I don’t know if I’ve ever made a post to show the entire path from the point where I pick up a rock to the color of that rock in my paintings. So here it is now, the journey from rock to art.

First, a Rock

This rock will make a brown colored paint. I’ll use it to paint the parts of my painting that are brown, or add some to other colors to change the shade of the paint I’m using. If I need a different shade of brown, I’ll add other colors to it, if I don’t have one better suited. But it’s not paint, yet. I’m getting ahead of myself.

Break the Rock

The journey from rock to art is first destructive. I break the rock into smaller pieces outside. I have a rock-breaking setup that includes a large flat rock on top of a tub I use for a stand, a chair, and a hammer.

Crushing Further

Once I have the larger rocks broken into smaller pieces of rock, then I crush it further. If I’m only working with a few pieces, I’ll use a mortar and pestle. If I’ve got a lot of pieces, I’ll use the motorized rock crushing machine my husband put together for me when he realized I intended to continue smashing rocks by hand if necessary.

Washing the Rock Powder

The powder I have made from crushing the rock needs to be washed. I do this to get a smoother paint than I would if I used the freshly ground rock as it is. And although the washing does give me a smoother paint than not washing, it will never get as smooth as paints made with other machines called a triple mill or ball mill. I don’t have either of those, so washing brings me as close to perfection as I can get with what I have available.

In between destruction and creation in this journey from rock to art there is the cleansing. The rock powders are washed and poured into several jars to settle. Then I’ll pour the water out and dry the sediment to use for making paint.

About a week later…

The Journey is Slow from Rock to Art

This is ‘slow art’. Very similar to ‘slow food’ in that the meal doesn’t start with a shopping trip, but begins with planting a seed. A painting doesn’t start with the paint, but with the rock. Or several rocks, as the case may be when I’m not creating a monochrome.

But while the journey is slow from rock to art as in a finished painting, it actually feels as if the entire process is the art.

Pigment to Paint

Endpoint – a Finished Painting

The whole point of this journey is to be able to create a work of art that features the colors from the landscape I am painting. Here is one of the paintings that featured the brown paint that I made from a brown rock.

Of course in this case, the brown wasn’t the only color. I also used yellow sandstones, russet sandstones, red clay, lake pigment made from thyme out of my garden, soot from the chimney, and a greenish rock that offers a gray-green paint.

To get a greater variation in green shades, I do mix in very small amounts outsourced primary yellow and green pigments. Titanium white helps adjust the earthy colors as needed, too.

But the balance of color is entirely Ozark, from rocks (and/or soot, bone, or clay) foraged at the start of a journey from rock to art.

That’s the end of the journey from rock to art.

I hope you enjoyed the ride! If you think you’d like to learn how to make paint from your local rocks, consider taking my online class at Skool.com or join me for one of my workshops in person this year.