The Basic Techniques of Oils ROCKS & BOULDER - Darrell · PDF filethe same techniques work whether you’re using traditional oil paints, acrylics, or the water mixable oil paints

The Basic Techniques of Oils, Chapter 25 25-1 Rocks & Boulder Techniques

Chapter 25

The Basic Techniques of Oils

ROCKS & BOULDERTECHNIQUES


The Basic Techniques of Oils

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 25: Rocks & Boulder Techniques

Art Supplies For Painting Rocks and Boulders………………………… 25-3

Section 1. The Four Basic Shapes of RocksFirst Basic Rock Shape: Knife………...…..…………………………….……. 25-4Second Basic Rock Shape: Brush ……………………………………….…… 25-9Third Basic Rock Shape: Dashes ……...…………………………………….. 25-15Fourth Basic Rock Shape: Embedded…..……………..….……………….. 25-17

Section 2. The Placement of Rocks and BouldersGranite Mixing Colors ………………………………………………………………. 25-21Beach Rocks ………………….………………………...….…….……..….……….. 25-22Waterfall Rocks ……………………...…..…………………………..…………….. 25-29River Rocks ……………………………………………………………………………….. 25-34River Banks ……………………………………………………………………………… 25-36Open Fields of Rocks …….……………………………………….……….………….. 25-39Snow Covered Rocks …………..………………………………………………….. 25-43Cliff Rocks ……………….………..…………………………………………………….. 25-47


Art Supplies: Painting RocksThis chapter provides a guideline for color selection,mixing paints, shaping and the process of paintingrocks and boulders.

I paint rocks by laying in a dark color and then high-lighting a brighter color over the base. There arefour basic types of Strokes I use in forming the rockshapes. After understanding the strokes, than itssimply a matter of placement and color.

Your best guide will be the reference photos you’vetaken on-location and notes you’ve made about anyparticular scene you’d like to paint. Take lots of pho-tos/notes of the scene along with close-ups of indi-vidual scene elements. Study them for shape, loca-tion and color. After you’ve decided upon each ofthese elements, you’ll find the rocks just flowingevenly onto your canvas.

The trick is this. Learn the four basic shapes. Mas-ter the four basic shapes. Perfect the four basicshapes. Then use the Seven Step painting processwe’ve outlined. Practice, practice, and practice untilpainting rocks is second nature. Then you’ll be ableto create some of the most stunning paintings ever.

For my traditional oils I can use justabout any brush to achieve the effect Idesire for rocks. My chief work horseis the #10 Palette knife AND the #4flat bristle brush . But I also use fil-bert brushes, fan brushes or my bigbrushes like the 1” or larger. It’s all amatter of the kind of rocks I want topaint.

Basic Rules For RocksAs you progress through this discussion on painting rocks, let me remind you thatthe same techniques work whether you’re using traditional oil paints, acrylics, orthe water mixable oil paints. You use the same brushes, same colors and samestrokes.

In my painting, The Highlands on the right I used all four basic strokes to achievedifferent looks I wanted to drive the viewer to appreciate. After you’ve had achance to study this chapter, come back to The Highlands and see if you can spotwhich rocks were made by ….

1. The Palette Knife Stroke2. The Brush Stroke3. The Dash Stroke4. The embedded Stroke

It may seem difficult now, but by the time you’ve completed this discussion,you’ll easily spot each of these four strokes.

Remember, study your reference information so that their shape, color and place-ment are second nature to you. Your job as an artist is not to paint a photograph.Rather it is to capture the scene in such a fashion that emotions and feelings youfeel, the viewer will feel as well.


First Basic Rock Shape: Knife

The most fundamental rock stoke is with the palette knife. The seven-step process for painting rocks and bouldersis quite simple.

1. SHAPE the rock with the basic color2. SCRAPE the excess paint off with the knife3. SMOOTH the scrapped surface of the rock.4. SHINE the rock with the highlight color you’ve chosen.5. SHADOW light the rock, as it makes sense.6. SPARKLE the rocks with an even brighter highlight.7. SET the rock(s) into the terrain.

In the first row of photos on this page you’ll note that I’ve loaded a thick bead of paint onto the short edge of the #10 palettepainting knife with BU paint. The whole purpose of using a knife is to make sure the rocks you paint have a clearly definededge (border). Therefore, take caution to preserve these edges throughout the painting process.

So feel free to put your fingers onto the knife blade while you stroke the rock’s base color (BU) onto the canvas. Force thepaint onto the canvas in the SHAPE you desire. Now again, you’re only concentrating on the outside edge of the rocks.Don’t worry about painting the interior of the rock. Simply focus on the outside shape of the rock. Once that is complete,then fill in the rock interior with the BU paint.

Next, SCRAPE off paint from the interior of the rock with the knife. AND LEAVE THE EDGE ALONE. Don’t touch theoutside edge.

Once scrapped, take a large enough brush (depends upon the size of the rock you’ve just painted) and SMOOTH the rockinterior down and to either the right or left side. Brush the rock in the direction of the rock’s surface.

After I finish smoothing out the paint, I’ll take the same brush and pull some of the color from the rock down for a half inchor so. This allows me to have a darker area to reflect shade when I highlight landscape terrain, or to have a reflection if I’mpainting a rock in or near water. It will also help set the rock into the terrain when we highlight the surface that the rock isresiding upon.


So be sure to pull the paint down and then blendthe area underneath the rock with your brushusing a long horizontal stroke. You’re nowready for highlights.

If you’re painting from reference materials mixtogether the color you need. If you’re just prac-ticing your rock techniques then mix togetherthe following colors: 3 parts BS, 1 part YO, 1Part TW. Sometimes I’ll even add a touch ofBR to this mixture. I mix the paint until I see amarbled of color. If at all possible, avoid ablended single color.

Hold the knife between your thumb and forefin-ger around the metal ferrule. Do not allow anyportion of any of your fingers ti touch the knifeblade. This will feel awkward until you’ve be-come accustomed to holding the knife and paint-ing with it. But trust me, it’s the proper way tohold your knife.

This grip allows you to exert very little to nopressure on your knife while maintaining fullcontrol of the knife’s direction as you paint. Thethree remaining fingers of your hand can juststick out into the air, or rest on the handle.

Since we loaded the short edge of the knife withpaint, stroke down the outside edge of the rockwith the short blade facing the outside edge.

Tribute To TheRocky Mountains

I painted this scene a cou-ple of years ago afterholding my second work-shop in Brighton, CO.

I formed all of the rockswith a knife using thetechnique you’re nowreading about. I love theragged look you canachieve with a knife.And by careful study ofyour reference materialyou can also match thecolor very nicely. Whatintrigued me in Coloradois that all of those jaggedrocks (except red rocks)had the same granite col-ors as the nearby moun-tains.


Before we SHINE the rocks, look at the top right twophotos. The knife is held at about a 30 to 45 degreeangle to the canvas. Pull the knife along the outsideedge of the rock in the direction of the rock’s slope.A small strip of paint will transfer from the knife’sedge to the canvas highlighting the rock’s surface.By using little to no pressure, the highlight color willskip over certain areas giving the rock a ‘broken’appearance. This is what you want to happen.

Reload as frequently as necessary. If you find your-self pressing on the knife to transfer paint to the can-vas, this means you must reload your knife. If youdon’t, you’ll make mud. So reload frequently. Byskipping a small section, you give the illusion of an-other rock in the pile. Do not paint the whole surfaceof the rock SOLID with the highlight color. Decidewhich side of the rock has light, and highlight onlythat side.

Once completed, mix up a small mixture paint con-sisting of TW, BS and PB or Purple. This is yourSHADOW-LIGHT color. Load the small edge of theknife with a bead of the shadow-light color. Paintthe shadow side of the rocks in the same fashion asthe highlight color EXCEPT this time you’ll godown the OPPOSITE side of the rock along its slope.Once the rock is completely painted with both thehighlight and shadow-light as shown in the leftphoto, its time to make it sparkle.

I like to take some of the highlight color and addeven more TW to it so that its noticeably brighterthan the highlight. Load a small amount of thisSPARKLE color onto the knife’s small edge and justpaint a very small amount of paint onto the rock’ssurface. This is where sunlight ‘dances’ on the rock.

Frequently I’ll use two different ‘sparkle colors’ justto make two rocks close together stand out.

The Hiding Place

About 20 years ago I created this painting as an exercise forstudents to understand highlighting. We used black as thebase color and a strong mixture of PB and TW for the high-light color.

Notice on the left side of the painting that the highlights areon the right side of the rocks. On the right side of the paint-ing the rock highlights are on the left side of the rocks. Therocks in the pile near the center has highlights on both sides.

This painting uses two of the basic rock strokes. One is theknife stroke as you’ve just learned and the other is the clifflike stroke which we’ll learn more about later.


That certainly was fun tackling rocks with a knife, solet’s go to boulders. Boulders are humongous rocks.The only difference is size.

1. SHAPE. Load the knife’s small blade edge withthe base color. I’m using BU for this exercise. Makesure you have a solid bead of paint as shown on theleft. Boulders frequently are piled together but you’llsee quite a few standing alone. For this exercise I’llhave a pile of boulders. I don’t care about paintingboulders individually right now. I’ll separate themwhen we highlight the boulders. For now, just shapethe outside edge of your pile of boulders. You want tomake sure you have clean, strong edges. Take yourtime in forming the shape and feel free to put as muchpressure on the knife as desired to transfer the paint tothe canvas.

After you’re satisfied with the outside shape of yourpile of boulders, fill in the interior with the base color.

Clean your knife with a paper towel.

2. SCRAPE. Now scrape the base color off the inte-rior of your pile of boulders. DO NOT TOUCH THEOUTSIDE EDGES OF THE BOULDERS. Leave theoutside edge alone. We worked hard to form theedges with a knife, but do scrape off the interior basecolor. The reason we paint then scrape is to stain thecanvas with the base color. Enough paint will remainon the canvas so we can have beautiful boulders. Seeall of my scrape marks?

3. SMOOTH. Using a large bristle brush smooth outthe boulder’s interior with the remaining paint. Strokein the direction of the slope for your pile of boulders.On the right, down the right side, on the left, down theleft side. BE SURE NOT TO TOUCH THE OUT-SIDE EDGES OF THE BOULDERS.

Once you’re satisfied with the shape of the boulderand the smoothing, mix up some highlight paint. Aswith rocks, I like to study my reference materials andmatch up the color to what I see in the photos I’mreferencing.

Load the small edge of the palette painting knife witha bead of the highlight color. We must be careful howwe’re holding the knife by the metal ferrule with onlyour thumb and forefinger. Do not put any finger ontothe knife whatsoever. We’re ready to highlight.

It’s so important to hold this knife as shown to theleft. This is the absolute, single most important tech-nique you can master to produce extraordinary rocks,boulders and even mountains.


It is so awkward to learn, but in a short amount of dedicated practice you can build a second-nature technique whereby thishold is just so natural. Your rocks and boulders will just flow off your knife.

Don’t be afraid. You Can Master. You Are The Master.

Boulders are really big rocks. And since they’re so big, we can take our time with them and have a lot of fun. Study thephoto to the right.

4. Highlight. My first stroke is to outline the edge of the boulder.See how the small blade of the knife is facing toward the right sideof the boulder’s edge. That’s the edge I’m painting. With onestroke I want to paint a single, thin line along the entire outsideedge. You’ll probable run out of paint before you’ve completedthe outside edge, so simply reload the knife and continue strokinguntil the entire edge of the rock has been highlighted.

With each successive stroke in the rock’s interior there are twothings to concerned you. First, load less paint onto the knife andsecondly, grab a part of the painted outside edge and lightly pull itdown. I use a lot of short strokes when painting the interior ofboulders. This gives a realistic, ragged, jagged surface.

5. Shadow-Light. Mix together your shadow color andpaint the opposite slope of each boulder.

6. Mix a small amount of sparkle color. This is an evenbrighter highlight I use to show the effect of sun dancingacross the surface of the rock. I like to marble the colorsI’m using so that the sparkle is not just one color. Youcan see the BR, YO and BS in the marbled mixture be-low in the bottom boulder range. Sparkle the highlightedsurface of the boulders to show the sun dancing alongthe surface. Use this color sparingly!

7. Set the boulders by placing a large brush on the bottomof the boulders and pulling the color straight down. Blendwith horizontal strokes. Practice this technique. We’re nowgoing to show how to achieve the identical rocks and boul-ders with the brush strokes. Study the photo to the right.The top boulders were painted with a brush and the bottomwith a knife.

Which to use. Which look do you prefer? Study your refer-ence materials for your answer.


Second Basic Rock Stroke: Brush

Let’s study the process of painting rocks and boulders with abrush. I can use a filbert brush (shown on the left), flat brushfan brush, or just about any brush I have. The key is alwaysfollowing our 7-step process, but depending upon the brushwe use and the effect we’re striving to achieve, we’ll skipsome of these steps. Let’s get started.


For our first example, lets begin by showing you how to make the most basic of all rock brush strokes. The firststroke we learned in the previous pages is the most common and my most preferred technique for painting rocks.

The Rock Brush Technique is the easiest and fastest to learn. Our first step is to prepare our paints for paintingwith a brush. I double-load my brush for this most basic rock stroke. Double-load simply means I’m going to usetwo colors. One for each side of the brush. One side of the brush will contain the base rock color while the otherwill contain the highlight.

In this step, I SHAPE and SHINE a rock in a single stroke.

But first, lets prepare the paints.

Rock Base Color: I’ll use BU as my rock base color. So pull one side only of the brush through the BU to load itonto the brush. I pull the brush through the paint toward me, lift the brush and repull the brush through the painttoward me until I’m satisfied with the amount of paint on the brush. I do not need a lot of paint for making theserocks with the brush.

Rock Highlight Color: In the left photo I use a palette knife to load up some medium. (In this case, its MediumWhite, but could be regular clear medium.) Mix the medium with the highlight color to thin the paint. You’relooking for a soft color about the consistency of cake icing. This color will have to load onto the brush in one shortpull.

Load up one side of your brush with the rock base color, turn the brush over and load up your brush with the high-light color on the opposite side with one short pull through the soft paint. You now have the dark base color onone side of the brush and the soft highlight color on the opposite side of the brush.


Rainbow Over Saddle Rock

Brush rocks really helped tofinalize this painting . I wantedsimilar color rocks as the mesato be scattered underneath theshrubbery and along side of thestream. I can almost imaginestanding in the middle of thisstream and fly casting upstream.

The mountain was made with aknife and the valley rocks with abrush. You can see how welleverything flows together. Asyou study photos, decide earlywhat brushes/knives to use oneach rock.

I’ve shown above, the proper way to hold the brush and position it on thecanvas whether you’re right handed or left handed. Paint using either theright or left side of the brush so that the paint transfers from the side edgesof the brush onto the canvas as you stroke. You can use a small straightstroke like a dash or put a little downward spin at the very end of the dash.This later stroke gives the rock a curved appearance. On the left photoyou can see the top rock which has a downward angle at the very end ofthe stroke for a round rock top. The rock below is a single dash withoutthe downward stroke.

Both strokes are quite important as a lot of rocks and boulders are halfburied in either the ground, or just appearing above the surface of water.A straight dash gives the illusion of the rock being totally on top of theground. Practice this stroke until you can make great rocks with your eyesclosed.

The above strokes are great for small rocks. But there are times when wewant to paint much larger rocks, or only a portion of the rock coming outof the ground. To accomplish this, reload your brush and this time insteadof a dash, stroke a long wide line.

Remember that you’re painting from the side of the brush so that colorfrom the top AND the bottom of the brush continuously transfer to thecanvas. If you run out of paint either reload or use a bigger brush that canhold significantly more paint.


I can use a flat bristle brush to achievethe same effect as the filbert bristlebrush. I will not get quite the roundedtops to the rocks, but for tons of smallrocks the flat brush would be preferred.Especially if I’m painting lots of rocksin shrubbery or fields of grass.

Load and stroke the flat brush identicalto the filbert, but only with the straightdash stroke.

A large filbert above 3/4” wide is ideal for painting hugeboulders. Again, because of its size, you’ll be able to load alot more paint onto the brush, carry the paint for longerdashes and in general, paint largte boulders with this brush.Remember this when deciding upon which brush(es) to use.

1. The key is to take your time in the stroke2. Make sure the brush goes in the direction you want3. Paint with the highlight color on top, the base color on

the bottom.4. Paint using the side of the brush5. Reload frequently.

We’re used to the dash strokes being done quickly and feelwe have to stroke quickly using the larger brushes. Not true.Take your time as I did on these large rocks. You could alsouse a 1” or larger flat brush if you don’t need the roundededge in order to paint large flat rocks.


The Making of Kissing Camels

In one of my trips to teach oil painting workshops in Brighton, CO, Sandee and Paul Franz invited me to visitColorado Springs for a photo session.

Colorado Springs is home to many exciting natural wonders including Pikes Peak, Garden of the Gods, CheyenneMountain and little bit further south, The Seven Falls and Royal Gorge. Naturally I had to say Yes.

In the above photo you see Pikes Peak in the distance. The red rocks below form a spatial collection of rockmonuments called, Gardens of the Gods. We spent a couple of hours just driving through the park, exploring andtaking photos.

I took the above photo with my Canon XTI Digital SLR using a traditional 28-300 mm SLR Zoom lens. When Ireturned home I loaded this photo into my Adobe Elements 4.0 photo editor and began enlarging to spot paintingopportunities. To my great surprise and joy, I had a beautiful blow up of “The Kissing Camels” rock formation.So I blew the cropped photo up to a 16”x20” image (landscape orientation) and really studied the formation.

The painting on the right is the result of this photo. This entire painting was completed using a brush. All of therock formations were created with a 99 cent #6 bristle flat. For highlights I did drop down to an equivalent #4 or#2 flat bristle. If you look closely you’ll see my dash strokes on some of the rocks. The trick is to highlight theedge and dash as you continue to the interior of the rocks.

In the wet-on-wet technique we often think that rocks must be made with a knife. Knives are great, but brusheswork just as well. Each has their own specific look and it all just depends upon what you need. Take a photo of arocky scene near you and paint. Send us a photo, we’ll be happy to give you some pointers.



Balanced RockColorado’s Garden of the God’s National Park is a true goldmine for inspiring artists. In this particular photo, Iwas walking around looking for just the proper angle. There had to be well over a hundred people walking aboutadmiring this rock formation. So I concentrated first on finding the proper angle. Once I was satisfied I had towait quite a bit for a clear photo without people.

Aside from the bit of pavement shown in the bottom foreground, there’s no sign that humans had ever beenaround.

So my patience was rewarded and I became the proud bearer of a terrific photo.

In less than 2 minutes I took a second photo, but there had to be well over 10 people standing around looking up orjust climbing the rocks below.

Never question fortune…...just paint it.

Pick and choose the rocks elements that are most meaningful to you and delivers the story you’re painting.

I saw an Egyptian soldier, or was it an Aztec warrior?

Although I call my painting Balanced Rock, I could easily have chosen “Warrior,” or “The Unknown Soldier.”


Third Basic Rock Stroke: Dashes

This stroke is solely for paintingBoulders and piles of boulders.It’s essentially an advanced sec-ond stroke. Load the brush withthe base color (BU in this exam-ple) and SHAPE & SMOOTHthe boulder. Thoroughly cleanthe brush. Load only one side ofthe brush with the highlight colorTo SHINE, paint one highlightcolor line along the outside edgeof the side of the boulder towardthe sun or light source.

Generally the outside edge will take all of the brush’s paint.Wipe the brush off with a paper towel and reload one side ofthe brush with the highlight color. Return to the canvas andbegin short “dash” strokes from the edge of the rock into theinterior. Skip here and there to leave dark crevices. Thedash strokes leaves irregular color and highlights on therocks surface and this is what you want. To create anotherrock, simple clean the brush, reload and form the next out-side edge of the boulder as you see in the center photo above.The best practice is to deliberately leave dark color betweenthe previous rock’s interior and the edge of the new boulderyou’re painting. Repeat this process until all of the bouldershave been painted. Then return with a brighter color toSPARKLE the sun on the rock’s surface. SHADOW-LIGHT and SET the base of the boulders into the terrain.


The key to success with the dash stroke is to make sure that the highlight paint is loaded only on one side of thebrush. You place the brush at a 90 degree angle to the canvas with the brush’s horizontal edge aimed along theslope. In the example above, the boulders’ slope runs from the top center of the boulder “right” and “down” to theground. Your dash strokes will need to follow in this direction.

The dash strokes are anywhere from 1/4” to 1” long. Never make them longer except for the initial outside edgestroke. There’s no set rules other than this. In Kissing Camels, my strokes generally ran from 1/4” to `1/2” longand I easily achieved the results I desired. Only the outside edge (sun side) of the boulder contain a single longline from the top of the boulder to the bottom. All other strokes must be dashes.

One additional thought to keep in mind. Irregularity is a key to every great painting. Not every dash should beprecisely the same precise length or direction as the previous dash. Mix it up. A bunch of shorts, bunch of longs,bunch of in-betweens. This makes the rocks and boulders very believable and your painting just shines.

Experiment with colors. Go out into the countryside and observe the rocks and boulders you’ll be painting. Askyourself what are the 5 dominant colors you see. Then select a combination of these colors and use them in yourhighlights. You can marble them or paint 5 sets of highlights on your rocks.


Fourth Basic Rock Stroke: Embedded

As I hike or tour the countryside, I’ve noticed I don’t just see the entireboulder or rocks. More times than not I see portions of rocks. Forexample, on the side of a hill covered with trees and bushes I’ll see justportions of rocks that seem to be “embedded” into the forest.

Across an open field I’ll see some rocks jut out of the earth and backdown into the ground. Or in a grassy area the surface of a few boulderswill just start to show through the vegetation.

These rocks are painted with the embedded technique.

Load up a palette knife or brush with the rock’s base color and apply to the area where we want to see our partial rock orboulder. Shape is not so important since we’ll never see the embedded rock shape. Mix up the highlight color and load upa palette knife with a bead of this paint. Stroke lightly either horizontally or vertically across the surface.

Once you’ve covered the entire sur-face of the base color YOU’REDONE. In subsequent steps you’llpaint the trees, field or bushes thatwill embed the rocks into the sur-face. But right now for practice,simply add foliage mix around theembedded rock and highlight fieldgrass. Don’t be shy about addingthe highlighted grass right into theinterior of the embedded rock. Thissimply adds realism to your paint-ing. Again, study your referencematerials.


After Mary completed painting the lay of the land it was easy to see how these two directions complemented theflow of the terrain. This didn’t happen by accident. I had Mary study her reference photo and identify each em-bedded rock she would paint, the highlight color and the slope of all of the embedded rocks. As Benjamin Franklinsays, “He who fails to plan, plans to fail.” Study and Plan. Above all, practice, practice, practice.

I recently helped a student paint an Irish coun-tryside scene.

Mary had a photo from 1930 of her ancestor’scottage in the motherland. She wanted to recre-ate the photo into a colorful paintings.

Now if you’ve been to Ireland or England orScotland, you’re quite aware of the rocky ter-rain. Not only are there numerous rocks andboulders, but embedded rocks littering thecountryside. In fact, I was told one had to becareful behind those embedded rock forma-tions. Could be an old Irish still that’s active.

So I had Mary identify which embedded rockswere to be included in the painting. We paintedthe base color of these areas with Van DykeBrown (VDB) using a #10 Palette Knife.

Then Mary selected a highlight color of BS,TW and YO. Now notice the left photo. Themost immediate embedded rock is highlightedwith the strokes going vertically. However tothe left, the next set of vertical rocks werepainted going from left to right and headingdown. Almost a 5 O’Clock stroke.


The Seventh Falls

In my painting, The Seventh Falls, notice the embedded cliff side to the left of the waterfall.

This follows the Very Same procedure for painting embedded rocks. This applies to rocks, boulders, cliff-sidesand portions of mountains.

How many different types of Basic Rock strokes do you see in the above painting? If you look closely, you’ll findI used all four types of rock strokes.


On Wolverton Mountain

In this version of a yet-to-be-released painting and DVD, I’ve used the embedded rock strokes to show two different elevations of anopen field as they slope down to a small path that leads to a colorful lake in front of Wolverton Mountain.


Mixing Granite ColorsMixing the right colors for your mountains, rocks and boulders is critical for setting the atmosphere in your paint-ings. As I traveled through the Western United States and rugged, arid sections of South America, Australia andEurope or Africa, I found myself struggling to come up with a basic method of mixing the right granite colors. Asimple BU base with a BS mix just wasn’t the right combination for me.

Mix PG & TW with apalette knife until youhave a light gray color asshown above.

Mix thoroughly. You can’tgo wrong with this mix-ture. This completes thegranite highlight color. Setaside two small portions ofthis color for mixing.

When satisfied, add atouch or two of IB to dullthe light gray color a bit.

Add a touch or two of BSto the granite mixture.Western rocks and boul-ders have all kinds of warmcolors and reflective mate-rials like quartz.

Set aside a small amountof the granite highlightmix and two touches ofIY and mix together.

Mix thoroughly. Thiscompletes the granite spar-kle color.

Add 2 times the amountof TW to the mix.

Mix thoroughly. Add adrop or two of IY if you donot see a slight, slight tintof IY in the mix.

Set aside another smallportion of the granitehighlight mix as well

You now have (L to R) Shadow-Light Highlight Sparkle

Add PB to the mix. Addonly a very small amountat a time. PB can easilyovercome the color.

Mix the Shadowlight colorthoroughly until you have agrayed blue consistent withthe other two mixes.


Beach Rocks

One thing you should always be aware when ‘on-location’ isthe elements that comprise your landscape.

I’ve noticed that wherever there is water, rocks reside.

When on location carry a notebook and a camera. Take refer-ence photos of the scene you’d like to paint AND referencephotos of the elements. Take good close-up photos of rocks,trees, rivers, bushes, everything. You never know how valu-able these photos will become until you’re in your paintingstudio. When on location I frequently bring a set of binocularsjust so I can study the elements whose distance is greater thanthe zoom lens. Write your observations down in the notebook.

Let’s spend a few minutes practicing how to make beach rocks.You’ve studied the four rock stroke we have, and you’ve be-come familiar with the seven step process in painting rocks (ormountains).

With a large brush loaded with BS & TW, paint a rectangulararea onto your canvas of any size for a beach.

Using a #10 palette knife loaded with BU shape a small rockon the beach. Most often a straight line, or an inverted ‘V’ or arounded cake top shape will be sufficient.

When satisfied with the shape, switch to a large brush. Touchthe very bottom of the rock with the clean dry large brush andpull the paint straight down. This will create weird streaks ofBU coming straight out of the bottom of the rock and straightdown the beach.

This forms reflections. This is one of the simplest techniquesof painting reflections I know.

Wipe the brush off with a paper towel and lightly stroke hori-zontally across the lines that form the reflections. Do notstroke across the rock itself. Only stroke the BU lines youpulled down from the rock.

When doing a beach scene I will often paint quite a few rocks.

The most prudent method is to first shape all of the rocks ini-tially with the knife (or brush). Then take a large brush andpull down the bottoms of each rock. Wipe off the brush fre-quently with a paper towel. You may have to clean your brushseveral times to keep the brush free from paint. Then horizon-tally stroke the brush for each individual rock.

Since the rocks are small there is no need to scrape and smooththe rock surfaces.


Now you’re ready to shine the rock with the highlight color.

Refer to your reference photos and/or notes to mix up the high-light color.

For the rest of us, we’ll put together a mix of BS, TW, YO toform our highlight color.

Since the rocks are small, I like using the short painting edge ofthe #10 or #5 palette knife. This allows better control of apply-ing the paint than the long painting edge.

Note the location of your light source. Is light going to betouching the right, left or tops of your rock? For the sake ofthis example, let’s determine that the light will reflect off theright side of the rock.

Remember to hold the palette knife by its metal ferrule withonly your thumb and forefinger. The other 3 fingers kind ofjust hang around for the ride performing no function.

Using short dash strokes, highlight the rock with the paletteknife. Stroke from the top of the rock and follow the right edgeto the bottom where the rock is touching the wet sand.

Repeat these narrow dash strokes until the right side of the rockhas been painted. Remember, the paint should not be solid, butbreak leaving ragged, jagged edges and dark spots.

Now mix up the Shadow light color.

When mixing shadow-light paint, this is my basic formulae..

1 part highlight color. Touch of rock base color 2 touches of blue or purple 3 touches of TW

I want the shadow light to have almost the same brightnesslevel as the highlight color, and ‘colder’ color. So I add a verysmall amount of blue or purple to the rock base and enoughTW to match the brightness I need.

Load up the small edge of the palette knife with the shadow-light color.

Stroke the left side of the rock from the top to where the rockintersects with the beach. Repeat this step until the rock iscompletely painted.

With a beach full of rocks, I’ll use the same shadowlight color.When you paint your first rock shadow side, inspect the colorto see if you need to go lighter or darker. It’s only when weadd paint to our canvas objects that we truly see the color.


Add waterlines at each rocks’ base to separate the actual rockfrom its reflection.

Thin some TW with the water color and medium. Mix thor-oughly. You want a consistency that’s about like gravy.

Load a small amount of the waterline mix onto the small edgeof the palette knife. Only a very thin bead is necessary.

Holding the knife at a 90 degree angle to the canvas, “cut” awater line between the rock and its reflection using a sawingstroke. Don’t be afraid of hurting or abusing your canvas. Thecanvas can easily withstand this abuse. It’s tough.

When using this stroke, feel free to go ahead and put your fin-gers onto the knife blade. We’re not trying to have the paintbreak so a firm grip and pressure is just fine.

You’ll find that as you gain more experience in painting water-lines that the sawing stroke is escellent for going around anytype of rock or river bank elements.

Master it. If you find that you have too thick of a line, cleanthe palette knife and place the knife’s edge underneath thethick line portion you want to thin. Use sawing motions gentlypush the line up with the sawing strokes. This will thin out thewaterline quite nicely giving you the type effect you seek.

A waterline around the rock has to make sense to your viewer.This means you’ll need to extend the foam pattern across thebeach as I show in the left photo. Continue to practice addingwaterlines to your beach rocks.

Let’s examine another method of making beach rocks. Orwould you call them sand pebbles?


We can also make rocks using either a filbert or a flat bristlebrush. The principle is identical to the brush stroke section ofthis chapter.

Very simply, ….

The first step is to SHAPE the rock with the basic color.

Remember that this step is accomplished with a double loadedbrush, meaning there are two colors on the brush. A dark basecolor on one side of the brush and a highlight color on theother.

The Base Color is BU The Highlight color is a mix of BS, TW and YO Thin the Highlight color with a few drops of medium.

This mix should be noticeably thinner than the BU, but notrunny.

Load only one side only of the bristle filbert brush (#8 or #6works best) with BU. Load the other side of the brush with theHighlight mix. The brush is now double-loaded and ready.

Hold the brush at a 90 degree angle on the canvas and then turnthe brush to the right or left at a 45 degree angle so that half ofthe brush’s edge and half of the brushes side make contact withthe canvas. Stroke a dash. This paints a beautiful roundedrock on the beach as you see to the immediate left.

Since these are small rocks we do not have to SCRAPE theexcess paint off the rock’s interior with the knife. Nor will wehave to SMOOTH the scrapped surface of the rock. We’ll skipthese two steps.

Once you have finished painting all of the beach rocks wipeyour brush with a paper towel. With the filbert brush (No, youdon’t have to wet-clean the brush), grab the bottoms of eachrock and pull the BU paint straight down. Since these are smallrocks, you only need to pull the base color down about 1/4” to1/2”

With a large brush stroke horizontally underneath each rock toset the rock in and to form the rock’s reflection in the wet sand.

Since we double loaded the brush and with a single stroke,formed/highlighted the rocks, there will be no need to shadow-light the rocks.

All that remains is to add the waterline at the base of each rockto divide the reflections and the rock itself. This step is identi-cal to the previous waterline painting steps we outlined on theprevious page.


Besides rocks along the seashore, its common to see large boulders as well. These could have been placed by nature or by aconservation act. The process for both is the same. In the above example note that I’ve added a large boulder in the wet sandand on the outskirts of the beach, typically to what I’ve observed and recorded on-location. More dramatic seascapes wouldshow higher waves drowing gigantic boulders as the water smashed and bashed its way from sea to the shoreline.

Always carry your camera. Be ready to capture a moment.

Take a lot of photos should you happen onto such a powerful scene.

It’s a seascape painter’s gold mine. Set the boulders into the sand identical to the process described previously.

Practice, practice and practice some more and these four basic rock painting techniques will become second nature to you.


Golden Morning

When we put together the Seascape Series students from all over asked for a cheerful scene that included a multi-colored morning sky, palm trees and a neat beach scene. Can you imagine waking up every morning to this beau-tiful scene off your balcony? As a youngster, I spent a year of my life living in Monterey on lighthouse Ave.Each day I awoke to the sound of seals and as I looked out of my bedroom window on a clear day I could see theentire Monterey Bay, including the little town, Carmel. What I would give now to own that small 2-bedroomhome in Monterey!

Study the rock formations on beaches.

Notice the reflections of the rocks and boulders in the wet sand.

Look how I’ve added SPARKLE sparingly on boulders and rocks. Too much sparkle will spoil the painting.

Can you identify which rock and boulder was painted with a brush? Which painted with a knife?

Hint: Study the far distant boulders as well on the right side.


Monterey

My brother and I moved to Monterey when I was 8 years old for a year. Our father had remarried and sent for us.This was an awesome adventure for two young boys who’d never been outside of Illinois. Our idea of a big tripwas as far as our little legs could pump a bicycle all in one day. This trip was over 1,700 miles by TRAIN!

Each morning we awakened to the sounds of seals barking and the roar of the ocean breakers. See how using abrush can produce awesome boulders. We also added water foam patterns onto the boulders by thinning TW andusing a #2 script liner. Our strokes went in the opposite direction of the run of water. We went up a rock to showwater running down the rock.


Waterfall Rocks

Twin Falls

You cannot paint a landscape or seascape which includes water without including rocks and boulders. We’ve justcompleted showing how to position rocks along the beach. Let’s turn to the second most common types of waterlandscapes desired by the buying public.

In this waterfall painting, I use two of the basic stroke techniques to add detail to the painting. First the left handside of the waterfall. Notice the cliff rocks that was painted with a knife. Secondly, the other rocks surroundingthe waterfall, splitting the waterfall in half and scattered throughout the landscape are rocks painted with a knife.

The rounded rocks in the stream and the lower landside were painted using the double loaded brush technique.Some of the rocks in the massive waterfall with all of the splash covering up a majority of the detail were paintedwith a bush.

Once you’ve mastered the four basic rock and boulder strokes, than you’re going to be more comfortable withpainting any kind of rock. But more importantly, you’re going to build a preference in how to approach potentialprojects.

It’s a blast creating new paintings once you learn the fundamental techniques.


Mountain Falls

A couple of decades ago when I was studying for an instructor certificate, one of the instructors, Ray, noted that amost useful practice in gaining a sense of how bright to paint certain scenes was to first paint that scene in black/white/gray. If the B&W will blow you away, the color version will be pure TNT. I found my students absolutelyloved painting B/W scenes. I’ve developed several paintings which are on video now that encourages the use ofB/W to study brightness. This is a great study for painting rock formations around the waterfall. I used only theknife strokes in this scene.


Rocks along a waterfall present their own unique challenges.

The basic theory is that a bunch of huge boulders in the way ofa river or stream does not stop water flowing. The water sim-ply topples over the top and falls to the ground. The bigger therocks, the longer the falls.

If the rocks are really small, this is known as cascades since thedrops are relatively short. Frequently, where there’s a largenumber of cascades, the rocks themselves are not seen. Just thewater falling over the rocks indicate their presence., Waterflowing over really small rocks flows around, over or simplycauses a small splash or ripple.

In this exercise I’m concerning myself with water falling overbig boulders and dropping down a considerable distancegreater than six feet or 2 meters.

To paint these boulders selec a large brush to utilize the secondrock stroke technique. A knife could be used if detail is de-sired, by following the mountain knife technique we coveredin an earlier chapter.

For the Base rock color, use a very dark color. Candidateswould include PG, BU, VDB or IB. Don’t create a mix, simplychoose one solid dark color that will best meet the photo refer-ence material or your desires.

For the highlight color, I’ll chose BS, TW, YO mix. You can’tgo wrong in this mix. Simply mix these colors together untilyou’re happy with the highlight color. Then add a smallamount of medium to thin the paint.

If you’d like a SPARKLE mix a small amount of the highlightcolor with TW. Add a couple small touches of IY to warm upthe color.

Double-load your brush. In this example, I’m using a 1” widebristle filbert brush. First load both sides of the brush with thebase color and the highlight color only on one side.

Place the brush such that the highlight color faces the waterfalland stroke. I like rather long boulders holding back these wa-terfalls. Either paint a single, long boulder holding back eachside or several big boulders. In this example I wanted two bigboulders on the right. Make sure you keep the brush loaded.

Notice the photo on the left. The waterfall’s right side boulderis about to get into trouble. I need to reload the brush at thispoint. The highlight color is nearly gone and the rock’s interiorbase color is fading rapidly.

When reloading, make sure you only load the rock’s base coloronto the dark side of the brush and only the highlight color onthe light side of the brush.


Finish painting as many boulders as desired along both sides ofthe waterfall. Reload every couple of boulders just to makesure you ALWAYS have paint on the brush. Check to makesure you’re always loading the dark on the dark side and thehighlight on the lighter side of the brush. It’s so easy to make amistake. If you do load the color on the wrong side of thebrush, wipe the brush thoroughly with a paper towel. If thebrush doesn’t come clean enough, than wet-clean the brush.

It’s fascinating to watch waterfalls that have a rock jutting outthe center where the water begins its fall. I generally find itbest to paint these rocks using the knife stroke.

Paint a rock jutting out of the top or along the length of thewaterfall by following our established procedure.


If the rock is too small for #2 & #3 skip those steps.

After all of the boulders have been painted I strongly suggestyou re-highlight the waterfall water. In fact, it’s a requirementif you’ve added a rock in the center of a waterfall. The purposeof this highlight is to set in the boulders and create a naturallooking waterfall.

There are two approaches in highlighting the water.1. Highlight the water after all of the boulders have been

painted.2. Highlight the water while the boulders are being painted.

To highlight the water while painting, determine which sidemust be painted first.

1. After you’ve first painted the waterfall observe if the lightis coming from the right or left direction. This waterfall iscoming from the left side of the canvas.

2. Begin with the right most boulders first.3. Once those boulders are painted, highlight the water next

to the right side.4. Paint any rocks or boulders jutting out from the interior of

the waterfall.5. Highlight the water between the boulder jutting out and the

left edge of the waterfall.

Now you’re free to continue painting the boulders’ interiors asdesired. Then continue on to finish your painting.


Brown Mountain

The rock formations holding back the water were madewith a knife using the same highlight and sparkle colorsas the distant mountains. I added some additional ‘flair’to the painting by painting outside of the oval. andthetrees on both side. Where is all that water going?

The Seventh Falls

Colorado’s glorious Seven Falls is a collection ofseven falls cascading down the side of a mountain.This is the scene of the seventh falls. The rocks hold-ing back the water and ledge is a mystery due to the‘embedded’ rock formations.

Hand of God

Many, many parentsthanked me for this paint-ing. It’s a sensational hitfor young boys. The colorschosen display well under ablack light and the fingersare easy to paint.

I painted the first finger onthe left, than the waterfall.I constantly alternatedpainting each finger andthen the waterfall.

I hadn’t thought of a namefor this painting until Ilooked at those boulders asthough they were fingers.


River Rocks

In the Waters Chapter we spent quite considerable time de-scribing how to paint rocks at the bottom of the stream or riverand a few along the shoreline.

We’ll concentrate in this exercise on the placement of rocksand boulders along the shores of lakes, rivers and streams. Theconcept behind the placements will be the same.

Of the four basic types of strokes available, the initial twomake best sense for this type.

1. Rocks/Boulders using a knife.2. Rocks/Boulders using a brush

Look at your reference materials and examine the shoreline toidentify the following….

Does the elevation of any portion drop? This is a candi-date position for a cascade and would require a rock orboulder to indicate a drop in the terrain for the viewer.

The general rule I was taught is that a change is needed inthe lay of the land every two inches. Inspect the riverbank. Will rocks or groups of rocks be needed to break upthe shoreline every 2 to 3 inches?

Is the lake, river, stream rapidly moving or slowly mov-ing? If rapidly, you’ll need rocks along the shoreline andpossibly in the water so that movement can be paintedaround the rocks to reinforce rapid movement. If slowmoving, than place fewer rocks along the embankment andonly a large boulder or two (if at all) in the middle of thewater. Make sure the water line around the boulder is veryTHIN. Thick waterlines indicates a rapid splash.

If the source of the water is available, does it indicate anyspecial type of rock, such as a stream moving out fromunder a waterfall?

Do you need rocks/boulders of a specific size to balancethe painting? For example, the simplest type of balancewould be placing a large boulder on the opposite side ofthe largest mountain. Study the reference to see if any-thing appears out of balance.

Let’s quickly review the process for painting brush strokerocks.

1. Double load a flat or filbert brush with the Rock’s basecolor on one side.

2. Load the opposite side with the rock highlight color.3. Shape the rock with a single stroke, either a dash or a

slightly curved stroke like the top of a ball.4. Pull down a reflection if needed (i.e. water/wet sand)5. Add waterlines for rocks or portions thereof in water.6. SPARKLE as/if necessary.


You can prevent the viewer’s eyes from leaving the canvas byadding elements that will prevent the viewer’s attention fromcontinuing off-canvas.

To illustrate this concept, look at the second left photo. Theeye stops following the stream as it heads toward the bottom ofthe canvas because the large boulders sticking up say STOP.

As you compose your painting, consider where a viewer’s eyescould move off of the canvas. Objects painted in those spotswill prevent the eyes from leaving a canvas.

Have you noticed in a museum or gallery how one can’t keeptheir eyes from leaving some canvases? That’s because theartist has composed several elements that holds the viewer’sinterest and keeps the viewer eyes within the painting. Theviewer following a path or stream will stop when they encoun-ter an object that stops the gaze from continuing off the canvas.

Think about your placement, balance, composition, color andall of the movement within your painting. Movement is bestdescribed as though you had taken an instant photograph of areal-time event. A frozen moment. The movement is obviousand the viewer’s mind will continue to complete/visualize therest of the movement.


River Banks

River banks are superb elements to add to a landscape painting.

River banks can gently slope to the ground and disappear underwater with only the water washing up. Or the top surface ofthe bank ends several inches or more above the water level.This creates a mysterious, dark cavity between the land surfaceand the water top.

So what’s keeping the bank from being washed away and tum-bling into the lake, stream or river? Generally it’s a collectionof rocks, boulders and tree roots. Together they form a naturallevee that keeps the course of the water in check.

The trick in painting the river banks is keeping the cavity darkand mysterious. A solid dark line or bright highlights will lookout of place, but slight highlighting actually preserves the mys-terious look and gets the viewer to start wandering how far,how deep, how ….? It doesn’t matter what they’re thinking,only that they are thinking…………...about your painting.

In the top right photo I’ve painted a small area with PB to rep-resent the water surface and SG to indicate the grass on thesurface. The gap is the riverbank.

Load the long painting edge of a #10 palette knife with the rockbase color. In this example I’m using BU. Cover the entiregap using the knife stroke loaded with the base rock color.This is the river bank.

Reload the knife with a small bead of BU. Now stroke hori-zontally from the green grass to the beginning edge of the BUrock base color. What we’re doing is forming the top edge ofthe river bank. The top is very thin and the rest of the horizon-tally stroked BU forms the undercut riverbank. Highlight theriverbank top surface as you normally would with plenty ofhighlights but don’t overdo it. So let me quickly review: Thehorizontally BU stroke is the top land surface while the verticalstroked BU is the River bank from the top surface to the river.

Clean your knife.

Just a reminder when highlighting with a knife. Hold the knifeby the metal ferrule with your thumb and forefinger. As youstroke over the surface, apply little to no pressure. Keep yourfingers off of the knife’s blade. Because I’m painting groundsurface, hold the edge at a 90 degree angle to the surface andlightly graze the canvas from the grass to the top edge of theriver bank.

Study your reference photos to determine if there are any par-ticular formations you want to preserve and include them.


With a clean, dry knife place the long edge just under the topedge of the highlight.

This is critical as I want to move my knife up (without touch-ing the river bank’s dark color) up and under the existing high-light paint. Grab a small amount of the paint and pull straightdown without going into the water. The riverbank will stayprimarily dark, but the upper portions will be highlighted.

Repeat this steps along the entire riverbank until it is com-pleted. Then step back a few feet (5-7) and observe your work.

What you will see ideally is the beginning formations of theriverbank’s horizontal edge. You’ll see the edge forming fromthe surface and disappearing as it moves down toward the wa-ter surface.

Now add your waterline with either the long edge or short edgeof the palette knife. Don’t forget this color needs to be thinnedsignificantly with medium.

If you find you cannot see any edges in your river bank thenload a small, small amount of highlight paint onto your knifeand redo the bank strokes.


Forest Walk

Over ten years ago, I de-signed this painting as alesson to teach studentshighlighting of trees &shrubs, cascades and knife-shaped rocks.

To create a tremendousamount of light in thebackground, the lower halfof the canvas was paintedin acrylic black and whendry, I added clear mediumand painted everything. Iused a medium white forthe top half of the painting.This allowed me to show amajor contrast and I useddark highlights to add tothis impression.

One does not see much ofthe river bank touching thewater. The higher portionsof the boulders are quitedistinct, but get darker,darker, darker as you fol-low the rock shapes toground (water) levels.

Rocky River.

Notice the following two boulder placements.

To balance the left center, tallest mountain, the highest boulder is right center ofthe waterfall.

To create a change every 2 inches in the terrain I added a large boulder and 2inches further back I added evergreen trees. They also headed toward the largest

peak for balance. Youcould draw a line rightfrom the largest boul-der through the backboulder, toward the tallevergreen in the paint-ing center and straightto the tallest mountainpeak.

I know that it soundsdaunting as you’relearning the basic tech-niques to even begin tothink about composi-tion.

So don’t.

This is just data for youto apply when you’regood and ready.


Open Fields of Rocks

In a little South American class I taught a few years ago Iwas asked by a serious lady, “When do I know when to putrocks in my paintings?”

Lipita, I said, there are no rules.

If you want the rock there, go right ahead and put it there.

You see, we paint to please ourselves.

The only person you have to impress with your paintings isyourself. Not your family, spouse, friends, art critics oreven that chubby, bald art instructor.

Only yourself.

My job is to help you paint the best possible rocks and boul-ders. With that said, let’s talk about how to effectivelypaint rocks in an open field.

Some fields have meadow grass that covers the rocks, oth-ers have huge boulders that tower up and over the meadowgrass.

The key to painting rocks is for to make them look natural.

When painting fields with rocks, I paint from the farthestpoint away and build up the field as I come forward. Whatthis means is I’ll paint the fields until I come up to where aboulder is to be painted. My preferred stroke for rocks andboulders in the open fields is the knife. Then I‘ll paint theboulder using our seven (7) step process and then continuewith the field until I reach the next location for a boulder.

This is the ideal method for painting rocks and boulders.

What generally happens in the real world is that after we’vepainted the open field with rocks and we inspect our work,we may notice that a field needs a few additional elements.

In these instances I’ll study my open fields and wherever Ibelieve another rock(s) should be included…..(Do each stepfor all boulders prior to proceeding to the next step)1. I’ll load the small edge of a #10 palette knife with BU

and lay in the basic shape of a boulder. I start small asI can always make the boulders larger. The first step isto identify all locations which would benefit with aboulder.

2. SHAPE all potential locations first.3. SCRAPE and SMOOTH all large boulders. Skip this

step for really small boulders and rocks.4. SHINE each boulder with the highlight color.5. SHADOW-LIGHT all rocks.


6. SPARKLE the highlighted side of each boulder as appro-priate.

7. SET the boulders into the open fields. This is perhaps themost crucial step of painting boulders in the open field.When painting the field, keep some of your meadow grasshighlight color as well as the dirty brush you used. Afterthe rocks are painted you will need to repaint portions ofthe field at the rocks’ edge. This essentially gives the im-pression that the field grass is growing up and over theboulders and ‘sets’ the boulders into the field grass. So itsimportant to set all the rocks into the field as you see medoing in the second right photo below.

The setting process is necessary no matter where you’re paint-ing rocks or boulders.

As we review our practice canvas below, we can see how thevery first rock stroke technique we formed has served us wellthroughout this lesson. By learning the four basic strokes andthe seven step process in painting rocks/boulders you’ll beequipped to paint any landscape painting with these elements.

Let’s take a look at some open field paintings and see howthese approaches worked in the real world.


Rugged Creek

There’s a rugged creek in every country. Some are characterized in open fields, some along tree-lined river beds,or wandering through a desert or cascading down a mountain side.

The lessons we can learn from this painting will help us tremendously in understanding … Balance Placement Composition

Here’s what I mean. Its important to place an object of change every so often in your painting to keep theviewer’s interest. The first group of rocks closest to the evergreens break up the upper right quadrant of the openfield. You can see how the groups of rocks break up their respective quadrants.

From a compositional viewpoint, vary the number of boulders in each quadrant. The rocks form a triangle compo-sition amongst themselves. Any two sets of boulders form a triangle to the tallest mountain (central viewpoint).Count them 1 lower left, 2 lower right, 3 upper right. The evergreen body forms a triangle within itself as well.

I have put together a three point balance system with the tallest mountain, tallest evergreen tree and the lower leftset of boulders that also forms a triangle. As you study your reference photos, look for triangles and include them.


Lunker Peak

I’m not sure if lunkers lurk the streams below this mountain but I sure wouldn’t mind giving the area a few weeksof my time fishing.

The magic of this painting is the open fields to the immediate left and expanse of the foothills as they give rise to atremendous waterfall in the distance.

What I want you to study is the use of embedded rocks on the left side of the waterfall.

To achieve this I first tapped in the hillside to indicate meadows and forests.

Than using a #4 bristle flat brush, I stroked in about a dozen lines of a slightly lighter color all along both foothillsto the left of the waterfall for the embedded rocks.

I completed painting the foothills and highlighted certain sections of the forest with a bit of TW and foothill mixon the 1” flat brush. I placed the edge of the brush on the foothill top and lifted up about 1/8” to indicate tall treesin the far, far backgrounds.

As you study open fields inspect not only the foreground, but the middle ground and the background to see ifrocks/boulders might really help you to achieve even more drama.


Snow Covered Rocks

The Color Of Winter

This painting was created about four years ago in one of my first trips to Colorado. It was late September or earlyOctober and the air was brisk when we landed in Denver.

Denver’s elevation is over a mile high and you can climb another 8-10,000 feet to view other mountains aroundDenver and other parts of Colorado.

In this painting I had open fields in both the foreground and the middle ground to consider. I placed tons of snowcovered rocks using the double loaded brush technique.

For the middle ground I felt it was too far away to clearly distinguish. So I opted to use shadows from the tree lineto break up the open field. Yet all of the rocks one sees surrounding the path, vegetation, and field would natu-rally be assumed to continue around the entire circumference of the lake. Logically it didn’t make sense to assumeanything else.

Always take advantage of the contrast between the background, middle ground and foreground to break up theopen fields. You’re essentially promising with the foreground details that these elements extend all the wayaround the lake. And building this assumption into the viewer’s mind is superb.


Whenever painting snow covered landscapes I like to add rocksand boulders jutting up out of the snow. It adds character,color and interest to a painting.

There is little difference between painting snow and open fieldsof meadow grass. Except temperature, color, and of course …the white powder.

But the process is similar.

Lay in the snow color with a large bush or knife up to the pointyou want to add your first boulder. Then switch to a paletteknife. I like using the #10 palette knife.

Load your rock base color onto the small edge of the paletteknife and SHAPE your boulder. If this is a large boulderSCRAPE off the excess paint and SMOOTH out the bouldersurface.

Now paint the snow in front of the base shape of the boulder toset the rock into the snow.

Now this is the important question. From which direction isthe sun coming? In the example above, its coming from about11:00 a.m. So I would have a small amount of shadow extend-ing from the bottom right of the boulder.

Using a large flat brush, pull a small amount of paint down theslope of the hill in the 5:00 direction. This is 180 degrees inthe opposite direction of the light source. Since the lightsource is almost directly overhead, I’ve made sure that theshadow is only for a short distance.

The boulder doesn’t allow us to see the SHINE of the sun di-rectly on the boulder.

Skip the SHINE and SPARKLE steps for this boulder.

Mix up a shadow light color of PB and TW. The color shouldbe a strong blue color. Load a thin amount of the shadow paintonto the short edge of the palette knife.

Paint short strokes with the edge of the knife from the top ofthe boulder down the right slope of the boulder. Make sure youapply LITTLE to NO pressure to the knife. KEEP THE FIN-GERS OFF THE KNIFE. Repeat stroking with the paletteknife until the boulder’s shadow side is completed.

Frequently check to make sure you still have paint on theknife’s edge. You’ll get 2 or 3 strokes at the most before youneed to reload. The key to stunning rocks is using a SMALLamount of paint, absolutely NO PRESSURE and RELOAdINGfrequently.

Now you have a big decision to make.


Is this a cold boulder in the snow, or is snow still on the boul-der?

Either way is fine, but you do need to make that decision.

Let’s consider a key observations about the boulder to the left.

Notice how the stroking of the knife is traveling alongside theoutside right edge about 1” down and suddenly there’s a 90degree change in direction. Remember this. Vary the directionof your highlights and shadow lights. This will help to createdrama and high interest in the elements you’re painting.

Painting a boulder like this keeps the viewer admiring yourwork. Adding interest is just giving the viewer more informa-tion about the details of the boulder.

Inspect the boulder to make sure you have sufficient detail, thatyou’re happy with its shape and shadow light, and the way theboulder is setting in the snow.

It’s now time to add snow.

Identify the flat surfaces of your boulder where snow wouldreside for a few days in the warm winter sun after a snowstorm.

Mix some medium clear into TW. Mix until the consistency isa tiny bit thicker than whipped cool whip. Load a smallamount on the small edge of the palette knife.

One of the things you could do is use the medium white that’ssold in a large number of art stores or TV artists’ websites.This is excellent for waterlines and adding snow onto winterelements.

Lightly stroke the thinned TW or MW onto the boulder’s levelspots and crevices.

To simplify the task of stroking the wet paint onto the boulders,make sure you have only a SMALL amount of paint on theknife’s edge. In fact, reload with each step. STROKE, RE-LOAD, etc….

Repeat until you have the tops covered with snow.

You can even load the knife with the snow mixture and add tothe snowfield to indicate patches of ice from a melting sun.

After the boulder has been painted, continue painting in thesnow covered landscape until you reach the next set of boul-ders.

Repeat the process. You can have as many boulders in a rockclump as desired. I’ve shown a lone boulder and a group ofthreein the left most photo.


Whenever I’m painting a snow covered landscape and including either a bodyof water, a path or another object, I like to add a few almost totally coveredrocks to break up the border.

In the scene to the right I added a snow covered bush and small rocks usingthe double loaded brush rock stroke to form all of the small stones litteringthe snowy landscape. These small rocks provided a border so that the viewerwould know that an iced path was in the painting.

In the scene below, I had a cabin on a hill high above a small wanderingstream in a farm. The riverbank would have been plain and totally uninterest-ing with only a waterline to separate the river from the land. By adding the

double loaded brush rocksalong the stream bank, wehave a very dramatic presen-tation that captures the view-ers attention.

Snow covered landscapeshave a magical allure to themand rocks/boulders will en-hance their appeal when usedto break up space and stopthe eye along certain borders.


Cliff Rocks

At the end of this section, I show several photos of my paint-ing, Paradise Falls which makes use of the Cliff Rock style ofboulders.

I vary this painting all of the time with color, boulder place-ments and whether or not to add forest creatures (wildlife)along the still lake.

So let’s take a look at how you can quickly and easily masterthis Cliff rocks.

After deciding where the flat top of your cliff will reside, loadyour knife with the base rock color.

We will first base in the entire cliff area.

1. SHAPE the rock with the basic color using a Palette knife.In this example because the rock is huge, I’m using thelong edge of the palette knife. I’ve also chosen Van DykeBrown (VDB) as the base color because its an extremelydark brown. Don’t worry about flattening the top of thecliff at this point. Just make sure you cover the entire edgeand rock interior with the base color.

2. SCRAPE the excess paint off with the knife. This gets theexcess paint off of the cliff.

3. SMOOTH the scrapped surface of the rock with a largeflat brush. I like using the 1” bristle brush as its hairs arelong and pliable. Don’t touch the top or side edges of thecliff. We want to preserve these shapes.

4. Mix a highlight color.

I’ve chosen BS, BR, YO & TW and mixed up a good batch.

This color is what we will use to SHINE the rock with thehighlights Load the knife with a small bead of paint on thelong edge and move to the top of the cliff.

Hold the knife so that the long edge is at a 90 degree angle tothe canvas.

Using a sawing motion, move the knife back and forth rapidlyand force the knife to move down and swing to the right asshown in the left photo. This step highlights the edge of a par-tial circle as you see in the bottom left photo.

Here’s the strategy: By ‘sawing’ our knife across the top of thecliff, the highlight color forms a small bead forming the outsideedge of the cliff. Above the bead you see the rock’s flat sur-face. Below the bead is the cliff’s sheer drop to never-neverland. Since I wanted a rounded cliff edge, I sawed the top in apartial circle. I can have any shape I desire.


Reload the knife with the highlight color and “saw” in anotheradjacent rounded cliff. In fact, I’ve made three rounded cliffedges in this example as you see in the second right photo.

This process allows the painting to take on a three dimensionalquality. You can make as many rounded cliffs as you’d like.More importantly, you can make any shape of the cliff’s edgesimply by forcing the knife in any desired direction with thesawing motion. I’ve even built a staircase down the cliff sideto emulate Nevada Falls, Yosemite National Park, California.

Once satisfied with the rounded edge of the cliff, the fun be-gins. Clean the palette knife with a paper towel.

Place the knife’s long edge under the bottom of the cliff’s edgeonto the very bottom edge of the highlight bead. While grab-bing a bit of the paint quickly pull the knife straight down theentire cliff’s face. Be sure to exert little to no pressure. Youshould be holding the knife by its metal ferrule with yourthumb and forefinger. There should be no fingers on theknife’s blade. All the other fingers are doing is resting on theknife’s handle and enjoying the ride.

There’s generally enough highlight color in the bead to allowthe highlight color stretch down the face of the cliff. If not,simply reinforce the bead with additional paint, OR load theedge of the knife with a small amount of highlight color andrepeat the highlight stroke.

5. Do not apply SHADOW light for the face of this cliff.Here’s why. The cliff is either in the highlight or its pitchdark. So simply skip the area where the rounded area iscoming back toward the cliff body. This dark will separateeach of the rounded edges. If by chance you do highlightthis area, simply reload the knife with the base color andlightly glaze that area. This will darken the highlight suffi-ciently to show separation.

6. SPARKLE the rocks with an even brighter highlight. Inthe example I just added a small amount of TW to the ex-isting mix for the SPARKLE,. I loaded the knife with asmall bead and touch the top edge of the cliff’s edge andgive a slight pull down. I formed an upside down “L” atthe edge of each of the rounded cliffs as shown right.

7. To SET the cliff(s) into the terrain I’ll need to do twothings. First, I need to decide what to do on the top cliffsurface and secondly, how to join the cliff body to the restof the painting. I generally put brush rocks on top of thecliffs, and paint trees and shrubbery along the face of thecliff (embedding the rock). For the far right edge of thecliff, I like to add a tall tree that extends well beyond thetop of the cliffs. These ‘SETTING” steps will set the cliffof the rock into the painting and hide its ending shape.


The one thing to remember about piling smaller rocks on top ofthe cliff’s surface is that they should have the same highlightand shadow light color as the cliff itself.

Imagine if you will that the top rocks are just broken piecesfrom the cliff that have yet to fall.

I place cliffs to hold back waterfalls, to break up other types ofrocks I’ve been painting and when painting arid or ruggedcountry sides. I find them abundant in the Western UnitedStates and parts of Australia and the Pyrenees and the Alps.

This concludes our study of painting rocks. You should have athorough understanding of the four basic rock strokes and theseven step process for painting each type of rock.

I’d enjoy seeing how you’re doing so feel free to send photosof your work to [email protected]

Let’s now focus on putting these techniques to work in our nextpainting.


Paradise Falls

I paint lots of versions of Paradise falls. It’s a very popular painting students never tire of painting. I vary color and I vary the type of‘cliff’ rocks I use on the right side of the falls. Of course the cascades and rocks below add significantly to the overall appeal of thepainting. The not-so-obvious appeal is that all four types of rock strokes are included in this simple painting. Its one of the first les-sons we put on video and we’ve received numerous thanks for showing our students how to paint the waterfall, its rocks, and the cas-cades.

Bertha Meyers, NYC wrote and told us, “…...not only do you say its easy to learn to paint, but you teach us its impossible no t tolearn.”

By now you should have a thorough understanding of the four basic techniques for painting rocks and boulders. And the seven stepprocess in painting each.

Now its your turn to practice, practice, practice. Let us know how you’re doing.

Documents

The Basic Techniques of Oils ROCKS & BOULDER - Darrell · PDF filethe same techniques work whether you’re using traditional oil paints, acrylics, or the water mixable oil paints