Painting rocks

If you paint landscapes, you probably have painted rocks. Rocks come in many different shapes and sizes. Not all of them are famous, but they are nevertheless beautiful and vary in shapes, size and with the material that compose them.

There are many different ways to create texture on rocks, here are a few options:

• lift wet paint with a crumbled tissue paper;
• dry brush irregular shapes;
• use a water bottle, spray dry paint and scrub some of the paint off;
• drop water into wet paint;
• splatter darker colours;
• add cracks by painting irregular lines;
• scrape the paint with an old credit card; or
• paint in some details.

This doesn't mean that anyone should use all of these options in one painting. Only one or two should be adopted. This may be the easy part to do.  The greater challenge comes in the use of colours and values:

• define rocks by contouring them with darker colours which are the shadows behind the rocks;
• distinguish some of the rocks by applying a glaze of a slightly different colours;
• emphasize how light reflects on the rocks with reflected light;
• Gradate the colours of the rocks with warmer colours at the front and cooler at the back; and
• Adding shadows from surrounding objects.

This week's artist find is Ann Pember, I'm a huge fan of her rocks and waterfalls.

Have a great week,
Danielle