Let’s Paint Some Rocks!

The School House Museum is located in an area surrounded by nature. One of the museum’s biggest goals, other than helping you learn the history of the Upper Ottawa Valley, is to get its visitors in touch with nature and what better way to encourage that then through a fun and simple craft.

Rock painting is super straightforward, requires minimal materials and can be easily adjusted for whatever level of complexity you are trying to achieve. This activity is perfect for all ages. Give it a try yourself!

Materials

Instructions

1. Because our main source material is something that we collected from outside, we have to make sure that they are clean so the paint we are going to apply later will adhere to the rock. Just rinse them with water and give them a scrub with your hands.

2. For this tutorial, we are going to be painting a sunset to resemble the landscape of Laurentian Hills. The first step to achieving this look is painting your entire rock in a layer of yellow paint.

3. Once the yellow layer has dried, add a layer of orange to the rock to create a gradual gradient of colour. Make sure not to block out all of the yellow.

4. Now that the sunset is in place, it’s time to place the mountains. To replicate a generalized version of the Laurentian Hills hill line, paint the silhouette of a small mountain and large mountain side-by-side.

5. The last step before completion is painting some clouds in the sky. Have fun with the shapes. Make them as realistic or abstract as you’d like. Pro tip: use a sponge brush for making clouds to get a fluffy effect!

6. If you’ve made it this far, that means you’ve finished your rock painting. With an activity as simple as this, it’s easy to paint multiple more rocks in whichever way you like. Check out some of our examples below!

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Thank you for trying out this craft! Let us know in the comments below what you thought and how it worked for you. Share pictures of your own painted rocks on our Facebook page.