Rock Painting: step-by-step photos on how to paint a Fish onto a pebble. The best colours for Fishies are Dragonfly Blue, Vespa Green, Aqua Blue, Periwinkle Blue or Cherry Red. For the purposes of this step-by-step tutorial, we’ll make a Periwinkle Blue fish.
What you’ll need for this project:
• Any small, longish pebble
• Lily White paint
• Periwinkle Blue paint
• Fairy Dust paint
• Normal pencil (HB)
• A small round 4/0, or a Round 1
• Varnish
Let’s begin, you can follow the step-by-step instructions and pictures below.
Step 1: You’ll need a smooth-ish, long rock – it can be quite misshapen as all long, funny-shaped rocks work well for fishies. Step one: Make sure it’s rinsed under water and dry.
Step 2: Paint your pebble with a white undercoat using Lily White. Allow it to dry and paint a second coat and third coat if needed, till the pebble is completely white. You can paint both sides of the pebble allowing each side to dry before painting the other side (it’s less messy that way).
Step 3: Paint the whole pebble using Aqua Blue paint, allow to dry and paint another coat if needed. You can paint both sides of the pebble, allowing each side to dry so that smudging doesn’t occur.
Step 4: Using a pencil, draw a nice big round circle for the eye, and a smaller circle inside that. This needs to be drawn only on one side of the fish.
Step 5: Paint the eye using Lily White paint, leaving the inside circle the colour of the already painted fish.
Step 6: Once dry, give it a second coat of paint. You only need to do this one one side of the pebble.
Step 7: Using a pencil, draw a straight or slightly curved line to represent the gill area.
Step 8: Paint a thin line using your brush. When doing fine work, only dip the brush into the paint halfway up the bristles, not right up to the metal part, and keep the brush clean as you work. If the paint starts drying and gets globby, give the brush a rinse in water, pat dry and carefully dip into the paint again.
Step 9: With your pencil, draw a small U-shape along the painted line, this will be your first fish scale.
Step 10: Paint carefully over the pencil line with your fine brush and Lily White paint. Your hand needs to be quite steady.
Step 11: Complete the first scale.
Step 12: If you are confident to carry on painting the scales without marking them out in pencil first, then you can do so. If you prefer to have pencil guidelines, then draw them along the gill line first, before painting them.
Step 13: Finish painting the first row of scales.
Step 14: Start the second row of scales by painting a U-shape directly in the middle of the curve of the previous line’s U.
Step 15: Complete the second row of scales.
Step 16: Start the third row of scales, always placing the new scale’s ends directly at the midpoint of the curve of the previous U-shape scale.
Step 17: Finish off the rows of scales by painting them until you reach the end of the pebble, allow your painted line to go over the side edges of the pebble (slightly onto the back of the pebble).
Step 18: Once all the while linework is dry, paint the whole fish with Fairy Dust. You can paint a few layers but make sure each layer is dry before you add another layer. The Fairy Dust gel takes a while to dry (longer than the paint).
Step 19: If your fish is going to be spending some time outdoors, you can paint some Varnish onto it and allow to dry.
Your Fishie is complete, how about trying another one with a different colour background?
