Terry’s Tips: What To Do With Rocks

• There are lots of types, sizes, colors, and opinions. Some people like to throw them: at birds, cats, skip them across ponds, or just collect them.
• We sculptors impose additional machinations on them to make them our own. We can make them into human figures (full/partial, posed/abstract or clad/nude). Or just their parts: faces: full, partial, masks, or just eyes; hands, arms, legs.
• I like holes in my rocks: round ones, ovals, open, shaped and curved. Maybe with just a hint of a depression or dimple.
• Polishing can be excruciating! Try texturing with score lines and chisel marks, or leave some natural surface.
• A bas relief technique on a 3D piece can have tentacles, leaves, and vines going every which way. Spirals, scallops, and bumps add texture and patterns.
• Multi-piece creations can increase the size and options for color and shapes. Self-based sculptures can save the cost and effort of pinning to a separate base.
• Slices can be spaced apart with another material or different stone and pinned or glued into a stack or rainbow.
• Inlays and overlays using gold, aluminum, and copper foils, tinted epoxies (oil-based washes for porous stone) or aluminum and copper wire can be used for special effects.
• As for possibilities for those smaller scraps that are too good to throw out, there are a lot. Drill a hole, polish a side or two, and insert a tea light, or a candle(s). Or drill it deeper for a vase.
• A bowl shape can be the collector of coins or keys. These smaller creations that serve a non-art purpose can be less involved from the finishing standpoint. And, of course, you have your own favorite concepts.