Cave Painting

Autumn is the kindest season in the Deep South. Winter is cold, Summer scorches, Spring is pretty but erratic. Autumn is long stretches of steady mild weather with little rain. Aside from Christmas and January, we take most of our time off in Autumn, because it's the best time of year to be outdoors where we live. Right now the girls are playing with bubbles in the backyard, and I'm supposed to be working on Halloween costumes.

The last thing we did before going on holiday was cave painting. Brighteyes had won some finger paints at the Summer Reading Program, and Daddy donated the cinder block wall of the blacksmith's forge for the purpose. We waited until he got home so he could be part of it and take the pictures.

When I opened the paint set, I found the paint was not liquid, but creamy. It looked like neon colored cold cream. We gobbed some on our fingers and went to work.

The first thing we found out was that an undressed cinder block wall is not the best surface for painting. It's so porous it steals the paint right off your fingers. It's no place for brushstrokes, you have to use lots to leave an impression. It made us appreciate the value of a good cave wall. The girls tried to make animals but they came out as blobs. My husband and I were a little bit better at making recognizable shapes, but not much.

When the girls got tired I poured some paint into a paper plate so we could make handprints. That was a lot of fun. Brighteyes made the best prints, because she spread her fingers the widest.

That was a week ago. The paint has dried well, and is holding to the wall. We haven't had any rain, so we don't know yet how well it will do then. We've still got over half of the paint, and we'll have to get back to it soon. It seems like Brighteyes and Sunshine have been trying to see how many different things they can do while on break. They've been on the go constantly. I'll post the list soon.