NOTE: The two rock paintings were rendered the night before I had a scheduled "painting rocks demo". The two rocks on the left (in the above photo) are the paintings, while the two rocks on the right are photographs of the actual rocks.
Each painting is approximately 6x5 inches in size, rendered in acrylics with inks, onto 140lb watercolour paper. The two paintings were rendered onto the same 9x12 paper sheet.
Painting rocks is something I have done for a long time. I first began rendering rock paintings onto 140-lb watercolour paper using watercolours in my early landscape paintings. In 2018, I incorporated new techniques into paintings featuring rocks and instantly received compliments for my resulting artwork. I assumed other artists did similar work, but I was told this is not the case. Most artists gloss over rocks in their paintings, rushing through them, simplifying and rendering them in basic shapes and colours, completely ignoring their uniqueness and textures.
It is my early professional work in archaeology, as an artifact illustrator rendering stone and bone tools using pen & ink, that makes my present rock artworks appear real. In archaeology, when rendering stone tools, it is necessary to exaggerate features to emphasize where and how the stone tool was made and modified, as well as how it was used. These resulting artworks were then published in site reports, allowing people to see the tools found in an archaeological excavation and where and how they had been modified, etc. Photos of stone tools fail because the details are lost in the crude tonal values that photography and printing create. Through illustration, I highlighted the features of the stone tools that were important to archaeology. Although my newer artwork is rendered in acrylics, I also employ pen & ink techniques to create 3D, realistic-looking artwork.
