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Painting your own rocks is an addictive link to the past.

Painted rocks can be fun and whimsical - a fairy nestled in your strawberry bed to ward off bad spirits, for instance - or just really practical, as a street number marker for the end of the driveway. In fact, rocks may be the oldest canvas used by humans. Cro-Magnon man, who lived 40,000 years ago, left awe-inspiring cave wall paintings in what is now France and Spain. The popularity of the art form has never diminished, morphing, some say, into modern-day graffiti. Having painted a few rocks, I must warn you that it is an addictive form of folk art. It scratches some of those primordial itches in people to say "I was here."

Before you paint, there are a few things to consider. First, what type of rock do you want to paint and where will you find it? Construction sites can yield some lovely angular pieces with rough surfaces, whereas river or beach rocks will give you a smooth surface to work on. (Pillaging construction sites is almost always illegal, as plundering beaches for rocks sometimes is, so check first.) If you want an angular shape, with a smooth surface, use wood filler underneath a base coat of acrylic paint. Other kinds of paint will work, but acrylic is low odour, of low toxicity, and can be cleaned up with water.

Prepare the rocks by scrubbing them with warm, soapy water. Rinse and then dry them in a warm location for a couple of days. Next you have to decide whether you are going to: (a) apply wood filler and a base coat of a dark, neutral colour; (b) apply a base coat only; or (c) paint the stone in its natural state.

Once you've settled on a design, sketch it onto the rock. Determine where you want the focal point of your artwork to be, and boldly draw that forward with paint. Taking a digital photo of your work-in-progress (with the flash turned off) will quickly show you where a detail needs a touch of light or dark. The final step will be to coat your artwork with a gloss, semi-gloss or matte spray, or brush-on, acrylic, to save it from the weather. Any type of varnish or polyurethane will work. I recommend spray acrylic for ease of use and for a nice, even coating, but if you like slightly textured finishes, use a brush-on type.

Now you're ready to paint. Have fun. Don't be afraid to try things out; if they don't work, you can just paint over and start again.

Cameron's Garden Fairy

1 Using a pencil, draw the head, body, wings, and surroundings of the garden fairy. Tip: Although you have to sharpen the pencil if you're doing three or four rocks in a row, it erases really easily with a damp cloth, and the paint covers all lines without bleed-through.

2 Using a slender brush, paint over the pencil lines in black. Use red to outline the flower in the forefront.

3 Create the appearance of dimension on petals by using shades of whatever colour you've chosen. He painted the fairy's wings in three shades.

4 Cameron then used his paintbrush, which still had the remainder of the lightest shade on it, to smudge the three colours.

5 The same technique is used for the robe: layers of colours, smudged together. Remember that dark colours will tend to become background and lighter ones will stand out.

6 Mix a skintone by adding a little black to pink paint, which takes the brightness off it, and paint the face and hands.

8 When dry, add the eyes, ears, and lips. Sketch in the nose and chin with shadowed lines.

9 To make the figure stand out, Cameron dabbed paint from the tip of a fat brush around the fairy, flower and butterfly. This created a softer looking background than if he had painted a solid colour. He added bright leaves and flowers similar to the one in the foreground. Dots of black make the wings stand out. When the paint has dried, coat it with clear acrylic.

Tip: If the eyes in your design are large, add life by applying a stroke of the lighter shade to the bottom of the iris, a stroke of the darker shade to the top of the iris, and two tiny, pure white dots of light, one on each side and slightly above the pupil.

Kate's House Marker

1 Use a ruler and pencil to draw horizontal and vertical lines for your number. Pencil in the numbers, and the petals and leaves of the flowers.

2 The flowers were painted one colour at a time, to save repeated brush washing and colour mixing, and the colours were not smudged, they were left as strokes of individual colour. When painting these, I held the slim brush upright, using just the tip for control. The centres are yellow with tiny black dots. Orienting the dots in circles with the centremost point bare gave the centre depth. Adding thin, curved black lines radiating out from the centre, up the petals for about a quarter of their length, emphasized the depth of the flower. Sparkles of light were added last by painting bright streaks of yellow. 

3 The black numbers are outlined in a thin line of yellow, to make them stand out.

4 I painted the leaves by loading a soft brush with green streaked with pure yellow, and sometimes a touch of blue. I began the stroke with just the tip, then moved the brush down to unload paint, rotating the brush as I went. I finished the stroke by lifting the brush back off so that only the tip joined the leaf to the stalk. Stalks trailing in and out of the flowers use the same method. Streaks of pure yellow light went in after the paint had dried.

5 To make the flowers stand out, I dabbed on an almost dry, black paint from the end of a fat brush. When dry, coat with acrylic.

Materials and Tools

  • Rocks
  • Acrylic paint - blue, yellow, red, black, white. Mix these colours to create secondary and tertiary colours. Black or white can be added to create lighter and darker shades. Premixed colours were used for the fairy holding the butterfly.
  • Selection of paint brushes
  • Plastic lid for mixing colours
  • Pencils - lead, white and charcoal
  • Ruler (optional)
  • Acrylic spray paint

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