Painting Like Crazy, Part 1: Rocks

I took a sabbatical from painting on panels and canvases for most of the summer.  Instead, I painted rocks - hundreds of rocks!  It was fun, it was easy, and it was quick.  It helped me get over my ego-crushing experience in painting earlier in the summer.  It was good because I can genuinely laugh about the entire "naive" thing now.

So rock painting!  It was fun.  Several times I would get tired of it, put all the rock painting supplies away.  Then a day or two later, I'd get them out again.

The whole rock painting craze is fascinating.  Here are the basics:  You paint a design on one side of a rock.  On the other side you write some variation of the following: "Post a photo on Facebook #615 Rocks! or #WorldRocks.  Keep or Re-Hide."  You join the Facebook page for 615Rocks! or WorldRocks.  Then you "drop" the rock in some public place for someone else to find.  The hope is twofold: (1) Whoever finds the rocks will post a photo of it on the appropriate Facebook page; and (2) that whatever you painted on the rock will be meaningful in some way for whoever finds it. And that happened to me several times.  Out of the several hundred rocks I painted, maybe ten or so were found and posted on Facebook. 

My favorite story was of a little girl who found one of my ladybug rocks.  She loved it so much she named it "Daisy" and made a cardboard home for it.  Her mom took a picture of her with Daisy and Daisy's little home.  Very cute!

Here are some of the rocks I've painted: