I had seen art rocks for a while, but didn’t think about trying them till the pandemic hit and I was bored and I saw some mandala designs on rocks on facebook that I thought looked really cool. Well, as of this writing, I still haven’t gotten the tools needed to do the mandala designs, but I’ve had fun creating other art on rocks.
Most of my designs are free use clip art, coloring page images, or just images I liked that I recreated by drawing them on the rock. I started by painting the rocks white. I colored a few, then found out when I went to coat them that the type of paint matters! The clear coat made the ink on the designs run really badly and ruined all my hard work. So I highly recommend acrylic paint, which works well for the next steps. After I painted the rocks white with the correct paint, I used colored permanent marker pens to add the colors. I found that the pens/markers allowed much more detail and fine lines than paint and brushes. I then carefully coated each rock in Modge Podge to protect the ink and let it dry. But because the Modge Podge stays just a bit tacky I sprayed each rock with a clear sealer (also by Modge Podge) to make them as smooth and weather tight as possible.
I started with rocks I got from the craft store, but they were tiny and expensive. And the paint doesn’t stick well to the super polished tumbled rocks at the craft store. Then I went to landscaping rocks, but it wasn’t easy find the suitable ones in the many that were not smooth enough. Then I went to a nearby lake shore and found the mother load! I collected a small bag of great rocks and should have plenty to work with for awhile.
I have no formal art training and have just been winging it as I go along. After I did some rocks, I found that starting by creating the image on paper helped ensure I got a good image I could work with when I was ready to put it on the rock. And in some cases it helped me select a better size/shape of rock to fit the image. In other cases, I decided the image was above my skill set and didn’t mess up a rock in the process 🙂 You’ll see from the blog posts that I started out really simple and with practice I progressed from there.
Before the pandemic hit, I was living full time in an RV and planned to travel the country (and did get some travel/sight seeing in). But the pandemic and all the associated closings put me at my parents house for the duration, which is where I started doing the rocks to help alleviate boredom. I planned to disperse them during my travels, but my travels are still on hold. So I decided to start dispersing them while I’m in place and on my short trips I’m taking to stay sane and show my dogs.
If you have found and enjoyed my art, I’d love to hear from you! If you have questions about the process, I’ll do my best to answer them, but I’m still pretty new at this myself and everything I learned I learned from Google. 🙂
Found Arts 