Rocks, Stones, Brick, Paving and Concrete In Art

I grew up in Christchurch, New Zealand, and occasionally visited The Christchurch Art Gallery. In the viewing room to the left of the entrance hall there was an especially memorable painting. Every now and then I come across a piece of art which takes my breath away, and this was one of the first.

When I say ‘memorable’, I don’t remember what this artwork was called or who painted it; the painting itself was memorable, for its hyperrealistic riverbank of greywacke. Each and every stone had been individually rendered. The entire canvas was covered in greywacke rocks, the iconic rock of New Zealand’s Canterbury plains. I couldn’t believe someone had taken the time to paint each and every stone so lovingly.

Much more recently, I was about to sit down and painting a cliff face and rocky riverbed. At first I wasn’t having much luck, so I tried to find examples of how other illustrators had handled it over the years. When you’re looking for a specific thing it’s always difficult to find.

After a few false starts I ended up with a perfectly serviceable cliff face and dry riverbed.

Cliff face and river bed in progress for Trip Trap, a re-visioning of The Three Billy Goats Gruff.

But now, every time I see beautiful rocks in art, I wish I’d already collected some for quick reference.

Below are some illustrations of my favourite rocks, boulders, paving stones, cliff faces, stone walls and everything related.

Watercolour makes for an especially good medium for painting rocks.
We’re often told that water takes on the colour of the sky. Well, so do rocks.
Sometimes artists choose to give the impression of a rock-filled landscape by drawing just a few then leaving the viewer to guess the rest. In other illustrations, the rocks are highly decorative and almost a character in their own right.

Painting wet rocks isn’t all that different from painting metal.

Paving, Cobblestones, Stone Roads and Paths

Harold N. Anderson

A scene from Edward Gorey’s 1968 book “The Other Statue”

Warwick Goble (British illustrator of children’s books) 1862 – 1943 Cinderella Trying On Her Glass Slipper By The Hearth

Illustration for The Sleeping Beauty showing the Good Fairy departing from the christening of the Princess in a carriage harnessed with dragons. Painted by British illustrator Richard Doyle, 1863

The Story of Siegfried illustrated by Howard Pyle (American, 1853-1911)

Vida Gábor (Hungarian 1937-2007) ‘The Goldmine ‘

Those paved paths above are impressive, but if those stones are wet, now you’ve got a picture where the stones are the star.

The Storytellers illustration by Ted Lewin

Sun room designed by Hazel Dell Brown, 1930

Edmund Dulac (French illustrator) 1882 – 1953 Portrait of a Woman Eleonora 1907

Arthur Rackham rocks

The Iliad and the Odyssey, A Giant Golden Book – Illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen

Sandra Dieckmann

Quiet Evening 1899, Theodor Kittelsen

Nash, John Northcote; Rocks and Water; Roebuck Collection; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/rocks-and-water-9922

John Singer Sargent’s ‘Simplon Pass,’ (1911)

Quirky charm infuses this tale of Old Rock’s life story, which is much more exciting than you’d expect.

Old Rock has been sitting in the same spot in the pine forest for as long as anyone can remember. Spotted Beetle, Tall Pine, and Hummingbird think just sitting there must be boring, but they are in for a wonderful surprise.

Fabulous tales of adventurous travel, exotic scenery, entertaining neighbors, and more from Old Rock’s life prove it has been anything but boring.

Great storytellers come in all shapes, sizes, and ages, and Old Rock’s stories are sure to inspire questions that lead to wonderful conversations about the past and the natural world.

GUSTAF TENGGREN for Pinocchio

The Young Traveller In Space by Arthur C Clarke 1934

Shoda Kakyuyu Ryokuin 1930s

Howard Russell Butler – Zion National Park

Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona (1938) National Park Service Poster

LADY FILMY FERN or The Voyage of the Window Box (early 1930s and 1980) Edward Bawden

Waterless Mountain 1932 by LAURA Adams ARMER Newbery Award Young Adult Literature Navajo Boy

Eyvind Earle (1916-2000) American artist, author and illustrator, noted for his contribution to the background illustration and styling of Disney animated films in the 1950s

Joseph Mallord William Turner – Mt St Gothard 1806-07

Francis Danby – Liensfiord, Norway, Calm c.1835

William Collins – Returning from the Haunts of the Seafowl 1833

Eagle Feather illustrator Viktor Britvin 1990

DER ROTE VOGEL FELIX (1975) Marie Sarraz rocks

Binz auf Rügen, 1901

H. R. Van Dongen (1920 – 2010) 1954 cover illustration The Big Rain for Astounding Science Fiction magazine.

Donald Teague 1942

Stories by Firelight by Shirley Hughes

Bernadette Watts (English, b.1942) – The Enchanted Nightingale

William Keith (1838 – 1911) Yosemite, Sentinel Rock, 1872

Joseph Feher (1908-1987) for Yosemite and United Air Lines

By Peter Kľúčik for unpublished edition of The Hobbit

Roberto Innocenti

From The Hobbit (1976) Mikhail Belomlinsky (b.1934). Unlike Peter Kľúčik‘s example of the bridge above, in which every stone is a feature, Belomlinsky gives us the suggestion of bricks by detailing some of the outlines and ostensibly leaving the others in shadow.

