On Working in Black and White, Living in Colour

I work almost entirely in black and white.

Graphite, charcoal, conte, paper… erasure. Value instead of hue. Pressure instead of pigment. It’s a quiet practice, one that asks for patience and attention rather than spectacle. And yet, I live in a world that is anything but quiet.

When I step away from my drawings, colour rushes back in - traffic lights, grocery aisles, storefronts, skin tones, skies that refuse to be subtle. Other people’s paintings glow. Fabrics shout. Screens hum. The world insists on vibrancy.

Working without colour has changed the way I see all of it.

In the studio, black and white becomes a kind of translation. Without colour to rely on, I’m forced to notice structure: how light bends around a cheekbone, how shadow holds weight, how a single dark mark can anchor an entire composition. Every decision matters. There’s nowhere to hide. A value is either right, or it isn’t.

It’s a discipline that sharpens the eye.

But what I didn’t expect was how much it would heighten my experience of colour elsewhere.

Because when you spend hours immersed in greys, colour becomes a gift rather than a given. Red feels louder. Blue feels deeper. Green feels almost excessive in its generosity. I notice colour in the same way you notice sound after leaving a silent room - suddenly aware of layers, contrasts, relationships.

Looking at other artists’ work becomes a kind of wonder again. I’m not competing with colour on the page, so I get to admire it fully when I encounter it. I can marvel at how painters orchestrate hue the way I orchestrate light. I can appreciate colour as something expressive rather than something I must constantly control.

Black and white doesn’t flatten the world - it frames it.

It reminds me that colour is not the only carrier of emotion. That tenderness can live in a soft shadow. That drama can arrive through contrast alone. And paradoxically, by limiting my own palette, I’ve expanded my capacity for awe.

There’s something magical about moving between these two ways of seeing. About translating the vividness of life into quiet tones, and then returning to the world to find it glowing brighter than before. Black and white teaches me restraint. Colour rewards me with joy.

I don’t work without colour because I reject it. I work without it because it makes me fall in love with it all over again.