Mostly rocks

@pscindy.bsky.social

1075 Followers 1896 Following

I paint rocks and leave them for people to find. Maybe I'll post other things sometimes.

The rock is a very light blueish purple watercolor, 1" high. It's standing upright with an orange line drawing of a shark, colored in with a lighter orange. The shark's open toothy mouth is drawn around the lower corner of the rock, and then the rest of the shark was drawn proportionally. *** Does anyone remember Land Shark from 70's SNL? Spoiler alert, that was really a person in a shark suit. In contrast, this shark was literally made out of a tiny piece of land and is therefore an EVEN BETTER Land Shark. In this essay I will
We're going to start with the back of the rock today. You can tell because the quarter is tails-side-up. The rock is approx 1x2" and slightly too flat to be an egg shape. I started by drawing tiny black circles that then turned into overlapping scales. Most of the scales are varying blues and greens, but there's some red and yellow too. This rock sat on my table like this for weeks. I knew it wasn't done, but I didn't know what was supposed to happen next. Then I remembered seeing other people's rocks turned into creatures hatching out of cracked eggs. If this was an egg, it was probably a dragon egg. Could I draw a dragon? --->
A selfie of a woman with a blue and grey flannel. Her phone is blocking most of her face, but she has glasses and shoulder length blondish** hair. She also has a grey tshirt with a cat wearing earphones and sitting behind a DJ setup. ** I have never been able to satisfactorily describe my hair color. Light brown? Wheat, maybe? Just don't call it dishwater blonde, I hate that.
A group of skeletons are sitting in lawn chairs in a circle. They are all wearing wigs and clothes. Behind them is a stage with maybe 30 other skeletons, some full size & some kid sized. Some of the skeletons onstage have instruments. My friend & I found this on a road trip, somewhere between Madison and Cedarburg. Her GPS took us off the interstate for reasons known only to itself, but when we passed this, we were forever grateful. This is my friend who will always know what Red Dwarf quote is most relevant to any situation. She said the ones in the chairs reminded her of Kryten's crewmates from that one episode. Also, please understand that I'm not personally telling you to "post or else." I hate that. No one needs that kind of pressure. But, you know, if you have something fun to share and you enjoy quote post chains, go for it.
The rock is green watercolor. There's clearly a tattoo there, but it could be just about anything. Sometimes the tattoos I use end up not showing up particularly well on a watercolor background & sometimes the tattoo itself is just odd. My best guess is that it's supposed to be a fawn, but its neck is twisted around so that the fawn is now looking back over its shoulder?
Olly, a very silly brown and white cat, is lying on the floor. Her head is behind the corner of a blanket hanging off the edge of my bed. I don't want to tell her, but her entire body is in plain sight.
Wait is this finally the day I make a video with alt text
Oh who am I even kidding. From this angle it's not even immediately obvious that this alleged cube even has six sides. Based solely on this photo, all one can confidently say is that there's some sort of indeterminate concentric pattern in purple blue orange green. The 1st comment will be a video. Each individual side has a thin purple number, outlined in repeated colors until the edges meet the edges of the numbers on the adjacent sides.
I saw The Flaming Lips last month. There were dozens of huge beach balls bouncing through the crowd.
A closeup of the shelf that was behind one of the stacks
Bottom shelf, and a duplicate of a shelf we've already seen. There just wasn't a good angle to get this particular shelf in two photos, because of my desk
It's probably safe to assume that the book I want won't be behind the piles of more recently aquired books, but if you really want to see what's back there just let me know
Another shelf that was hard to get a good angle because of my desk. 2nd shelf has a framed picture of my all-time BFF cat, Bertie.
This shelf was hard to photograph because my desk is right there. Looks like it's mostly Pratchett though so I think that's OK The top shelf has Tiny Scotty Aukerman and JW Stillwater. Someday, I really want to make a little TV studio for them to hang out in. For now, they just have a table with a globe, and JW has a pet axolotl
Omg why am I like this
This is the shelf I can reach while I'm working at my desk so it's really bad. Check out the eyeball vending machine on the top shelf.
Bottom of shelf two. There's a jar of wheat pennies, a round bottle with a fish, a purple muppety guy.
