Paleolithic Spit Painting in at Home!

For another one of my classes, ANTH 392: Paleolithic Art, I am currently working on a term project on spit painting. This is the method used at Pech Merel in the Quercy region of France to create the famous spotted horses dating 250,000 BCE.

For this project a friend and I are attempting to learn how to spit paint. It is surprisingly hard. To create this effect you have to chew up, or grind, charcoal which then you put in your mouth and spit on the wall. You have to be careful otherwise you will end up with huge globs instead of the fine spray that is desired...

Lorblanchet's beautiful horse....

My Pathetic first attempt... waaaay too much saliva!
Although the top bit is okay...

For this project I am using "Art- Arch Charcoal" which is made of burned rods that vary from stick to stick, some of them are a lot harder to chew but it is the safest choice health wise. 

So basically you chew up the stick and then, while trying to keep your mouth as dry as possible you spit it onto the wall. We tried this in class during a lab as well, on paper, and it turned out really soggy!

Using my hand as a stencil I was able to make the first hand with one stick of charcoal. As you can see from the picture, there were a lot of globs the first go. The second one I chewed the charcoal more at the front of my mouth using my incisors in stead of my molars, that worked a lot better. Also, I tried using my tongue as a stopper more in the second one. 

Much better!

Each Hand took about 7 minutes... but I think that as you get better it takes more time. To see how the pro's do it watch the video at the end of the page!

The advantages to spit painting is that no matter how rough the surface you are working with, such as cave walls, the paint will still reach all the crevices. Using a brush is harder because you have to dab in order to get the sharp dark lines achieved in the Pech Merle picture. 

This method  is not just limited to France though, or even to the Paleolithic. There is still a group of people who practice this art form today! The Aborigines of Australia use it to create hand marks as well. 

Lovely!

I will ad to this blog after I have experimented some more. Tomorrow I plan to try some lines using my hands to channel the paint!

Me and my hand, yummy yummy.

 Watch this video from 3:00 - 7:00. Its a snip of "The Incredible Human Journey- Europe".  There is some interesting information about the development of white skin as well as looking at first settlements... it moves really fast.