ROCKIN THE ART...

Retirement isn't too bad after all.
I am finding time to play a little more...
I did another one of the wonderful Jen Hall''s Painty Hands Classes again on Friday..
Friday''s class was all about rock painting... This is something I have been interested in lately..
I had been painting a few rocks myself to distribute around the neighborhood on my daily ones...
Just little bits of randomness to brighten up people's days...

I LOVED this class and I learnt so much...  So much so that once it was over, I set about prepping my rocks and Friday evening was spent decorating some new rocks... I have since prepped another dozen rocks ready to paint this week...

This was Jen''s stash and the promo for our class....

The class went for a couple of hours and you are able to sit in your lounge at home and participate... Mostly I just prepped the rocks during the class time and then watched the live feed taking notes so that once my rocks were dried I was all ready to go...

The very talented Jen Hall

Ready to start the rock painting online class

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Prepping our rocks

 Jen always gives you a list of the materials you will need a day or so before the class, so on the Thursday when I was out I paid a visit to Spotlight to pick up some of the Liquidtex Gesso that I needed to prime the rocks first.  I had not done this step previously which might be why I was having trouble getting a nice spot coat of paint with my paint pens..

My rocks are all prepped ready to go...

 This was about as far as I could go with the class, as you really need to put two coats of the Gesso on the rocks before you can paint them, and I knew that I needed them to be very dry before I used my paint pens.  It is very easy to ruin your pens if you try and use them before the paint is completely dry.  Considering they are not cheap, I didn't want this to happen....

Stepping us through the painting process.

The other new thing I learnt was that I could use several different sorts of mediums to paint my rocks.  Jen used acrylic paints as the background to a lot of her art work where I had been totally relying on paint pens.  This opened up a whole new world of creativity for me.  One of the other things she used was Kindy Glitz,  one of my favourite scrapbooking mediums so I was hooked.  I could add sparkle to my rocks...

Several rocks on the go at once...

Jen also told us that we didn't need to be totally creative, there were lots of good ideas on Pinterest.  I must admit I had already been on there and started a board on rock painting, so I figured it would be easier to find some simple designs and play around with them until I got my confidence in holding the rocks whilst I painted them.

I printed a few sheets of designs that I felt that I could master and I went from there...

Out came all my acrylic paints.  I was ready to play..

Not bad for an evening's work...

Bright and Happy

 Some close ups of my rocks...

I particularly love this little fellow

 We live pretty close to one of the hospitals in town, so I wanted to do one for the medical staff because life has been pretty tough for them over the last couple of weeks.   Nice to acknowledge the great job they have been doing under the present circumstances we all find ourselves in...

All painted ready now to be sealed..

 The last step to the rock process painting is to finally seal the rocks and this is achieved by giving the finished rocks a couple of coats for a sealer like this...

Clear spray

 This you can buy from Bunnings...
If you ever want to do some fun classes than I recommend that you log into Jen's "Painty Hands" Facebook page and sign up.  At the moment whilst we are all isolating she is running them each Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons at 1pm.  They are brilliant.  I am sure you will enjoy them as much as I have been...