Painting and drawing constitute the best graphic elements of Paleolithic cave art, with both engravings and to a lesser extent sculpture. However, it often happens that paintings, which could have been spectacular, appear discreet, even evanescent, notably because of poor conservation conditions. Painting is a technique of addition of pigments, therefore, it is inevitably more fragile than engraving and sculpture which deal with subtraction. These fragmentary images become unintelligible, they are misunderstood, when they aren’t simply invisible to the visitor’s eyes, even specialist ones. Their disappearance deprives us of some of the symbols and clues to paleolithic activities – some of which were probably ritual – that took place in the caves. But it happens sometimes that this color still remains as vestiges, protected under veils of calcite or hidden in their folds. Offering color its real place, on the walls, in connection with other graphic entities, constitutes today a prerequisite to the transdisciplinary study of the caves iconographic devices, inserted in their archaeological, geological, geomorphological contexts, etc. This is what we have attempted to do in two neighboring caves, very famous in the history of science and recognition of prehistoric cave art, Font-de-Gaume and Combarelles I in les Eyzies (Dordogne). These two caves open in a massive Coniacian sandstone cliff on the left bank of the Beune valley, tributary of the Vézère river. The Font-de-Gaume cave was open with a diaclase oriented north-west/ south-east which that gave birth to the Access Gallery and to the Main Gallery up to the Final Diverticule at 120 m from the entrance. The ceiling reaches variable heights, from 1.60 m to 3.80 m in the Access Gallery and in the deep parts of the Side Gallery, when it’s up to about 15 m in the Main Gallery. The width of the network also varies from 1.50 m to 3 m with several narrowings due to concretions, including, at 60 m from the entrance, the Rubicon which separates the Access Gallery from the Main Gallery. Three galleries open on the right wall of the cave. The first one (Vidal Gallery), 35 m from the entrance, is twice bent, and is about twenty meters long. It opens outside on the escarpment that borders the valley and does not shelter any decoration, at least in the current state of its conservation. The second (Prat Gallery), about 50 m from the entrance, starting from the antechamber of the “Rubicon” and is also about 20 m long. The third gallery (Lateral Gallery), 75 m from the entrance, is nearly 50 m long and develops perpendicularly to the Main Gallery, from the Crossroads sector. On the left wall, at the end of the second part of the Main Gallery, the small alcove of the Cabinet of the Bisons precedes the Terminal Diverticule which is 11 m long. The Combarelles I cave corresponds to a single gallery of 250 m long, 0.60 to 1.50 m wide and 1.50 m high on average. It is bent several times, defining the different sectors of ornaments. At its end, the network divides into two opposite galleries, one leading to active levels and the other to the recently discovered Combarelles III sector, also decorated. Font-de-Gaume and Combarelles I were discovered almost simultaneously in September 1901. Their revelation contributed to prove the authenticity and the Paleolithic antiquity of the cave art. The Font-de-Gaume cave is famous for the quality of its engraved, drawn and painted works, sometimes in polychromy, and for the majesty and the support integration of its bison, mammoths, horses, reindeer, deer, ibex, aurochs, rhinoceroses, undetermined animals, etc, arranged in long processions on the walls of the Main Gallery and of the Final Diverticule, amassed on the curved walls of the Cabinet of the Bisons, or scattered in the Crossroads and in the first meters of the Lateral Gallery. According to the approximate counts published to date, the Font-de-Gaume cave system is rich of at least 220 representations. To this should be added 143 painted and engraved entities located in the Access Gallery near the entrance. Our initial work in progress has allowed us to add to this corpus nearly 500 new graphical entities (animals, motifs, signs, isolated features, discrete engraved and/or painted marks, vestiges of colored matter, etc.) in the two sectors recently studied, i.e., the Prat Gallery (178 entities) and the deep sectors of the Lateral Gallery (approximately 300 entities). At Combarelles I, the corpus counts to date about 530 graphic entities, mostly engraved. The bestiary is largely dominated by horses (141). Humans (55) and bovines (42), mainly bison (38), are also frequent. The bestiary is completed by mammoths (24), deer (21), bears (9) and some rare animals. The signs are numerous (69). In addition to the innumerable animal, human and geometric engravings that occupy a large part of the two walls of the deep sectors of the gallery, numerous colored traces, somewhat neglected by previous researchers, have been the subject of our specific study. At Font-de-Gaume, our research focused on the lesser known sectors of the cave. Rapidly studied by H. Breuil and reputedly poorly decorated, these areas have yielded dozens of new graphic entities previously unnoticed. Where the new mammoths, horses and bison come to reinforce the classical cave bestiary, numerous human or animal “masks”, distributed on stalagmitic columns, changed our per-ception of its art. To the figurative representations, signs and masks, is added a multitude of traces, marks and colored red or black spots listed in the two galleries studied, as well as in the unique gallery of Combarelles I. Beyond an indispensable inventory, the typology of these colored traces must be better defined. This is a category of parietal remains that may be hold of symbolic and ritual origin. The colored traces at Combarelles I are essentially black. Nearly 200 entities have been counted. Far from being anecdotal elements, they are now directly related to the engravings, especially animals, offering a new vision of the decor of this cave. Black serves as a sketch for the location of an animal, enhances the fundamental characteristics or accompanies other congeners barely sketched. With the support of new image processing applications (DStretch©J. Harman in particular), color finally finds its rightful place in these two cavities. Thanks to it, we can better perceive the decor conceived by the artists and we get a little closer to their symbolic reality.