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Materials |
MATERIALS
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Caveman often left stencils of their hands on the wall. They used hollowed out sparrow bones, or sticks to create tubes. He would then place his hand firmly against the wall and blow pigment over it with his mouth using the tube. Once the caveman took his hand off the imprint remained. The hands look very much like our hands today. Several prints have been found with parts of fingers missing, but nobody knows why this is. Paints were made by crushing minerals into powder and putting them onto damp surfaces, like rock after the rainy season. Sometimes the powder was mixed with wax or oil to make it stick to other surfaces such as hide, wood or bone. Powdered pigments were kept in hollowed out animal bones. Large animal bones were used as palettes when painting. Charcoal like this was used to create black for cave paintings Crushed rock and soil produced browns, yellows, reds and oranges, powdered charcoal produced black. A different rock called manganese produced the color violet, whilst chalk enabled the cavemen to use white. Greens and blues came from certain crushed rocks, but these rocks were very rare so they were only found in paintings in some parts of the world. Chalk like this was used to give white shading and color to cave paintings The paints were applied to the walls with fingers, or from primitive paintbrushes that had been made out of animal hair or sometimes feathers. Some colors may have been symbolic. Red, the most ancient color known to mankind, represented the blood of life. Black symbolized death, while white symbolized rebirth. Blue appeared on sexually related cave paintings, so may have had a sexual meaning. |
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