The Cave Paintings of Trois Freres

Helpless romantics dream of traveling to France for a number of reasons. The country is quite well-known for its romantic places and atmosphere. But did you know that there's more to see in France aside from the lovely romantic places? Yes, that's true and one is the cave paintings of Trois Freres.

Not all individuals appreciate paintings. Oftentimes, it depends on the person's taste and interests. If you're interested in cave paintings, you can also find some of them in France. Trois Freres shows fascinating images about the people of prehistoric times. Visiting the cave is like exploring the world many years ago. You can learn a lot from the paintings, but only if you appreciate them.

Though people lived primitively thousands of years ago, they seem to know quite a lot. They knew about the different patterns and seasons of life. The seasonal variations and their food supplies are the determining factors between living or dying. The cave paintings in France show this great knowledge about the ancestors of the French people.

Translated in English, Trois Freres means Three Brothers. The paintings on the cave show indistinct images of animals and certain figures which experts believe to be a shaman. Trois Freres attracted international attention because of the depictions in the cave. The paintings are found in the far corners of the cave and so you have to go deeper to be able to get a good glimpse of such a work of art.

The paintings have a graphical nature and was skillfully drawn. You can easily make out the figures to be beasts and cattle surrounding a high figure that reaches the cave roof. This central figure is about 70 cm or 2 1/2 ft tall and appears to be half human and half animal. The figure has deer antlers and wears a mask with an eye of an owl. Below the mask is a beard and the hands are hidden within bear paws or lion paws. The back of the figure can be compared to that of a certain animal and somehow it appears that the figure is wearing an animal skin of some sort. The figure has an erect penis covered by a fox tail.

Experts called the figure 'Animal Master' and if you want to see the picture of the cave painting, you can go to France or you can search the net and simply type the words 'Trois Freres'. Find a link that will show you the painting itself. You can use any of the popular search engines in order to get a glimpse of the cave painting.

If you try to conduct a research on the net, you can read many speculations and comments about the cave painting. The painting is like the sketchpad of the prehistoric people. Animals or beasts were drawn on top of one another. Experts believed that the paintings are more than 14,000 years old or even longer.

Today, painters and other artists treat art as a process. It is the expression, recording, and reflection of the divine or inner nature of the artist. But did the primitive artists view art in the same way? Perhaps there's more to their drawings that what modern experts and artists can understand.

You can find other cave paintings in Asia and in Europe. To better understand the paintings, just allow your imagination to take over.

Painting Like the Masters

Oil paintings began in the Mediterranean during the era of the Greek and Roman civilizations. The Egyptians also used paint techniques that were rich in bees wax, pigments of such minerals as copper, iron and manganese oxides and tempera.

While historians have noted that the Mediterranean civilizations of this time were aware of flax, walnut, poppy seed and other vegetable oils there is not definite proof that they were used in oil paintings of the time.

The tempera these early oil painters used were organic mediums mixed as fluid with water and volatile oil additives. Italian artists of the next century used organic binding ingredients such as materials containing protein from whole eggs, animal glue or milk.

From the Roman Empire's demise to the 15th century Renaissance era oil paintings and tempera painting became prevalent. In Greece and Italy olive oil was the preferred based for pigment mixture preparation although this made for a long drying period and great difficulty for human models. Theophilus, a German-born monk and oil painter in the 1100's dispensed with olive oil in his oil paintings. In Japan a substitute for oil paintings was perilla oil, applied after a lead application as early as the 8th century. During the 1300's the Italian Cennino Cennini created oil paintings that were a combination of tempera and several layers of light oil.

Much later Leonardo DaVinci, who lived until 1519, created his own oil paintings concoction made by adding up to 10 percent bees wax to his oils and then boiling the combination.

If you'd like to follow in the footsteps of these great painters there are some simple preparations and techniques before and during your creation of oil paintings.

The first important technique is to dress for it, including gloves. Your tools include two containers, one with paint thinner, and the other with a combination of two parts thinner to one part walnut oil. Make sure you've made room in easy reach for your paint brushes, your palette and its knife, your containers, paint tubes and paint rags.

Your palette should start out with only 2-3 paint colors. Generally you'll need cadmium red, cadmium yellow and ultramarine blue to start.

Your palette knife is the oil paintings tool you use for the technique of mixing colors. Keep in mind that oil paints have a short blend life, so if you try to make a color change and it doesn't work right the first time quickly take a paint rag and wipe it off the canvas and start over.

One of the advantages of oil paintings that make the correction technique so much easier is that they take nearly a full day to dry. So, you have lots of correction time. On the other hand, because oil paintings take so long to dry and excessively heavy coat can slow your painting process considerably.

The brushes you use in your oil paintings must be cleaned well between each change of color. This technique is crucial. The first thing you do is remove as much of the paint as you can with the paint rag and then place the brush in the paint thinner. Swish the paint brush around in the thinner, and then dry it with the rag.

You must wait 24 hours after your first complete oil paintings application before you start your second or the first application will smear.