Gwion Gwion, also rendered Gyorn Gyorn, is the ancestral origin of painting itself. In Ngarinyin account the name belongs to a small long-beaked bird that pecks so hard at the rock that its beak bleeds, and with that blood it wipes the first marks across the stone, beginning the whole tradition of image-making. The same name is given to the ancient painters who first covered the shelters with finely drawn, ornamented human figures, and to those slender figures themselves, the oldest layer of Kimberley rock art, regarded as ancestors of the later Wandjina. Sources differ on whether Gwion Gwion is best understood as the bird, the ancient artists, or the painted beings, the three being held together as one continuous ancestral presence.