Rock Paintings

Filled with creative exercises, art prompts, templates, and step-by-step projects, The Little Book of Rock Painting encourages interactivity for immediate results, while teaching beginners the fundamentals of the medium in an engaging and fun way. In the new The Little Book of ... series from Walter Foster Publishing, artists and art hobbyists alike will delight in learning a variety of fun and interesting art topics in a portable format boasting a fresh, contemporary design. In The Little Book of Rock Painting, aspiring artists will discover how to gather and prepare their rocks to create masterpieces that are truly one with nature. Written and illustrated by three talented rock-painting artists, the book features a range of contemporary designs to experiment with, from patterns and animals to mandalas and dots. The instructions are easy to follow and invite creativity and originality. Grab your colors, head outside, and start painting beautiful works of art on stones!

From the high plains of Canada to caves in the southeastern United States, images etched into and painted on stone by ancient Native Americans have aroused in observers the desire to understand their origins and meanings. Rock paintings and engravings can be found in nearly every state and province, and each region has its own distinctive story of discovery and evolving investigation of the rock art record. Rock art in the twenty-first century enjoys a large and growing popularity fueled by scholarly research and public interest alike. This book explores the history of rock art research in North America and is the only volume in the past twenty-five years to provide coverage of the subject on a continental scale. Written by contributors active in rock art research, it examines sites that provide a cross-section of regions and topics and complements existing books on rock art by offering new information, insights, and approaches to research. The first part of the volume explores different regional approaches to the study of rock art, including a set of varied responses to a single site as well as an overview of broader regional research investigations. It tells how Writing-on-Stone in southern Alberta, Canada, reflects changing thought about rock art from the 1870s to today; it describes the role of avocational archaeologists in the Mississippi Valley, where rock art styles differ on each side of the river; it explores discoveries in southwestern mountains and southeastern caves; and it integrates the investigation of cupules along GeorgiaÕs Yellow River into a full study of a site and its context. The book also compares the differences between rock art research in the United States and France: from the outset, rock art was of only marginal interest to most U.S. archaeologists, while French prehistorians considered cave art an integral part of archaeological research. The bookÕs second part is concerned with working with the images today and includes coverage of gender interests, government sponsorship, the role of amateurs in research, and chronometric studies. Much has changed in our understanding of rock art since Cotton Mather first wrote in 1714 of a strange inscription on a Massachusetts boulder, and the cutting-edge contributions in this volume tell us much about both the ancient place of these enduring images and their modern meanings. Discovering North American Rock Art distills todayÕs most authoritative knowledge of the field and is an essential volume for both specialists and hobbyists.

This book describes in word and illustration the results of an exciting quest on the part of its authors to discover and record Indian rock paintings of Northern Ontario and Minnesota. Numerous drawings were made from these pictographs at a hundred different sites; the originals range in age from four to five hundred years to a thousand, and were done with the simplest materials: fingers for brushes, fine clay impregnated with ferrous oxide giving the characteristic red paint. Where an overhanging rock protected a vertical face from dripping water or on dry, naked rock faces the Indians recorded the forest life with which they lived in intimate association—deer, caribou, rabbit, heron, trout, canoes, animal tracks—and also abstractions which puzzle and intrigue the modern viewer. Many of the paintings could only have been done from a canoe or a convenient rock ledge. Selwyn Dewdney travelled many thousands of miles by canoe to make the drawings of the pictographs which illustrate every page of this fascinating and attractive book. He provides also a general analysis of the materials used by the Indians, of their subject-matter and the artistic rendering given to it, and his artist's journal records in detail the sites he visited, the paintings he found at each, the comparisons among them that came to mind, the references to rock paintings in early literature of the Northwest. Kenneth E. Kidd contributes a valuable essay on the anthropological background of the area, linking the rock paintings with early cave art in, for example, France and Spain, describing the life of the Indians in the Shield country, and commenting on what the pictographs reveal of their makers' attitudes to their external world and of their thinking. This is a book which will appeal to a wide audience: to those interested in primitive art forms and in Canadian art in general, to all students of the early history of North America, to travellers who in increasing numbers follow the canoe trails of the Shield lakes and rivers.

Learn to paint your favorite Disney characters—including Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Tinker Bell, and more—onto decorative rocks with this rock-painting kit. Rock painting gets a special touch in this kit with beloved Disney characters. Step-by-step instructions and photos show readers how to paint 12 different designs featuring Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Bambi, Tinker Bell, and other favorites. Included are 3 river rocks, 3 acrylic paints, 3 gel pens, 2 paintbrushes, a permanent marker, and a dotting tool. The instruction book also comes with stencils for each project, so drawing your favorite characters accurately is made easy. Paint the rocks to add color to your home or garden, give them as gifts, or leave them along a trail to brighten a stranger’s day.

More than 400 rock paintings adorn the Canadian Shield from Quebec, across Ontario and as far west as Saskatchewan. The pictographs are the legacy of the Algonkian-speaking Cree and Ojibway, whose roots may extend to the beginnings of human occupancy in the region almost 10,000 years ago. Archaeologist Grace Rajnovich spent fourteen years of field research uncovering a multitude of clues as to the meanings of the paintings. She has written a text which is unique in its ability to "see" the paintings from a traditional native viewpoint. Skilfully weaving the imagery, metaphors and traditions of the Cree and Ojibway, the author has recaptured the poetry and wisdom of an ancient culture. Chief Willie Wilson of the Rainy River Band considers Grace's work "innovative and original."