Why I Work Almost Exclusively in Black & Grey

People ask me all the time if I'll do colour. The answer is rarely — and when I do, it's deliberate. Black and grey isn't a limitation. It's a discipline.

Colour is a shortcut. You can use a saturated red to draw the eye, a bright yellow to create contrast. In black and grey you've got none of that. You have to earn every bit of depth through technique alone. That forces you to be a better artist.

There's also the longevity argument. I've seen colour tattoos on ten-year-old skin that look like watercolours left in the rain. Black and grey, done right, ages into itself. The contrast softens, the tones blend, and it becomes something different — not worse. Just older.

The work I'm most proud of doesn't rely on colour to tell you where to look. The composition does that. The values do that. When someone squints at one of my pieces and it still reads, that's when I know I got it right.