Rock Art Inspiration - More Tips and Tricks

Thanks to Goose Creek Rocks, I have been inspired to make rock art! Here are some of the rocks I've made as gifts for my friends and family, as well as the rocks I've donated to the community. I also give you a few hints about making similar work of your own.

"Sun" Rock Art - For my mom
Sharpie / Acrylic Ink

This rock is a companion piece to the Moon rock pictured below. You can get a really cool "stamped on" effect with the drawing by using a sharpie and stippling on the lines. For the colors, I used acrylic ink. Then, I sealed it all over with a varnish sealant. Shiny!

"Moon" Rock Art - For my mom
Sharpie / Acrylic Ink

This piece was made similarly to the sun rock, just sharpies and acrylic inks on bare rock.

Star Trek Spock Rock Art
Acrylic Ink / Acrylic Paint

This lovely Spock Rock was a gift for my Trekkie boyfriend. It was done with acrylic ink and acrylic paint. I included a progress shot to illustrate how I built up the layers to get those nice juicy colors. I'm especially proud of the inky space background, the details of which were unfortunately a little too shiny to pick up with the camera. 

Spock Rock unfinished- As you can see, I started by painting
the background and then blocking in the foreground details.
Most of the base was done with acrylic paint, then I went
backwith the ink and got the sharp details in. 

Unlike the sun and moon rock, Spock Rock was made heavy with paint. I think that was ultimately the reason why I was unable to paint varnish over top of this one... My theory is, the acrylic ink wasn't absorbing into the rock enough because it was sitting on top of plastic based acrylic paints. The varnish just lifted and pushed the ink around instead of properly sealing... luckily, I only did this in a test corner and didn't continue on the rest of the piece!

Check out the other sides of this painted rock. I'm low key psyched about managing to at least somewhat pull off the Enterprise part. Technical and geometric drawings are definitely not my forte, I'm more into organic shapes myself.

Star Trek Spock Rock Art - The Enterprise

I used shiny blue paint to give it that spacey glow.
 I suppose this was inspired by the reboot Star Trek movies and all their lens flares.

Star Trek Spock Rock Art - Planet Vulcan

Star Trek Spock Rock Art - Star Fleet Insignia

Octopus Rock Art - For my friend Racheal
Sharpie Markers

This squiggly little octopus was done for my friend Racheal who absolutely loves anything to do with tentacles. This one was fun to do, just layering dots on top of dots. The stippling effect looks really neat on rock art in my opinion. You can get some good color values and the dots seem to look a little more natural than just smooth lines for some reason. 

All I did here was build up various colors of sharpie to get a desirable level of color and shading. And since they're permanent markers, you don't have to worry about them smearing with varnish- if you decide to put varnish on at all at this point. Using Sharpies is a good way to cut out the sealing step altogether. I decided to go ahead and varnish anyways, it couldn't hurt right?

Lighthouse Rock Art for Goose Creek Rocks
Acrylic Paint

Sailboat Rock Art for Goose Creek Rocks
 Acrylic Paint / Acrylic Ink

Since we're on the subject of beachy things, here's a few of my "Broken Ocean Series" rocks that I made for the Goose Creek Rocks community. I was interested in using the three dimensional nature of "broken" rocks to add an extra depth to the scenes.

Fish Rock Art
Acrylic Paint / Sharpie

Check out this sweet fishie! 
The rock's shape did all the talking and I just painted in the details and drew the lines with sharpie.

A cute pumpkin rock
Acrylic Paint

Another example of using a rock's shape to dictate the design painted on it.
 In this case, I couldn't stop thinking of this rock's shape to be very "pumpkin like."

Pink Flower Rock Art
Sharpie

I love the level of control and detail you can get with a simple fine point sharpie marker. I think these are the funnest rocks to decorate. Mess free and more control over details, what could be more ideal?

House Rock Art
Acrylic Paint

This was inspired by a similar series done by another artist, but I can't find the source!