Austrian artist Heinrich Lefler (1863-1919)

advertisement in the back of Volume VIII of The Yellow Book, for a new imprint by the publisher John Lane

Vincent van Gogh – (1853 – 1890) The Prison Courtyard, 1890

William Nicholson painted Sydney and Beatrice Webb (founders of the LSE) at their country house, Passfield Corner, in Liphook, Hampshire between March and June 1928

Carel Weight (1908-1997)

Penguin Books 1896 Graham Greene – A Gun for Sale 1963 cover art by Paul Hogarth

Trina Schart Hyman 1977 illustration for The Sleeping Beauty

Frank Tenney Johnson, A Light In The Night, 1936 cowboy

Anna Palm de Rosa (1859–1924) – Högklint Cliff

MERGEN EN ZIJN VRIENDEN (1974) Gennadi Pavlishin rocks

STONE WALLS AND BRICKS IN THE MIDDLE DISTANCE

‘Summer Gardens, Great Bardfield’ (1940) Kenneth Rowntree

Andy Warhol

Ellen Tebbits by Louis Darling for a Beverly Cleary book

Anton Pieck (1895-1987), Dutch painter and illustrator

William Heath Robinson (English, 1872-1944). “They reached the house where the light was burning.” An illustration from the story “Little Tom Thumb” from the book “Old-Time Stories by Charles Perrault” translated from the French by A. E. Johnson, with illustrations by W. Heath Robinson. Published by Dodd, Mead and Company, New York, 1921.

Anton Pieck (1895-1987) 1951 Illustration from ′Geertgen van Leyden to Sint Jans by Jan Verheyen

Cinderella and her Friends (A Little Golden Book) 1950

Frederick Cayley Robinson (1862-1927)

1949 February, cover by George Giusti stone

The ogre was frightful to behold by Gustaf Tenngren

Anton Pieck (Dutch 1895-1987) Illustration of three men playing cards by a graveyard

Daniel Ridgway Knight (1839–1924) – A Halt

from Ty’s One Man Band

New Yorker May 3rd, 1969 Art Print by Ronald Searle stone

Michael Deas US release advance poster (1977) for Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972)

Jill Barklem Brambley Hedge, The High Hills

Captives by N. C. Wyeth from The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. NY Scribner’s, 1919

Anton Pieck (1895 – 1987) 1935 illustration for Franz Schubert by Lou van Strien

Frank Henry Mason, Yorkshire Coast, 1937

Leslie Ragan, 1949

Gustav Tengren, Pinocchio

From Kipling’s A Song of the English. Illustrated by W. Heath Robinson

Frank Godwin (1889 – 1959) 1921 illustration for The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang. The sky is the star of this environment. Even so, the rock occupies a significant amount of the canvas and must be interesting.

Carry On – 1932 Norman Rockwell

unused artwork for The Fog, illustration by Kenard Pak

Fritz Hegenbart (German painter and illustrator) 1884 – 1962, Quelle des Unheils (Source Of The Doom), c1902

N.C. Wyeth illustrations from The Anthology of Children’s Literature, Kraken (1940). Golden Age Comic Book Stories. The greenish rocks are quite rounded and almost look like creatures themselves.

Maxfield Parrish

Maxfield Parrish, Poet’s Dream, 1901 , Created to illustrate John Milton’s poem L’Allegro

Kodomo no kuni (“Children’s Land”), 1922–30

Postcard by Tove Jansson (1914-2001)

Pan American – South Seas Travel Poster – art by Paul George Lawler – c 1938

The Christmas Legend by Gustav Tenggren

I’m tempted to collect only those examples of beautifully coloured rock, where the environment affects the beautiful colour. But sometimes rock is just gray. In the artwork below, the viewers eye is drawn to the spot of warm colour, to the woman holding the lantern. The night-time rocks do not compete.

From Egypt and Its Monuments (1908) Jules Guerin (1866-1910)

In the illustration below, we know that the walls of the booth are made of metal and that the ground is made of tarmac. We know this from life experience, but Dohanos also renders the textures slightly differently. He’s used a grungy splat to decorate the surface of the road, but streaks of subtle reflected light for the metal.

By Stevan Dohanos (1907-1994)–‘Stop and Pay the Toll’ f. Saturday Evening Post cover April 7, 1956

The statue of the old man in the foreground left of the painting by Boris Godunov is a good reference for how to depict old stonework covered in moss.

Illustration for Boris Godunov (1913) by Leon Bakst (1866-1924)

WORKING WITH BLACK AND WHITE ONLY

What if you only have black and white to work with? Hatching is key. In the black and white illustration below, Charles Robinson emphasises the atmospheric perspective. The rocky arch of the foreground is black with white detail; the stonework further away is white with black detail. It’s not a great photo of the artwork, but useful as an example of how to depict a stony surface using only linework, no greyscale, no colour.

A Child’s Garden Of Verses, the very first book illustrated by Charles Robinson, 1896.

Fritz Hegenbart (German painter and illustrator) 1884 – 1962 Im Streben (In The Pursuite) c1902. This etching makes use of the same technique for aerial perspective, with what looks like white on black for the foreground rock, and black on white for the distant rock.

Paul Landacre, Tuonela, 1934 rocks

The Story of Siegfried illustrated by Howard Pyle (American, 1853-1911)

Below is another linework example. Each and every cobblestone of the road has been individually rendered, grounding the artwork for the viewer. The stone walls of the buildings are rendered in graduated flecks; white flecks on black where shadow dominates, and the reverse where there is light.