Another shelf. There's a rack of drying watercolor rocks, a family of Axolotl and another Grover. My favorite thing though is the tiny bookshelf, which is also a mix of books & assorted treasures, but tiny. (I don't think the book Im looking for is on the tiny shelf)
Bottom half of the same shelf. Noteworthy items include a Grover, several paintbrushes, and a photo of an absolute doofus, aged 14, with a terrible perm and huge coke-bottle glasses. She is dancing with her grandfather at a family event.
It's a bookshelf. I'm not going to list all the book titles because that defeats the purpose of you looking at them for me. The shelf also has, among other things, a tiny robot with a clock in his stomach who is holding a Minecraft creeper mask, a Get Out of Jail Free card, two different crocheted octopuses.
A brown cat named Farnsworth is sitting on my lap on the couch. There's a stack of books piled on the couch armrest. Farnsie is within paw's reach of a bookmark with a fascinating red string and a super delicious yellow bead hanging out the top edge and he's trying to eat the bead. It's only a matter of time before he pulls out the bookmark. Closer examination reveals that there's also a scrap of paper at about the 10% completed mark, which is probably my real bookmark. Also, that's not even the book I was reading last night. If I Sherlock Holmes this all out, my best guess is that someone, possibly me, put the beaded bookmark there specifically for the cats' amusement. Then, someone, probably not me, gathered up a pile of partially read books and stacked them on the couch armrest.
The rock is white with a basic sheet-style ghost outlined in black, but with far too many eye holes. Underneath the ghost, I wrote "....I got a rock" I thought about saying what it is here, but that feels like cheating. If you don't get it, I guess we're all just going to have to live with that.
This rock is orange pinkish watercolor. There's a blue outline of a kind of goofy looking shark, facing left, colored yellow. The rock is standing upright & the shark's jawline curves around the front bottom edge. There's another rock, not pictured here, with a blue watercolor background and an entirely different yellow fish, facing left, outlined in orange. For that fish, the rock is lying flat, so you can see the entire fish. I finished the blue rock and then it spent a few weeks on the drying rack in the other room and basically stopped existing in my mind. I was actually a little surprised, the first time I saw both rocks next to each other. It's probably a coincidence. It's probably not concerning at all, this sudden and inexplicable urge to make nothing but assorted yellow fish-shaped things. What do they want from me? WHAT DO THEY WANT?
Olly and Farnsworth. Olly is on my left knee and Farnsie has the lap. Neither one is looking at me. They seem more interested in my bookshelf display with Little Scotty Aukerman & JW Stillwater. I mean, that's fair. This is the bookshelf where we talk to interesting people.
The rock is very pale, about 1" high, with just a faint pinkish tinge. It's standing upright with a line drawing of a chicken. From this angle the chicken is facing left & we can see mainly the wing & body. The chicken is white, outlined in blue.
The rock is kind of greenish with some orange bits. There's an annoyed looking octopus with yellow eyes. He's outlined in purple, mostly green, with some lavender streaks. The tentacles kind of got away from me, honestly. As you can see in the other photos, there weren't enough legs to start with, but then I went a little crazy overcompensating. Just legs everywhere. He's probably technically more of a Chthulian Horror than an octopus at this point, but he looks pretty badass.
In my defense, there's a lot going on here. There's some flattish sides but a lot of odd lumpiness, too. I drew black curvy lines that wind all around the rock, dividing the rock into 10 irregularly shaped segments. There are four different patterns filling the segments, and no two adjacent areas have the same pattern. From this angle, we can see yellow with tiny orange hearts outlined in red, purple with concentric blue ovals, blue & orange stripes, and pink with tiny green dots. (I really wanted to tell you that there are 11 segments because I kind of have a thing with prime numbers, especially 11. I respect you too much to lie to you, though. There are somehow 10 segments. Rest assured, the investigation into this glaring oversight will go all the way to the top, if necessary. Someone will pay.)
