CRV: Medium Specificity: Rock Painting

Painting is an artistic medium that doesn't require colored oils or a canvas. It simply requires a choice of tool, material, and color. I chose to look specifically into material and see what I can make out of something out of the ordinary. Then, I saw the bed of rocks that surrounds my apartment building, and noticed how the rocks come in at least 5 colors. I knew I was looking at a material that could be used to “paint” something. Best of all, I could just sit down and make it right then and there, without any additional equipment.

At first, for visual inspiration, I used a screenshot from an inspirational movie I’ve seen and based my first rock painting after it. Then, I decided I could take a step further in originality, remembering that I don’t need to recreate pre-existing objects to paint either. I thought of Jackson Pollock’s painting “Number 6”, which simply is splattered paint. The cover art to the single album for the song “Monogamy”, by the band Self, also came to mind, as it is just a bunch of different colored circles and rectangles against a black background. From that, I chose to create a simple image of colored stripes making use of the different colors I had.

This compliments the painting medium by adding another possible “canvas” to work on to express yourself on. In any location where rocks lay together, like a riverbed, one can make creative use of the different shades of rocks at their disposal. Different colors can still be controlled to make different designs, shapes, and movements. This even adds an element of depth to the artwork: by piling rocks to a certain height, you can achieve a custom topography that can enhance the painting, from bringing contrast between solid colors and thin lines, to fully encapsulating the shape of a person’s head.

The painting medium is an open book, not only for what you paint, but how you paint it. Scott McCloud states in his book, “Understanding Comics”, “Our attempts to define comics [or painting] are an on-going process which won’t end anytime soon.” The definition of art is an ever-changing blob of ambiguity, that is relative to style, subject, mode, or message. In this exploration to finding my own version of painting, I learned to be resourceful of my available materials, mindful of time (to use the natural light of day to see well), and respectful of my surroundings (not bothering the ground or disturbing other people using the nearby pavement).

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