Faux Cave Painting

[eller]

The saga of artistically questionable postcards goes on! This time, I drew the address of someone I already knew a bit from the Postcrossing forum - and they're another paleolithic art nerd! YAY! Of course, I could not resist the temptation to produce some cave art fanart.



I prepared a piece of thick Kraft paper (A6 format) with sand (collected myself, of course) and acrylic paste, so the result looked kind of like a sandstone cave wall. (The closest approximation I could manage, anyway.) I then took charcoal and pastels and drew on it, which was somewhat tricky. I fixed the end result with spray varnish. (Also, obviously, I had to send it in an envelope, but I’m told it arrived undamaged, which makes me very happy.) This was SOOO much fun! XD

Comments

[yhlee]

OMG, this is so cool. I love it - you have captured the genre!

Also I'm sure people in prehistoric times would totally have used Kraft paper if it had been available. :p

[eller]

I'm sure they would have loved modern acrylics, too. XD

[amberdreams]

Great job!

[writedragon]

This is gorgeous. Question -- did you mix the sand into the acrylic paste, or did you spread some paste and sprinkle the sand on top? I am in love with the texture and everything about this art piece.

[eller]

I spread the acrylic paste on the paper and then pressed the whole thing face-down into a tray of sand - but I'm sure both approaches are equally possible. :)

[sabotabby]

Those are some hardcore aurochs!

[eller]

:D :D :D

[goss]

What a fun idea - Very impressive result!

[eller]

Thanks! I definitely had a lot of fun making it! The only thing I regret is that in 2D, it wasn't possible to incorporate any shadow art, which is my favorite aspect of paleolithic art. :3

[light_of_summer]

Beautiful! I like cave art (and other prehistoric art), too. One related thing that was really interesting to me, years back, was how much some prehistoric European pottery decorations looked like some prehistoric Native American pottery decorations. I grew up with some exposure to the latter, and it was very surprising to later see similar European designs in a book called The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, by Lithuanian archeologist and anthropologist Marija Gimbutas.