As I have mentioned, I was getting somewhat need of new ”raw materials” to paint stones on.
So, when my wife decided to go use our neighborhood swim center, I tagged along and decided to spend about half an hour wandering about on the adjacent beach.
It was one of our typically cold and windy mornings, with about a 25 mile an hour "breeze" blowing in from the mountains with an occasional drop of rain or two mixed in.
Unexpectedly ran into one of our neighborhood friends and her dog Thor and they decided to accompany me on part of my walk, with Thor constantly insisting that I kick his ball down the beach a bit.
It was not exactly perfect conditions because the beach was very narrow with the tide being near high but I decided to make the most of what little time I had out there and it turned out to actually be a pretty good haul.
Yes, there are a lot of stones in these photos, but keep in mind that maybe one in 1,000 is actually suitable for painting... perfectly smooth stones are remarkably difficult to find.
Our local beach here is far from the perfect place to go looking for rocks and I'm usually happy if I can come away with a dozen or so in decent condition. In this case I came away with quite a bit more than that.
Included in the day’s finds were a surprising number of pale rocks which is unusual since they tend to usually be too rough to be suitable for painting.
At the end of the 30 minute outing I was definitely quite cold and my fingers were starting to turn a little bit numb!
After getting home there was the ritual cleaning of things. The rocks have to be washed in warm water to get rid of any salt residue as well as bits of seaweed and other things that might have made them messy.
During this stage I'm also able to discard any stones with roughnesses that I wasn't able to see clearly — often the case when my eyes are watering from the cold! — stones that turned out to have bumps and cracks making them unusable.
All in all it was a good little start to the year and it'll keep me going for a couple of weeks.
If you enjoy painted rocks, do check out The Hive Rocks Project and help spread the word about Hive, while also being creative!
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2026.01.08 AS-TXT-356/326