A screencap of the gift I received from another Pokémon Go player. The gift is a postcard called "Historic Grope Lane" If you don't play, someone went to a real place which is called that in-game, collected a postcard, and sent it to me. It's one of the best gifts I've gotten in recent memory
The same rock, next to a real Rubiks cube. Note how my color placement is perfect & this would actually be solvable. You know, if it wasn't a rock. (Honestly, copying a real one was so much easier than trying to randomize the sides on my own)
It's a goddamn Rubik's cube y'all! Omggggg! No,wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me try again: The rock is technically six-sided, each side is approx 1" across. Each side is divided into nine more or less equal squares. The squares seem randomly colored; there are six different colors. It looks like a deformed Rubiks cube and I love it very much
A small plate, with a cardamom bun. It's all folds and twists of brioche with cardamom and sugar. The edges will be crispy and the inside chewy. It's kind of like an unfrosted cinnamon roll, a little sweet but not overwhelmingly so.
The rock is standing upright, probably about 1" high. There's a mostly orange & greenish watercolor background with a cartoony critter somewhere between a dragon and a beagle maybe? The face & ears are definitely Snoopyesque, but then there's also tiny wings? I dunno man. It's definitely red though, outlined with light blue.
(The rock is pale green watercolor, standing upright. The side facing the camera is triangular. There are vertical orange stripes that go all the way around & there are also varying sizes of round black spots.) I chose a very easy-to-describe rock for today so I could spend the rest of the #AltText ranting: **** I have a college friend who keeps sending me pics of other people's rocks. We have basically no other interactions, but about once a month she DMs me a photo she found on Insta, with a watermarked photo of a really good rock made by a real artist. There’s never any comment, so I have no idea what reaction I'm supposed to be having. Is it a threat? It feels threatening, or at the very least, rude AF. "Aw. You made another lil rock. *pats my head* Here's something you'll never do!" I have to believe she's trying to be nice. "You like rocks? Here is rock. Friend?" My immediate responses are all terrible. I know this, so I don't say, "Oh good. Another reminder of my inadequacy. Hooray." I also don't say, ""Yup. Those are rocks alright. That's an A-plus on Rock Noticing for you, friendo!" But what should I say? Can I just say, again, "Wow! Those are <adjective, complimentary>!" It's the most basic response possible but I still feel like I'm doing most of the heavy lifting in these little chats of ours.
There are two rocks, both slightly larger than a quarter. The yellow rock has a solid yellow background with a very basic rooster, outlined in black. The body is lilac & the entire head is red. The pink rock is a watercolor background so it already looks 1000x cooler. This rooster is outlined with a slightly thinner line than the other one, purple instead of black. The body is blue with tiny grey dots & the feathers are much better defined. Most of the head is the same blue/grey as the body, but the wattle & comb are red while the face is yellow. (The pink rock had a flat bottom so it's standing upright unsupported & my finger is holding the yellow one up so you can compare them. That's not a skill issue, but it's another reason why I much prefer the the pink one.) I won't usually have the 1st version rock on hand like this. Most rocks are off to parts unknown within a month of completion. If I want to play compare & contrast like this with any other duplicate tattoos I'll have to find the original photo. The only reason the yellow one is still here is that I read somewhere that it's good luck to have a rooster in your kitchen, while I happened to have a rooster onhand. Now I'll have to figure out which one goes out into the world & which one will stay in my kitchen.
Is today the day that this finally works?
You can tell that it's a snail this time because there aren't any feet. Also the shell has a multicolored swirl instead of irregular pieces.
Ok this is clever. Good job, Past Me. This turtle is probably related to the other orange and green one, and I'd guess it's from around the same time. (Once a paint pen is out, I tend to use the same color combinations on multiple rocks until I realize that I'm doing that again and force myself to try some different colors)
This turtle is facing left instead of right. The background is pink and blue, the turtle is green with an orange shell. His mouth is open and his single tooth cracks me up. I think I drew the head first, and then I was too scared to redraw it in a better position on the rock, so this turtle is slightly lopsided
The rock is about 2x1" with a flat bottom side & a curved top edge. There's a green watercolor background. I drew a side view of a turquoise turtle (a turquoitle? Is that anything?) with a pink shell divided by purple line segments. The turtle's body is outlined in orange. It has a yellow eye and a prominent black eyebrow. Seriously, there's been a lot of similarly shaped rocks over the years and even though some of them turn into snails, an alarming number of rocks that have a curvy top & a flattish bottom will end up as turtles. I just like how the curve of the shell follows the contour of the rock. Im stuck on the treadmill for 20 more minutes so OK FINE I'll go find more turtles for you.
