Paint In Spain: The Oldest Cave Painting

Discovered only recently, the oldest cave painting was found in Spain, believed to be left by the Neanderthals and is now the oldest and historical cave paintings discovered. A previous painting found in France was dated to be from 37,000 years ago, is now replaced by the Spanish cave painting, believed to be more than 48,000 years ago. Now in modern days, paint is very common. There are many different varieties of paints and uses, such as acrylic, water-based, oil-based, sheen, latex, and others. Water-based and oil-based paints, however, are the more common paints that are used. Like the name, water-based paint is consisted and made up of water while oil-based paint is made up of oil. Water-based paint can be “obtained by blending an aqueous dispersion of a carbonyl group containing copolymer with a carbonyl group containing aqueous polyurethane resin” (Hori, 1997) Basically, water based paint is able to be achieved by combining fine particles that are distributed through water with polyurethane (a type of binder) that contains water. …show more content…
Although they have differences, they all share the components of binders, pigments, and solvents. The three are necessary to make up paint and each has their own function to compose paint. Binders are responsible for binding the pigments to the surface of paint and dissolves into paint for proper function. Pigments are responsible for giving the paint color and a finish. Pigments also protect the surface under the paint from corrosion, weathering, or any outside forces. They are composed of tiny solid particles less than 1 µm in diameter. There are different kinds of pigments for different kinds of paints. For example, there are special pigments purposely used for metal works and finishes such as