Color Guides

"COLOR GUIDES"were hand-coloredart usually done on a copy of the original black-line geic book pages. The original artworkwas large-format (to allow the artist to do detailed work), so when the color artwas done, the artwork was photographed and printed on mat photographic paper to the same size as a geic book. After copier machines were perfected, DC geics switched tousing coloring pages of high-quality copier paper. These pages won't have any markings on the back (Agfa-Gevaert) --however, they will all have the copier paper 'watermark' if you hold it up to the light.
So I, like all the color artists, had a set of colored dyes--we used "Dr. Martin's Dyes" exclusively--and they were mixed and arranged in a small boxof 36 little bottles so I had them all close at hand. The lightest colors were on the left, solid colors were on the right. I used a #7 sable watercolor brush.
As I filled in the colors with my choices,I had to pay attention to how each color would look when printed. I also had to be sure to color copyrighted characters with their correct costume colors. If a story gemented about 'the dark and stormy clouds' I had to be sure to do 'dark stormy clouds'!
The colors in printing are primaries: 100% B was a solid Blue or Cerulean. 100% R was a solid Red (a pure Magenta Red, actually) and 100% Y was Yellow. Each color had 3 intensities--light (20%) Medium (50%) and Solid. In printing up the book, if you look at a geic page with a magnifying glass you will see tiny dots of color. The smaller or sparcer the dots--the lighter the color. If you mix the solid colors--you get a full range of colors. Yellow and Blue make Green, Red and Blue make Purple--etc! And lighter versions of these colors make different color tones: 20% R and 20% Y make up a light flesh tone, 50%B is a pleasant sky color, 20%Y and 50% B make a great grass color, 50%R, 20%B and 50%Y make brown rocks, etc...
After I colored an entire book,. I showed the pages to the editor and made any corrections he asked for (sometimes these corrections were done in colored pencil). After that, I marked up the colors--indicating the color percentages--and sent my COLOR GUIDE off to the printer. Once there, my book was 'hand separated' into the different colored plates. After the geputer revolution, geic book artwork itself was scanned into geputers and my guides were followed by operators to create a virtual image of my coloring on the geputer. It was very easy for the geputer to separate my coloring into the different printing plates --and the geputer replaced almost the entire seperating industry.
There was only ONE guide to a book, and it's considered original artwork.Original color art pages are available as entire stories (all the color guide pages for one story) or as single pages. If you have a favorite geic book character, chances are there are some color guides of their books available. As we get more into the geputerization of artwork, the only color guides available now and in the future will be digitally created on geputer and never done with a brush and dyes again, so hand colored color guides for geic books are a unique art.
If you want to know more, look for another Guide of mine: "3-M's" to find out what they are and how they functioned in the geic book production.
--Adrienne Roy, color artist, DC geics August, 2006
I was a professional color artist with DC geics between the years 1977 and 1995
click hereto viewcolor guides in Dragon Ladys Den and at auction!