Stone

_{Photos: Ernestina Gallina}

Rock Painting Project Tutorial

Precious Messages Written in Stone

Acrylic Painted Open-Book Quote- and Keepsake Message Rocks

By Ernestina Gallina | Updated November 3, 2018

What you'll need:

smooth round rock
acrylic paint colors
brushes

Imagine your favorite saying on a rock, a meaningful message for a friend, an expression of love or devotion written on the pages of an old book...

This project will show you how to paint an old open book that you can personalize with your own text, for a very special gift that will last forever because it's "written in stone!"

Step 1

Choose squared, rectangular or oval rocks, preferably smooth. Flat rocks that cannot stand on their own may work too, in that case the finished piece will look best when displayed on an easel.

Wash your rock and let dry.

Step 1

Step 2

Start base coating your rock with white acrylic paint.

Step 2

Step 3

Use a pencil or the tip of your round brush dipped in brown paint to divide in half the rock's front.

Sketch in two pages, make them a little smaller than the rock's contour.

Step 3

Draw two rounded triangular shapes on top and bottom.

Draw

Step 4

Give depth to your book by tracing a second line for the book block. The line runs from one triangular shape to the other.

Step 4

Draw a inner page with some movement to make it more interesting.

Draw

Step 5

Use a medium flat brush and mix white with a drop of ochre paint to get a yellowish tone.

Step 5

Paint the two pages, giving a darker ochre shade sideways the midline.

Paint

Step 6

Use the same yellowish tone to fill in the sides.

Step 6

Now, with a liner and thinned-down brown paint, paint many tiny parallel lines. Those are the pages of your book.

Paint

Step 7

Turn the rock and paint the back with blue paint or any other color you prefer.

Step 7

Fill in the triangular shapes on top and bottom of your rock with black paint.

Fill

Step 8

Detail the rock's back by painting the book's spine in the middle adding sideways shadows in dark blue.

Step 8

Write your book title and add decorations of your choice.

Write

Step 9

Add a drop of white to the blue paint and highlight all the book cover's edges.

Step 9

Now you are ready to write your text! You can write it using the tip of your thin brush or, the easy way, using a permanent black marker.

Draw blue lines to add a bookmark.

Write

Paint the bookmark adding some white highlights and a diluted brown shadow under it to make it look more real.

Paint

These are the same rocks that I showed unpainted at the start:

A music book.
A music book

A poetry book.
A poetry book

Finished examples.

About Ernestina Gallina

Ernestina Gallina is a self-taught artist living in Italy. Her artwork has been exhibited within Italy and is currently in various private collections. ...