This has made it functional for me. I'm using lcd_clear to manually draw everything and updated my colors as following.
// Data control
sendCMD(DATCTL);
sendData(0x00);
sendData(0x01);
sendData(0x02);
// 12-bit color definitions
#define GREEN 0xE0
#define RED 0x1C
#define BLUE 0x03
#define YELLOW 0xFC
#define TEAL 0xE3
#define PINK 0x1F
#define BLACK 0x00
#define WHITE 0xFF