Sugar Skull Rocks
Acrylic Paint

These are some of my favorites. I hid one of them inside one of those quarter toy machines and I snuck one of them behind the bar at Starbuck's to add a little spontaneity to the lives of the busy baristas. These were done in straight up acrylic paint, no tricks here.

Eyeball Rock Art
Acrylic Paint

When in doubt, paint an eyeball!

"Soot Monster" Inspired Rock Art
Acrylic Paint

This was a silly and simple one but I think it's one of my favorites. 
There is just something charming about his creepy little expression.

Witch Rock Art
Paint Markers

I got my hands on some paint markers and they work like a dream on rocks! I was very happy with how the colors turned out on this one. The ink is oil based which makes it pretty darn permanent to boot.

One day, me and my parents snuck over to my cousin's house and hid rocks for them all to find. Here's a pic of the happy hunters after discovering their specially made rocks! 

Do you make rock art, or are you a part of a rock hiding community? Feel free to toot your own horn in the comments below. I think it's a beautiful and unique medium to work in and I'd love to see more of it.

 Also, if you want to paint some rocks of your own but don't know where to start, make sure to check out my massive tutorial I made about rock art here. I compiled some good info there, hopefully it will be of use to you. Until next time!

Wreck this Journal part THREE!

Oh snap, my Wreck This Journal is back with a vengeance!

(Don't forget to read my Wreck this Journal posts Part One and Part Two first! Don't worry, I'll wait...)

Gosh, is it time for another update on my journal already? Surprising how time flies when you're having fun. Needless to say my WTJ has been keeping me very occupied. I have been persistently working towards my goal of completing every page. It has been a long road but I am slowly but surely inching towards completion! Lately, I've just been focusing on getting content onto all of the pages. The tasks are a lot less daunting when you aren't staring at a clean, blank white page. There are over 200 pages in the journal from cover to cover and I think I may have at least something on just about every page now. Everything's been smooth sailing so far!

Sometimes I feel like one day I'm going to pick up my book and it's just going to fall apart in my hands. Actually, that happened recently. I went to grab my book and both the front and back covers completely fell off! Alas, that meant I finally had to tape up the spine of my WTJ.  I tried to put it off for as long as I could but you simply can't use mod podge for a job that requires good ol' fashioned tape.

Oh, and my Wreck this Journal is getting so FAT! How much more stuff can I cram into these pages?  

I haven't shown the back cover of my journal before so, here it is. The "Attempted Not Known" sticker is my half ass attempt at sending my journal through the mail. At this point the book would cost close to $10 to ship (which is way more than I want to spend!) so I just put a sticker on there from another package.

The "Wreck this Journal" inside cover again.. a few things have changed. It was inspected by David.

This page got all wet and melted, so I had to redraw a bunch of stuff.

Add your own page numbers- Another that is still in progress.
I want to find some of those little house number stickers to put all over this page...

Leave this page blank on purpose? BOOBY BUTT TO THAT!

In a weird way I kind of liked the strange coffee smell my journal got when I did this page, but unfortunately many other strange stinks and funks have long since over powered that scent. No one told me that the Wreck This Journal would start to smell so weird...

"Draw Fat and Thin Lines" - I did all my lines with a mechanical pencil.. they leave deeper marks on the pages. Those lines look lovely going along with my gelatinous blob covered in eye balls.

Speaking of gelatinous blobs, I finally finished up "Poking Holes in This Page Using a Pencil." Eye see you...

The "add dirty finger prints" page has
really taken some abuse!
Check out those awesome embossed textures.

Color this entire page.. and then color over it again!

I dedicated a page in my Wreck this Journal
to one of the most badass (and underrated)
Batman villains of all time, Inque. I love the
dramatic range of motion this character has.

"Draw lines in motion"- I finally like this one. I went over all the lines with a dark pencil and colored in the rest of the white spaces. It totally reminds me of one of those wicked scribble doodles you'd draw in Paint now. 

