Aura's Family!

This photo is of the “paint” I used. I combined dirt from my yard with water, then I added some crushed grapes in hopes of giving my mud-paint some color. The grapes did not add any color to the paint. I used some weeds from my flower bed to make a brush. I braided the weeds and tied them in a knot to the stick I used for mixing. The weeds did not hold up very well and about a quarter of the way through my painting the weeds fell off and I finished the painting with the end of the stick. This is my cave painting. I painted it on the side of my house. It tells the story of when my kids and I moved from Florida to Virginia.

Nereyda in Nature!

My painting is a family and dog out in the country admiring the mountains and the birds flying above. I did my painting on a big tile outside my house, since I did not have a large rock or other hard surface. I did my painting by using some dark dirt that was outside and mixed the dirt with water.

Tanisha's Big Adventure!

For my cave painting I used a stick with hair for the paintbrush. I used water, mud and oil to make the paint. The painting is a picture of my grandmother house with a big tree beside it. I chose to paint this picture because every weekend when I was younger me and my brother stayed with my grandmother on the weekends and I remember the big haunted looking tree that was in her yard.

Quanesha's Family!

I wanted to show my family and the love that we have for each other in my painting that is why I added the hearts. The stick figure with the cigarette with the smoke coming from it is my grandma, she smokes like a train. The stick figure beside her with the afro is my sister, she had big curly hair. The stick figure on top is my mother. I put her on top of the other two because she is the head of my family and she makes sure everyone is taken care of. I made my paint from a natural make up powder, a little dirt and some olive oil.

Shannon's Wild Life!

The Brush - made of cow bone, horsehair and (artificial) sinew The Brown Paint – salt, cornstarch, water and dirt The Red Paint – salt, cornstarch, water and blackberries The Painting – “Family with Sea Cow” this painting is about my family’s love for the beach and our love for the sea creatures that live in the ocean. The “Sea Cow” or Manatee is one of our favorites because they are so gentle yet so big. I painted and took the pictures at night so that I would have more of a “cave-like” feeling. My dog guarded me from any wildlife that might come by in the night. I tried paint mixed with teak oil but it was too runny so I used the cornstarch, salt and water instead. I tried using a stick for details but my brush worked much better. I really enjoyed this project and will use it in my classroom.

Susan P. and her Pup!

I also used a lilac leaves as they are shaped like hearts. I covered the leaf in mud and then pressed it on the 'canvas'. I tried to get my dog to help with the paw prints but she wasn't interested so I used my thumb instead. The flowers kept falling down from the crepe myrtle above the walkway so I decided I would add them to the piece, too.

Jake Q. at Home!

For my cave art I used a piece of charcoal as my "brush" to draw my house. I used mud and dead grass to make the roof and add texture. For the sun I used a yellow tulip poplar leaf. The grass is made out of pine needles.

Jasmine W. Goes to Sea!

I used paprika, water, & honey to make a dark red pigment. I wanted to use a deep red to bring some intensity into the painting. The circular figure with the swirls represents the sun and a crab and the other figure is a shark. I recently went crabbing with my mother and we spotted far off from the pier what appeared to be a baby shark. The triangular shape above the crab represents the location of the fishing pier and the spot where we find the most crabs.

Marien Goes Prehistoric on this Assignment!

Limestone composite rock, marigold flowers, mud, slate etchings, on concrete. This is a "cave painting" of the deer that can be seen grazing along the railroad tracks in my neighborhood. Although I live almost in the center of Charlottesville, deer actually travel into town upon the tracks, and can be seen in small herds late at night alongside them. I utilized a sharp slice of slate to etch the outlines, filling in the silhouettes with either the white lime composite stone or brown mud ground in with marigolds. In keeping with other cave paintings, such as the ones found at Lascaux, I attempted to make the animals as naturalistic as possible, while rendering the railroad tracks as basic, and almost as abstract, as possible. I found all these materials in my backyard.

Will Weighs In!

