Bamiyan Cave Oil Paintings

I have already written about oil paints. You know that artists used to have to grind minerals into powder and then mix the powder with oil to make their paint. It was long believed by art historians and scholars that oil paints were not used until the 1600s. They also believed that oil paints were invented in Europe. Recently an act of terrorism allowed us to find new information about the history of oil paint.

In 2001 members of the Taliban blew up two, huge sculptures of Buddha. Behind the sculptures were paintings from the 5th to 9th centuries. The paintings had always been protected from the sun and the environment by the Buddha scultures but the attack put the paintings at risk. While trying to protect the paintings, scientists were able to study them.

Using a special type of light, scientists studied each layer of the paintings. They discovered that oil was used in paintings from the 7th century. Oil painting began in the Middle East 800 years earlier than art historians had thought!

From destruction came new knowledge. Sometimes there is a thin silver-lining.

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Create Your Own Cave Painting

Want to try your own cave painting?

Materials Needed:

4 Plastic Containers
Sidewalk Chalk
Water
Large Paintbrushes
Rock
Stick


Use a rock to crush the chalk into powder inside the plastic containers. Use a different container for each color. Add, about 1/3 cup for each stick of chalk and use a stick to stir in the chalk until the water becomes the right color. Use your paintbrushes to create your masterpiece on the sidewalk or in your driveway. Try painting animals like the cave painters did. Don’t forget to leave your handprint next to your painting.

The cave painters used red, yellow, brown, and black but sidewalk chalk doesn’t usually come in brown or black. To make brown, mix blue and orange. If you want light brown, use more orange. If you want dark brown, use more blue. To make black, mix purple, blue, and orange.

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Cave Painting

The earliest artists that we know of painted inside caves about 32,000 years ago. Scientists have found paintings in caves on nearly every continent.

Cave painters only had a small number of colors to work with because they made their paint by grinding up certain stones and adding water to the powder to make a type of paint. They could make brown, black, yellow, and red and these colors suited their needs because they painted mostly animals. Early humans could not sign their names on their paintings like artists do today because they hadn’t invented writing yet. Instead, handprints are common in the caves.

Just like today, cave painters used paintbrushes to create their artwork. They made the brushes out of animal hair or small twigs. They also used their fingers to paint and sometimes they created small tubes out of sticks or bone that they filled with paint and then blew through one end to spread the paint across the rock.

The paintings have lasted for so long because many of them have been closed off in caves for thousands of years where the temperature stays cool and the rain and snow can not reach the paint to wash it from the rock.

Click here for more information on prehistoric cave painting.

Click here for cave painting illustrations.

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