Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Images of ancient cave paintings amaze us with their suggestion of the first spark of Man's creative spirit.  To recreate that concept I first built a section of a cave wall  in the studio and painted in some early drawings.  A single tungsten lamp and gold foil reflectors gave the appearance of light from a fire.  The hand of an assistant was oiled and blackened to complete the illusion.  Photographed with the Nikon D3x and 24-70mm zoom at f/9.


3 comments:

  1. ElenaphotoSeptember 14, 2011 at 10:10 AM

    Hi Tom - this image is amazing, you'd make a very good cave painter, too:) Would you mind me asking how did you create this wall in your studio - which materials did you use?

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  2. Tom Grill:September 14, 2011 at 10:38 AM

    The technique for making the wall was similar to how model railroaders build scenery and uses some of those supplies. The base is foam core. On top of that I built texture using acrylic medium, various papers, cardboard, and model railroad "earth". Then I spray painted it with several colors. Finally, I used earth-toned pastels for the coloring and the drawing, sometimes drawing them on and sometimes crushing them up and dusting them on.

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  3. ElenaphotoSeptember 14, 2011 at 10:08 PM

    Thank you - hope the image does well, it is very unique.

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