'The artist/magician':

Development of specialization in human industry & beginning of limited 'leisure' time;
still devoted to a 'practical' art intended to produce results.

Views of some of the caves & their surroundings; floor plans of caves:

What Does Cave Art Mean? - University of South Florida
Human and Animal Activities in the Deep Caves - The Bradshaw Foundation

Views of some of the caves & their surroundings; floor plans of caves:
Slide Show of Lascaux Cave (art and geology) - Slide Share
Science, Vols. 19, 20 (1904) - Google Books
Chauvet Cave - Don's Maps

Tools & artistic implements:
Early Modern Human Culture - Palomar College

from Nauix, France

"Panel Of Signs"
simple markings -
perhaps some symbolic significance,
but the first artistic 'experiments'
probably looked like this.

Paleolithic Cave Paintings - Boundless.com

 

 

The first 'finger drawings' were mere playful experiments
& appear to have no meaning.

Here is a simple line caricature of a generalized human face -
one writer has described the abstraction as 'grotesque' -
at any rate, it seems probable the cave artists preferred not to depict people with all the realistic ability at their disposal. Depictions of people were rare in this time period, perhaps for fear of accidentally enacting some sort of 'magic' over themselves.

June, 2008: What Does the World’s Oldest Art Say About Us? - The New Yorker

Silhouettes of Hands

Prehistoric Hand Stencils
- Visual Arts Cork

Oct., 2012:
What Prehistoric Art Tells Us
About the Evolution of the Human Brain
- Slate

Feb., 1959:
Special 'Science and Art' issue - several articles
- Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Silhouette of the artist's hand -
often found repeated a number of times.

A form of 'signature' or other expression of an independent ego? This may be so, but more archeologists theorize prehistoric culture had no real sense of individual identity, certainly not as we understand the concept.

Some dismembered hands appear to be part of a ritual of some sort, but most appear to be victims of frostbite in this,
the end of the glacial period.
Notice how the silhouette is created in a 'niche' area of this outcropping of rock - certain 'areas' seemed to be particularly inviting for the artist, perhaps for some symbolic or suggested artistic reason.

Depictions of 'Witch-doctor' Figures
(Left; also see Shaman, top left of page)

and

Male and Female Fertility Symbols as Abstractions
(Right, female fertility symbol)

April, 2014: The Venus Figurines of the European Paleolithic Era
- Ancient Origins

The Origins of the World's Mythologies,
2012, Oxford University Press -
some pages available at Google Books

Venus Figurines - Wikipedia

etchings of animals into stone & bone
(see top of page, right)
depicted here, a rare human subject

natural stone formations suggesting imagery
(see next page)