To make the painting, I used two kinds of mud and clay; a darker topsoil from the woods and a bright orange clay from the lawn. For a brush, I found a root and frayed the very tip of it make it produce similar strokes to a real paintbrush. At first I tried to keep the clay dryer, but it clumped easily, so I got it as wet as possible, which worked nicely. The painting itself is a depiction of a group, most likely a family, as they construct a house by bringing the building materials to it. This represents the effort and unity required to produce happiness and industry within the home.

Alex C. Explores Nature!

I tried to think of what may have been remaining in the caves of Virginia had they not been such a damp place. The First image is of a deer hunt. The second is my attempt to document the construction of an arrowhead. The arrowhead suffered from a lack of definition. The brush was made of a bundle of leaves lashed to a stick (although I ended up mostly just using the stick). The paint was ground charcoal suspended in mud.

James F. Kicks It Old School!

The cave painting is a picture of my family. In the picture is my father, mother, brother, and sister and I tried to portray them as best I could with my caveman paintbrush (My dad doesn't wear a tophat, but it seemed fitting to make it clear it was a man). We are a soccer playing family and it is one of our favorite things to do together so at the bottom I tried to draw myself kicking a soccer ball towards one of the two goals. My paintbrush was a strong piece of mulch and was nice and short so I could control my strokes better. The paint was made from red clay that I dug up from my own backyard and mixed with a little bit of water and some honey to keep the consistency. It took about ten minutes to make sure that most of the red clay I used was crushed into fine powder, but once it was fine the clay mixed very well with the water and honey.

Kristina C Shares some sunshine!

I created a cave painting of my family. Me and my fiance are the two tall ones and my 6 year old is next and then the baby. I used water as my medium and mixed it with dirt to create mud for my paint. I also used a stick with a large and small end for my brush.

Brittany H.'s Olympic Spirit!

I tried to make someone holding the olympic torch in honor of the up coming games in London.

Ming K.'s Super painting!

When you asked me a story about my family in this assignment, I first think of my father, my idol, and I come from a Chinese family. And since I saw most of the cave paintings depicted animals as the main character, I choose a snake to represent my father. It is not only because I do think of snake as a hard-working, smart, and strong animal, but also, in Chinese, my father’s zodiac sign is a snake. During the process, I first used piece of leaf that tied with a tree stick as my “paintbrush”, and some mud mixed with water as my medium. Soon, I realized that it is too hard to draw a thick line with my “paintbrush”. Therefore, I have picked a tree stick as my second “paintbrush” in order to draw a thick line.

Jacob D and Julie D ROCK the assignment!

The first photo is my little sister Julie and I playing tag and Frisbee. She's 6. She drew the next one, which is the sun, because "we have to have the sun to be able to see the Frisbee." The next one is our initials, Jake and Julie. The brush is hard to see, but I broke off a sapling and frayed the end. The paint is mud (brown), charcoal (black), and fresh leaves (green).

Mark K. and His Dog!

Here we have my interpretation of a cave painting. It's a rather simple drawing of what I feel I'm doing all the time, which is walking my dog - and I have left nothing for the imagination for the exception of whether my head is that round and lacks hair. After experimenting with a couple different items to use as a paint brush, I found a simple piece of mulch from my yard which worked well, especially since I wasn't going for any fine lines. The "paint" was red clay dirt from the yard mixed with water. I chose not to use oil as I needed to make sure it was easily cleaned up before the neighbors complained.

Aura W.'s Painting!

This photo is of the “paint” I used. I combined dirt from my yard with water, then I added some crushed grapes in hopes of giving my mud-paint some color. The grapes did not add any color to the paint. I used some weeds from my flower bed to make a brush. I braided the weeds and tied them in a knot to the stick I used for mixing. The weeds did not hold up very well and about a quarter of the way through my painting the weeds fell off and I finished the painting with the end of the stick.

Laura R Takes a Hike!

