I'm nowhere near the type of artist that works well in color. I've been spending the recent part of my career putting special focus on clean linework. Now that I can say I've achieved some mastery over that, I thought I should try working with color and making it a tool rather than just a component of design. I refused to let go of all my lines but I kept it to a minimum focus in the center of the face.

I noticed that rich black lines may be too strong of a contrast with all the light colors so I lighted up the black into a gray tone to soften its appearance against the rest of the piece and let the colors really do all the work on your eyes.