 |
|
| Messages on Stone Selections of Native Western Rock Art |
|
| TECHNIQUES Stone is typically durable and long last and we can enjoy ancient rock art today simply because its creator s selected stone as their medium of expression. Paper and canvas were not available and it is possible that a great deal of ancient painting and drawing was done on animal skins. Also, some tribes are known to have used tree bark for conveying messages. Skin and bark do not last for long and their messages have perished with the. Native southwestern Americans have even more transitory art form known as sand painting. These "paintings" are made of loose varicolored sand grains and are wiped away in a few hours after their purposes are fulfilled. It is doubtful that rock surfaces were deliberately chosen to insure that messages pecked or painted upon them should last for hundreds or thousands of years. A smooth, light-colored rock surface seems to have constituted an irresistible challenge to those with something at hand to make marks upon it. The same thing is illustrated by the way modern man reacts to fresh concrete, board fences and subway walls. The understandable impulse of ancient artist was to attack stone with stone. This can succeed only when tools or implements harder than the surface to be worked are put to use. Very hard material is available almost everywhere in streambeds in the form of pebbles or nodules of the material known as flint orchert. This will easily mark or indent ordinary sandstone, limestone and lava rock. The technique commonly employed was that of pecking or indenting the surface along the lines necessary to create what the artist had in mind. A piece of flint, suitably shaped and pointed, was held against the surface and struck sharply with another heavier stone. In this way small dents were created one at time. The numerous small pits that go into a moderately complex figure such, as spiral must be placed with great precision otherwise the design is spoiled. Possibly 25 to 100 dents per inch go into a typical pictograph, a large panel of many The technique of painting came later than pecking. This is shown by the way painting overlies the more ancient pecked outlines. It may be that the painting of pottery led to painting on rocks. The nature of the various coloring materials is no mystery; they are chiefly iron minerals that are common in sedimentary rocks. Nodules of ochre, which ranges from pale yellow to orange, brown and red, can be picked up in many places. White pigment may have been made from gypsum, black from charcoal. Coloring materials were pulverized on flat stones or in shallow bowls such as are found frequently in ancient ruins or campgrounds. The finely ground ochre was mixed with plant juice, animal oil or some other liquid and presumably with rather wide strokes but a few painters knew how to make and use very fine brushes and produced narrow lines and delicate forms. |
|
|
|