Fill this page with circles.. a lot harder than it sounds. I decided to make it even harder and only use circular found objects instead of just drawing a bunch of circles. Some of my favorite "circles" include a bunch of stale rubber bands that I found at the office. Also found at the office was a bunch of these weird caulking samples of all different colors. No one ever knows what they are when they see them....awesome. Speaking of awesome, check out the two beer coasters that I hinged together with some tape. Oh and yes, there is a Ralph Steadman drawing on that coaster!

Wow this page looks crappy right now.  All the pretty flowers I glued on  have now fell off for the most part... and I still haven't worked up the guts to even "swing the book wildly" yet!

"Collect Fruit Stickers Here"

Great improvements have been made on this page. You may notice that there are more fruit stickers! My family and I are trying to eat healthier Obviously, our favorite fruit is still the banana.

Have I mentioned yet that if you put a page of the
Wreck this Journal in the wash that it completely disintegrates?

Well, that's what I have for now, but there's still so much for me to do in my journal. I have really enjoyed documenting my experience with Wreck This Journal. As time goes by I am able to look back at my old posts and say, "WOW, How things have changed!" Make sure to stay tuned for more updates!

In the mean time, what do you think of my progress so far? Which page is your favorite? How would you suggest finishing some of my incomplete pages? Oh, and if you have your own WTJ it would be really cool to see some of your interpretations of these assignments. I can always use a little bit of inspiration. 

My Journey With Keri Smith's Wreck This Journal 

1) The Beginning.....
2) WTJ Part Two
3) WTJ Part Three - Vengeance 
4) WTJ Part Four - The Reckoning
5) WTJ Part Five - Return of the Journal (Final)

My hideous paint palette!

On a random note, I fondly nicknamed
my set of fav. paintbrushes my "A-Team"

Today I figured I'd make a little post about my "traveling" painting kit. It's basically all my favorite paintbrushes and tools packed into one box that I can take with me anywhere. No biggie... most artists have a version of this. However, I have a very special ongoing project involving my paint supplies that I couldn't help but share with you guys... It's a masterpiece in the making!

BEHOLD! My super gnarly paint palette, proudly never washed.

I always get a lot of comments on this thing. Most people find it gross.. I can't imagine why!

It all started a few years ago while surfing the net. I discovered illustrator Will Terry's blog post about a paint palette he's been using for the last 20 years. This thing is truly inspiring, see for yourself:

Will named his palette Benjamin. And about the mountain-like shape it's taking, he says, "That arch you see was at the request of my children constantly nagging me to sculpt some form into him - that took about 9 months."

After seeing this post, I decided that I would start "growing" my own paint palette. By comparison, I still have a lot more layers still to build up before I'm anywhere near Terry's level. But it's definitely something to work towards. For the record, my palette is probably about three years old now.

You can see the layers slowly emerging. Also, in its defense, it looks a lot grimier than it actually is. I use india ink often, so there's this lovely blotchy black glaze all over everything..

Here's the palette from the bottom. As you can see, I've completely filled up the original "wells" to the top, but evidence of their existence still remains underneath.

GEROSS!! And by gross I mean.. AWESOME.

I am often questioned about how I am able to use this thing without "mixing up my colors." I actually don't have this problem with my palette at all. Since I use mostly acrylic based paints, they don't run after drying. I just keep building layers upon layers on top of the older paint, like some sort of crazed mad scientist of paints. 


Not all artists can have a paint palette as monstrous as this one, it certainly isn't for the "Faint of heART" (get it?)

 It requires you to never clean your paint palette, and serves as a valuable lesson in wastefulness. It's incredible to see how much left over paint will accumulate in time- seemingly wasted and unused. But a benefit of creating a crazy palette like this is that you have a chance to sort of build something completely new and unusual out of something that would otherwise be washed down the drain. Plus, it's a testament to your journey as an artist.

Like Will Terry mentioned in his blog post- "[My Palette has] been to Maryland, California, technically Nevada and idaho, but mostly he's lived here in Utah. Like I said before of the thousands of paintings I've done he's got parts of all of them in him."