Painted Rocks: No Drawing Skills Required

I needed a break from detailed rock painting and created these colorful stones using an easy, no-drawing technique.

  
The only items required were a brush, some paint, masking tape, and, of course, stones.

I love to collect color palettes to inspire future rock painting projects. However, I often don't have the opportunity to try out the color combinations. (You can find beautiful color palettes here.) 

This simple, rock painting technique serves many purposes:

• Method for trying out new color palettes
• Easy project to undertake after time-consuming, detailed rock painting
• Use for stones with no definitive subject in mind
• Adds colorful stones to a give-away collection

You'll need:

• Smooth, flat stones
• Flat brush
• Masking tape
• Acrylic paint

Step 1: Use masking tape to section off a portion of the stone 

Step 2: Apply acrylic paint in your choice of color. 

Step 3: Once the paint is dry (you may need 1-3 coats), carefully remove the tape.

Repeat the process for each section you wish to cover with paint.

2 Sections have been completed

Geometric-painted stone with unpainted center section

Tips

• Smooth, flat stones work best

• Limit paint colors to 2-4 hues.
• Make sure the masking tape is firmly pressed onto the stone so no paint leaks underneath.
• Pull the tape off carefully after the paint has dried.
• You may need to touch up some areas when tape is pulled off.
• When painting between sections, a thin piece of masking tape can be used to section off the area. This will minimize the risk of removing paint from a dried section.

Ideas

• Embellish your geometric stones with dots, dashes, floral vines, etc.
• Leave a section of the stone unpainted
• Paint stones in flag colors of your country, sports team, etc.
• Use metallic, glitter, or other specialty paints for a different effect
• Mod Podge a saying, pretty flower, etc. onto the stone

No drawing skills. No problem. You can still have fun painting colorful rocks and stones.

Embellished geometric-painted stones

© Cindy Thomas Painted Rocks

Color Inspiration for Hand Painted Rocks

I recently came across this wonderful book containing more than 3,000 innovative color palettes including a CD with 3,286 downloadable swatch files. It's called "Color Inspirations."

Color theory is explained but what I found much more helpful were palettes for red, red-orange, orange, orange-yellow, yellow, yellow-green, green, green-blue, blue, blue-violet, violet, violet-red, pink, brown and grey.

Each page features 18 palettes for the color harmonies (monochromatic, analogous, triadic, split-complementary, complementary and other) of each color mentioned above, along with the CMYK, RGB, and HEX code to recreate the palette.

Here's a sample of what I'm talking about featuring the color green (in honor of St. Patrick's Day) and 6 palettes from each page:

Green - Monochromatic

Green - Analogous

Green - Triadic

Green - Split Complementary

Green - Complementary

Green - Other

When I'm having a difficult time choosing colors for painting my rocks, I refer to "Color Inspirations" and discover color combinations I'd never thought of using before.

Since I love bright colors, just thumbing through the book brings me joy and delight and sparks my creativity.