Before The Invention Of Breakfast Cereal

A long time ago, before the invention of breakfast cereal, primitive mankind used to spend its nights in primitive holes and caves, bereft of culture and diversion apart from hunting and procreation. Back in those pre-sophisticated times, there was little conversation due to a lack of language, but eventually something must have happened. Maybe it was music, or play acting, but the entertainment we know about is cave painting. At some point back in the distant past, someone found some pigments and started scraping pictures on a cave wall, starting mankind off on the first steps to abstraction. Yes, sticks had been used to make pictures in the ground, but they tended to go away.

Think about it a little, and let the awesomeness sink in. A cave dweller, who had barely discovered fire and the rudiments of food scavenging, suddenly dipped his finger in some soot, blood or other tint and started scraping it across a wall to make a picture. It's pretty amazing. Pictures, the foundations of the first writing systems, being stuck on a wall or scraped in the ground with a stick. Now, here in the twenty-first century, we use brushes, pencils, computers, pens, sprays and even mosaic tiles, but we're ultimately doing the same thing. Those ancient people invented a wonderful thing, but did they ever know it? Did the first composer realise what they had done either?

What would you, the imagined reader of this blog post, daub onto a cave wall if you had the chance? Would it be an old red London bus, or the Starship Enterprise? Would it be a rough painted sketch of your sweetheart or your favourite sports team's crest? It could be anything! I think I would start with the Superman shield, or an attempt at the famous Groucho face, before giving up and doodling lighthouses, which are my default and solitary competent drawings. Everything else is difficult, but a lighthouse on a rocky outcrop can always be done. It may actually be time to start breaking out the sketchpads and experimenting again. Christmas is coming, after all, with its endless expanses of free time. Already, the tutoring is dwindling to holiday levels, and OU revision taking over.

Hmmm... reverting to cave painting for a moment... how do children start to illustrate usually? It's remarkable similar, isn't it?

O.