Ancent Cave Paintings.

The First Paintings were found in the Lascaux Cave, which was located in The Lascaux Wood in France, the paintings were discovered by some boys that were hunting and they came upon a hole in the ground that seemed to be the opening to a large cave so they later went back to the cave to see what was down there and they found paintings of large animals such as Deer, Bulls Oxen, Horses, and Rhinoceros. One of the paintings even showed a Bison getting killed by a spear.

There was a lot of work to be done to make their paintings look like what they look like. First of all they had to crawl into the caves with their animal fat light, which had to smell and be hard! Then they had to make the color and how they did that was they put red, brown, and yellow orches of iron but they also added the black from charcoal, they also sometimes used animal fat. To make brushes they took sticks and roughened the ends. That would be one method they also sometimes sprayed the paintings on.


They think the oldest painting was painted about 30,000 years ago and they youngest about 10,000 years ago. We do not know they were painted but I think they were painted to show what they had saw that day or what they believe. The paintings started with the Cro-Magnon which are Homo Sapiens who lived in Europe 40,000 years ago. The paintings were mainly of animals and how they were hunted.



Some Examples of the paintings are:









This painting is of a horse and it is one of many paintings that were found in the Lascaux Cave.







This painting was also found in the Lascaux Cave. The painting is of two
bulls and it also has a horses head at the top.







This Lascaux Cave painting is of a bull well a half of bull

The painters of these Lascaux Caves had many different techniques. Some of those techniques are that they would crawl on their hands and knees so they could go far into the cave to paint. To give the paintings dimension they would paint where the cave were not smooth. They would also use the techinques of gradation of value which is the slow transition between opposites, which is also known as the value between light and dark. How this is shown is through shading. The paintings were of different animals such as bulls, horses, bison, reindeer, and other wild animals. They would be outlined with charcoal and the painters would use yellows, reds, browns, and oranges. Another Technique they used was that they would use animal fat for lighting when they are crawling into the cave, and to see what they are painting on.

What do you think it would be like to be a cave artists? Well I really don't think I could be a cave artists because I would not want to crawl into a small cave that smelled really bad. But I do think it would be cool to find one or see one because it shows what the life 16,000 years ago was like.