I live with my brother and the two of us love to go hiking, so I painted us together climbing a mountain. He usually is the leader because I tend to lead us off the trail without noticing. I follow closely behind. Our footsteps show the trail we have taken around the mountain. The mountain in the distance is the one we will summit next. The brush, pictured on the side, is a tall weed I pulled out of the edge of our yard. I pulled the majority of the leaves off the stem, leaving only the thicker bunch at the top. For the paint, I mixed the red dirt from under the porch with water. The handprints were made before the painting, after I had mixed the dirt and water together using my hands and had brought nothing outside with me to wipe them off with. My brother will be confused when he comes home and sees my project in front of the front door on the cement landing at the top of the steps.

Michelle A. goes prehistoric!

I picked some grass in the yard which was more like a weed that had four pieces sticking out the top. I used like 5 of those to make the bush part. I took some string off the mop and tied the grass to a stick. There was my paintbrush. lol. For the paint I decided to use two colors. I started with oil and mixed the red dirt from the yard. The other one I used leaves on a grader and mixed it with oil as well. The picture I was trying to depict was that of a dog groomer. That is my profession at the moment. I painted me supposedly holding clippers, then a grooming table with what was supposed to be a dog. This was fun after all !!!

Megan S. goes wild!

This was my THIRD consecutive attempt at this (you should have seen my carport...it looked like children made 1000 mudpies and left them there to bake...) I only had one color of mud since the EPA replaced the top three feet of topsoil in my entire yard a few years ago(woo hoo!)....and the Little Man was pretty eager to help, so he got a bucket of mud and water, too. I think his turned out better than mine and in retrospect, I probably should have taken a photo of his and claimed it as my own... ;) My brush was a stick, that I initially used exactly as I found...but after a few failed attempts, I realized that smooshing the end with a rock made it able to hold more mud and also able to spread it around more efficiently. I used dirt from my yard and mixed it with honey and water to make a thick sort of paste. The thing on the left that looks like a Christmas Tree - that's me, and the little asterisk next to me is my almost-two-year-old son, Quinn. The three ant-looking things were supposed to be his three dogs, Bobo, Atticus and Whiskey. When I showed them to Quinn - he didn't recognize them at all, so obviou

sly I didn't do them justice. The thing that looks like a devil is actually a bull, and the strange thing next to it - well, that's a bear. Bull & Bear: Because I work in the stock markets. I thought I was being clever at the time by trying to tell the story of my everyday life. Baby comes first, then my job, then my home life (the dogs) are below everything else on the totem pole.

Andrea D's Painting!

I tried to paint a table with people around it, representing my family and friends having dinner. I love having big meals and a good time with everyone. There's also a dog, a tree, the sun and some birds flying. I used dirt, red mulch, vanilla extract, chocolate powder and water to mix it up. I also tried to glue some weeds with the vanilla extract on the tree. For the brush I used some weeds and a stick from a flower.

Tiffanie's Painting!

For my Cave Painting I used a Paint Stick with pieces of Hay for the paint brush. I used water and dirt from my garden to make the brown color. The story is I have a family of three and we have a dog and we live on a farm. We believe in God and that is why I put the cross in my picture. I really had fun with this project!!

Jen's Cave Painting!

For my painting, I used a stick, the top of a branch from some bushes, and my fingers as my paintbrushes; the stick and branch are at the top right of my picture. I used mud from last night's rain as my paint. On the left is a swimming pool, then on the right are three people, me and two happy swimmers. I did this on my back deck so I'd have a flat surface. I used seeds I found in my back yard to make eyes and smiles on the people. I teach swim lessons in the summer, and I did this right after I got home from the pool today. Some chlorine water from my ponytail dripped on the picture as I was making it, so I've even got some chlorinated water mixed in too.

Brian M's painting!

my cave painting depicting my saturday spent sailing with my son. charcoal and water on stone. with a brush of evergreen.

Alyssa's painting!

For my cave painting I started by collecting the items for the paintbrush. The handle is made out of a piece of cracked bamboo found behind an apartment complex in an area of bamboo trees. For the bristles I used dried pine needles still attached to the thin branch and slid them into the center of the bamboo. As far as the paint, I used dirt and water and experiment with different textures. I drew my husband, myself and our dog going on a walk like we always do when its nice out. Finally, and added some tiny, colorful leaves for my hair.