Day 21 – Cave Hand Prints

Ever since we did the hand prints in dough, I have been drawn to the Chauvet Cave handprint. So I decided we would try to make our own.

 

This cave was discovered by hikers in 1994 in France. Most of the images found in the cave date back to 30-32,000 BP. These extensive artworks include several partial handprints and hand stencils[1]. From the pictures I’ve seen of the work, the cave is closed to the public, it appears as if the artists are leaving their marks with the hand stencils.

 

LeeAnn and I had picked up some slate roofing tiles last time we were at my Grandfathers house. We choose to use these for our prints, but any material will work. We first experimented with blowing and rubbing pastel chalk dust around our hands to make the stencils. Though this worked some what, I did not get the definition I was looking for. Next we used pastel crayons to trace around our hands. After showing her how to do this on one slate, I let her trace her own hand. Since this was a new idea, LeeAnn really enjoyed it, but did not create perfect prints. Her work instead created beautiful abstracts. We ended up working on both sides of every slate she enjoyed it so much.

 

I kept two pieces by spraying them with matte clear coat to preserve the images and cleaned off the rest of the pieces. LeeAnn however has continued creating hand stencils on her chalk board in the house.

 

How to Make Cave Hand Prints

Supplies:

A hard surface (I used slate, you can use anything though)

Pastel Crayons

Matt Clear Coat

Instructions:

 - Using the pastels, trace you hand with different colors, using your fingers, blend the colors around the shape of your hand.

 - If you want to keep them intact, spray a few coats of matte clear coat over the print.

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[1] http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/chav/hd_chav.htm