Colouring and Drawing Style Expanding Meaning in Issue 3 of We Stand on Guard

Colouring and Drawing Style Expanding Meaning in Issue 3 of We Stand on Guard

When reading through the 3^rd issue of We Stand on Guard, I found colourist Matt Hollingsworth’s work very symbolic to the plot. It added depth to Steve Skroce’s drawings and affected the way I perceived the story. The comic’s colouring aided in the understanding of both the setting and the character’s emotions.

McCloud discusses the history of colouring in Understanding Comics, and notes that colour has had a spotty history with the medium due to “commerce and technology”. In the beginning stages of comic’s colour was mainly limited to primary colours that resulted in flat-colour. Over time colouring became a preference where artists were able to utilize a more subjective palette. Due to this, colour became a primary role in comics and often worked to expand the overall meaning of the images and text. Colour expands meaning because it gives the reader more information and details to the plot. We Stand on Guard would not be successful without its use of colour because colour in this comic is used to add depth, express mood, and create realism.

The colouring of this comic is able to achieve tonal value. The strong use of gradients and colours that depict real life adds depth to the drawings, which gives the imagery a more realistic style.

             This set of panels really demonstrates the comics drawing style and colouring and shows how they impact each other to create meaning. When looking at the drawing style and relating it to McCloud’s analysis of cartooning, this comic’s drawing style can be deemed realistic. McCloud states that readers involve their own personas with abstracted and simplified characters. By reading a character as simply a human face, but not a specific face with unique characteristics the readers are able to inject themselves into the story. However, this is not the case for We Stand on Guard. If you look at just the line work of the female character she has some detail, but is still rather simple in style. By adding colour it completes her as a character because it adds definition. Her skin tone varies from other characters, her hair is highlighted creating texture, and her overall form is given depth from tonal value. By using colour in this way it makes the character more realistic and stops the readers from injecting themselves into the story. Instead of seeing themselves in the cartoon, they see an actual character. This changes the perspective of the story, instead of the reader being an insider they are an observer, which works with the plot of the comic. The reader is simply meant to observe how bad society can get.

                The top two panels also create high contrast with the bottom panel. The top two have a dark moody vibe from the colour palette. Both the shadows and highlights contain the colour green which washes over the whole panel. The use of this green wash darkens the imagery creating an eerie look that reflects the plot. The bottom panel create a high contrast because the dominant colours are light tones of blues. This contrast works to completely change the setting acting as a reveal to where the character really is, therefore making the bottom panel an establishing shot. This contrast in setting would not have the same affect without the use of contrasting colours. By having the colours strongly vary it expands the meaning of the plot and alludes to the difficulty of the character’s situation.

            Colour in this comic is also effective in expanding upon the characters personality and motive. In the top two panels it shows the main character being tortured with fire. Looking at the bottom panel it has a close up shot of her torturer. By having a glow of red from the fire reflecting upon the character it gives a hellish appearance, thus expanding on the characters true personality. The lettering in this panel also is also significant. The “AHHH” in the background adds to the look of evil, while the character stares blankly at the viewer as if to say “you’re next”.

             This set of panels shows how colour affects the setting of the comic. The dominant colour of the scene is blue. The shadows and highlights both are tinted with shades of blue. The colour blue itself usually tends to symbolize sadness, water, and cold. The blue colouring here shows that the characters are in a cold setting. From the imagery of the snow to its blue reflection on the trees it can be determined the climate is a cold one. If these panels were presented in black and white the reader might understand that the setting is cold from the imagery, but they would not actually get the feeling of coldness. Colour is an important aspect in this comic because it expands the meaning of the imagery.  

Blog post 2 on monthly comic, by Victoria Ghione