought black/gray had to be the way to go. I'll try that next time

[ghostmaya]

I use indigo then sepia effect

[monotone_ink]

Though opaque overlays are handy, you shouldn't entirely rely on them to make scenes look like they're set in the evening - rather, you should focus on learning which colours to use when painting said scenes.

One tip that many have already mentioned is that you should use colours that lean more towards bluish or purple colours, as they are very prominent during the evening or the dusk.

For example, the first two panels of your first link - while you may have attempted to seem darker - is difficult to parse as an evening scene, as bluish colours aren't very present within the scene. This is something you can fix up with just a colour correction filter, like I have done so here:

As you can see here, just by pushing the colours towards more bluish colours, the impression of evening in the scene is a lot stronger.

Another consideration you'll want to have during evening/dusk scenes is that there is less contrast on the objects depicted in the image:

As seen in the above examples, while tree surfaces are feathers are generally known to be very detailed things to paint, the fact that their many textures are cast under darkness and melded together serves to push the idea of these scenes being set sometime in the evening.

Good luck, I hope you find your way.

[Pandastrophic]

There are several variables you need to consider, I like using multiply and overlay layers in my art a lot and I think they're especially useful in comics. I think several people have mentioned using darker colours that lean more towards purple/blue, I'd use those colours and set the shadow layer to multiply.

If you want it to look more believable then where is your lighting? even darker evening scenes need to have some sort of light direction, they're not in a pitch black area right? Make sure you have your light source decided on and don't be afraid to exagerate it.

I used your base colours with a multiply layer for shading and an overlay layer for lighting. These are a bit messy but it's just to explain what I mean better.

This is a little darker, (I'm assuming they're in a park and since there are people skating around there might be some light from streep/park lamps.)

[Daknight]

That looks nice...I might use this concept style for future nights scenes. I also agreed the light is what sells the night scene nicely. The high contrast of light area with dark makes it stand out nicely.

[ButterflyEmpress]

Oh wow! That looks a lot better! The top one was the way I was trying to get it to look. I never really thought too much about the lighting, I was so focused on making it look late that I neglected it. When working on my comic, I suddenly realized that I had a ton of night/evening scenes written in my outline. Thanks for the advice!

[ButterflyEmpress]

I see. I never considered the contrast of objects in different lighting before. Thanks!

[Pandastrophic]

@ButterflyEmpress Yes lighting adds so much more to the scene! and it's not just there to make the setting more realistic but you can make it really help convey the emotions of the scene better.
This is indoors in the dark but there is light coming from the window outside and it's done with the same technique as before, the panel feels a lot different without the lighting.

When it comes to colours I love experimenting with them and I try to make them different to every scene but usually in evening scenes it's warm colours like brown or orange especially earlier evening. Night settings I use with dark blue. If you're going for a style like this avoid using blacks or greys, even if you want a more grey tone to the shadows use a low saturated blue or purple. Greys make other colours look bad.

Also when you're in any real life setting pay attention to the lighting and the colours and maybe take some reference photos too, it's really helpful.

Made this if it helps: