Monday 24 June 2013

Painted Stones Tutorial


 Painted Stones ... What you need:

Gesso - any brand will do.
Liquid Acrylic Paint (I use Daler Rowney Acrylic Artists Ink - comes in lots of colours)
Three brushes I like to use are: for painting thin lines and making dots I use  a 10/0 and a 5/0  Robert A Wade NEEF 970 Taklon Round. I also use a general flat 6 or 8 for painting the gesso on with.
A dish to put your ink into (Note: you only need a very little amount of ink/paint)
Some paper towels.
A water dish
Smooth clean River stones (I wash mine in warm soapy water and scrub them with a green scourer, any slightly abrasive wash cloth will do. This allows the gesso to get a better grip and some purchased river stones have a wax coating on them)


How to start.  I use the Gesso straight from the lid - it is thick and you don't need very much.   Using your flat brush pain a layer of gesso onto the top half of the stone.  Let it dry. 
Paint a second layer of gesso, ensuring you paint to the edge line nice and smoothly.

When this is dry you are ready to start painting lines and making dots and other marks. 

You can use Zentangle patterns, crochet patterns, even quilt blocks, embroidery patterns or anything you can think of to be inspired by.  Less is often more when it comes to painting stones, but let your imagination take over :)

Once you have painted them, let them dry and give them a spray with either a gloss or matt craft spray sealer.

Happy Stone Painting ... Jane

9 comments:

  1. Thank you for your tutorial Jane. Maybe I'll get mine painted now....
    Will have to look up the acrylic inks you use - haven't seen those before, but I'm sure one of my Americana acrylics (thinned down, of course) will work. Why else do I have every color in the DecoArt universe??? Thanks again. Another project I just might get finished this year. Have a great week.

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  2. Jane, i absolutely adore those two little owls. LOVE

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  3. Thank you Sherri and Laura :)

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  4. Wal-Mart carries all Daler Rowney art products. Very inexpensively too. Thanks for this great tutorial, I've posted it on my FB groups and people are responding with glee.

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  5. Thank you so much for the tutorial, the painted stones are lovely and would make a unique gift. Hand painted paper weights. I also like the white with just the blue paint. :)

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  6. These are just gorgeous, thanks for the inspiration , I will have to give this a go.
    Hugs Kaylou xx

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  7. Thank you so much. You are a very kind person :)

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  8. Hi is it always neccesary to put gesso before painting? I mean: if you paint with markers or acrylic paint instead of ink directly to the stone the paint could start to "crack" or damage when passing the time?

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