Your images here look really nice! I agree that it is easy to quickly build a mess of colors. I think building up so you don’t make a mess of dense cloud of colors is a challenge and probably takes some practice. I’m trying to get better myself. Having some nice routines that you can return to and gradually morph between might be one way to deal with this. Naoto Hieda does a nice job of manipulating hydra in intentional ways that are sharp/precise. You could check out their videos and tutorials for some ideas.
There’s also nice ways to integrate hydra and p5 together! And Ted Davis has a nice interview with Processing on this. I also like this unique tutorial on text collage with p5 and hydra by nervous data.