How to Paint Rocks?

Guide To Painting Rocks

Painted rocks can be an excellent addition to a display, regardless of whether they’re the focal point or just a minor detail, and they can add a much-needed natural touch to a specific corner of your home or garden without looking like a low-effort rush-job. Unfortunately, they can be challenging to paint properly, especially when you’re hoping to do a tricky design or pattern.

Thanks to Best of Machinery, you don’t need to search through hundreds of different paint types or tools to get started – here’s our quick guide on how to paint rocks. Hopefully, you’ll be able to get out there and start putting together some excellent rock-based designs in no time, both indoors and out!

Finding Rocks

Finding a good set of rocks might seem like a really easy job, but it can actually be much trickier than it looks. It can be hard to track down smooth, single-color stones on short notice, especially if you’re hoping to have them ready on short notice: you can simplify things by just going out and buying packs of rocks from gardening or landscaping stores, since they’ll almost always be organized into bags of matching colors and/or sizes.

If you still want to go out and find them yourself, you should try looking near beaches and rivers – they’re more likely to be similar shapes, especially if you only need a handful to finish off your current project. You won’t be allowed to take them from a lot of public hotspots, so it’s easiest to track them down ‘in the wild,’ like at picnic spots or out in the middle of nowhere.

The Base Coat

Like most surfaces, a base coat will change the way your finished rock looks once you apply the primary layer. However, unlike a lot of the decorations you might paint yourself, rocks aren’t always made of consistent materials, so a single rock can have a range of different colors and layers that will show through on thinner paint coats. A solid base layer will fix this, but the color you use for it still matters a lot.

A black undercoat is best for darker colors, while a while one is better for more vivid or colorful paints. A white base coat will generally work with any color of paint, but darker colors might come with a slightly washed-out finish – using black instead will make these colors much more solid at the cost of darkening brighter colors.

It’s up to you which combination you use, or whether you use a base coat at all, but both kinds will still offer the same benefits – a much smoother painting surface and a more consistent paint coverage, regardless of any differences in the shape or material of your stones.

Choosing a Paint

There are no “best” and “worst” types of paint to use for rock-painting, but some will still usually perform better than others – since rocks don’t act as a man-made painting surface, it’ll often be much more receptive to ‘outdoor’ paints like general-purpose acrylics. Also, indoor paints will still work, especially if your painted rock is never going to be left outdoors.

Most water-based paints will work well, regardless of what they have in them – remember that some of these might have odors or be more toxic than others, so you might have to keep the room well-ventilated while you’re painting or drying a large number of rocks at once.

You can also use marker pens and marker-style paintbrushes to add extra details to a finished rock without needing to fiddle around too much – this can be great for more intricate designs or correcting small mistakes, and can open up a lot more design possibilities to you without forcing you to buy any special tools or equipment.

Painting a Rock

The painting process can be a little bit fiddly since rocks aren’t always perfectly flat or weighted, but it’s still fairly simple. To start, lay your rock out on a painting surface you’ve prepared – preferably somewhere with plenty of newspaper to help catch paint – and start planning out how you’re going to paint it. If you’re doing a base coat, apply it straight away leave your rock to dry (you can do half of the rock at a time, if you want to ensure it’s as smooth as possible).

Once your rock’s ready to paint properly, sketch or mark out any designs you’re hoping to draw: unpainted rocks can be marked with a pencil, but base coat layers might need markers or ink-based pen instead. If you’re painting it all a solid color, this obviously isn’t necessary.

Focus on painting the larger surfaces first, especially ones that you can rest it on later – this gives you a chance to let it dry so you can turn it over and do the opposite side, rather than having to hold it the entire time. Once most of the surface is done, start painting on the smaller details (if you’ve got any to add), and re-paint over any mistakes you make.

If you’re really proud of your design and want to keep it safe from future damage, spray it with paint sealer – very few of these will affect the way the finished rock looks, but will still help keep it safe from harm, and might even give it a nice reflective shine at certain light angles. If you’re into creating designs with a lot of light trickery in them, this can be useful even if the rocks don’t need any extra protection.