Construction of the images

The first anatomical element to be created during the construction of an image of a horse is the mane, and possibly also traces of the neck, created with an initial field of black pigment. The second phase consists of painting the hide and the neck. The artist then proceeds to structure the fields of colour through drawing the lines of the back, hindquarters and belly, the forelimbs, the outline of the head and the tail. This sequence is identical for every image of a horse that has been examined. There are, however, differences in the appearance of the structuring lines, variations that are linked to the grain of the wall. If the surface is too uneven due to the presence of macro-reliefs, the brush is abandoned in favour of the spray method. The line of the back and the four legs of the yellow horse in the Locality were made with a stencil, while the brush was used for short lines such as the nostrils and the base of the tail.
In the painted and engraved section of the Nave, we see most often the same succession of gestures, the sole difference being the outer lines that are engraved rather than painted. We should point out one other difference: very fine engraved lines were added after the flank and neck were painted. Other than this marginal episode, the remainder of the operations is the same.

These means for constructing the figures may vary due to the size of the subject and the grain of the wall surface. The Panel of the Falling Cow is distinguished by the presence of a number of smallish subjects, especially those belonging to the Frieze of the Small Horses. The grain of the surface on which they have been depicted is fairly large, some 8 to 15mm in diameter. These two particularities, one of them dimensional and the other related to the texture, resulted in the use of a single technique. Three of the animals, created by the spray technique, have no structuring line whatever.