I never sketch using a single color for the entire pic because I get confused really easily which line is supposed to be which part and ink incorrectly. So to cope with how my brain works, I both sketch different parts in different layers (sometime up to 4 or 5 layers) and with different colors. Here's an example;
For the six figures, I sketched two on each layer, each layer with different color (brown/purple, magenta and green), the BG frame in orange and uniform in black. These layers are in multiply mode so when I want to focus on inking a certain part on a certain layer then I can just lower the opacity of other layers to make what I want to ink stand out.