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“Where’s the newsletter?”  It’s a question I’ve heard more than once in the past few months.  As a spectacular Ozark spring unfolded outside my window, I sat at my computer putting the finishing touches on the text for my newest book, Painting Zoo Animals on Rocks. Hard on the heels of that deadline was another for magazine projects to be featured in the next rock painting magazine.  Both deadlines were met, but before I could take more than a quick breath it was time to head off to the huge Society of Decorative Painting convention in Indianapolis. If you’ve never attended one of these conventions, you’ve missed the chance to meet some wonderful folks and shop for supplies in a gigantic and amazing sales hall.  I didn’t teach a class myself, but did demonstrate rock painting at my publisher’s booth.  And plans are now in the works for a special Rock Painting Workshop to be offered at next year’s convention in Phoenix.  I then struck out for neighboring Kewanee, IL to pick up the telescoping travel trailer my husband bid on for me through Ebay!  I hope to put it to good use in the next few years as I do more travel teaching.

It’s been almost a quarter of a century now since I picked up my first rock and transformed it with a layer of paint.  With twenty-five year’s worth of rock painting under my belt, I had begun to wonder if I had discovered just about everything I ever would about painting on rocks. Was I ever wrong!

As I worked on the projects for the zoo book, I puzzled over how to include giraffes.  It just seemed wrong to leave out those wonderful, towering giants.  On the other hand, I knew  giraffe-shaped rocks are about as rare as hen’s teeth. It would do my readers no favor to paint something on a rock so unusual no one could ever find anything like it.

So I began experimenting and before long I had discovered a way to build up or augment my rock shapes that not only solved the giraffe problem, but opens a whole new world of possibilities for rock painting.  By combining two inexpensive and easy to use products with ordinary driveway gravel, it is possible to literally ‘sculpt’ with stone.  The resulting additions are amazingly sturdy, and, when painted, they are guaranteed to make people do a double-take.

“How’d you do that?” I was asked over and over as I displayed a few of these special rock animals at the convention.  People were even more amazed at the way I picked up the pieces by their additions to demonstrate how stout the additions really are.

Painting Zoo Animals on Rocks is scheduled for publication next spring. The next Painting on Rocks magazine will go on sale in November and features Santa rocks, snuggled bunnies and some striking techniques for creating rock jewelry.

I can’t fail to mention how much fun we all had at the fourth annual Rock-Painter’s Get-Together in Golden, MO.  This year’s festivities included several informal classes where various painters shared their special techniques.  Next year we hope to include a ‘Rock Safari” to a favorite collecting place here in the Ozarks.  Attendees came from as far as Texas, Oklahoma and Wyoming. A big Thank You to Wandra Dees and her husband T. Joe who came up with the idea and host it each year, and to Betty and her husband who do so much to help out.

If you’ve had trouble finding copies of the current and back issues of the Painting on Rocks magazine, I still have some for sale at a special rate. Check my website, www.linwellford.com

As always, I enjoy hearing from fellow rock painters and invite you to write to me about your experiences with our unique art form.

Keep Rockin’!

Lin
 

Lin Wellford
Stone Menagerie
www.linwellford.com
 
 

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