There's a white and brown cat named Olly laying with her front paws on my lap. It's not the full lap, of course. Olly would never go that far. She's not that kind of girl. But sometimes when we're alone she'll do this and purr SO MUCH
The rock is pink watercolor. It's more roundish than not, but it's not particularly watermelon-shaped. I always like the contrast of green & pink together, so next I made a dark green drippy-drip line going all around. This was when I first began to suspect that I was headed watermelonwards, so I tried to change course. Surprisingly, adding a line of tiny yellow dots to the dark green line didn't help matters, so I tried a light green line tracing the inner edge. Honestly, doing literally anything else at this point would have probably made things less watermelonesque but I chose to add some dark blue spots. That's on me. I see that now.
It's probably best if I talk you through this one, step by step. The rock is standing upright. The side facing the camera is triangular, approx 1½" at the base. There's a pale purple watercolor background. There was originally a tattoo of a yellow scoop-style crane. If you embiggen the photo, you can still see the scoop & the caterpillar-track base. Then things got weird. I added eyes and cat ears to the top of the crane arm joint, so now it's an animal with a long neck and an elephant trunk. Then I added large pink butterfly wings with black swirls. Sometimes I use a coat of sealant as a "save point." Then if the next step turns out to be a mistake, I can wipe it off with rubbing alcohol without damaging the sealed parts. I thought that's what I was doing here, but looking at it now I think it might be done?
The rock is flat and roundish, about 1" across. It's a very basic daisy with a round pink center and seven evenly spaced blue petals outlined with green. Each petal has a line of pink dashes from the tip to the center. Daisies are another design that I can forget about for months. Then when I remember how much I like them, I won't be able to stop making them. Sometimes I can pass through these episodes without Ween getting stuck in my head for a week, but this is not one of those times.
The rock is black and it is TINY. So very small. There's a US quarter for scale so I can confidently say that the rock is about 1 inch long and ½ inch tall. It had a flat bottom edge so the design is standing upright. The dragon is blue, outlined in green. It's a very basic dragon, with a pointy head and a tail that curves upward and wings. I'm getting a pedicure right now & I'm trying to decide if I want to give it to the nice lady who is doing so much stuff to my horrific troll feet. Obviously there will be a cash tip as well, but this is just the usual mental conversation I have at times like this. I prefer to leave rocks anonymously. Last week Mr Rocks & I went out to eat and I hid a rock under my napkin so the server would find it after we left. But then she cleared the table while we were still finishing our drinks and then it was super awkward. It probably wasn't awkward at all. She was very complimentary but my brain was screaming that of course she was nice about it because who could be mean when someone foists crappy art at you. The nail tech is really nice you guys. I don't want to be weird about this
The rock is green watercolor. The tattoo is a roundish fish with a yellow face, a pink body with yellow dots and purple fins
My car's odometer hit 80085 miles today
The rock is pink watercolor, kind of shaped like a wedge of pie. The main drippy line is turquoise, and then I traced the inside edge with dark green, then light green, then turquoise again, repeating in that order until I ran out of rock.
The rock is flat & polished & about 2" long, with a hole drilled straight through the top to make it into a pendant. There's a leather cord strung through the hole. I used paint pens to draw increasingly smaller irregularly shaped stars, in the usual way. The stars are purple, dark blue, light blue, pink, yellow, orange. I'm not sure how I feel about this. As a pendant in general, it's fine, probably. It's larger & heavier than I usually wear, but not uncomfortably so. It's uncomfortable for different reasons that I'm having trouble articulating. I've worn jewelry that I made before, but this is more personal. This design is one of the earliest things I figured out when I started doing rocks and so it feels like I condensed my entire essence into a pendant and now I'm wearing it. How can I BE so arrogant etc.
The rock is pink watercolor with a tattoo of a cartoon baby wearing a bee costume. Its very Anne Geddes and probably charming if you're into that sort of thing. If you're not into saccharine baby art, then do I have some news for you. Let's go to the other photo --->
The rock is... I don't even know. It's rock-shaped. It's not smooth or flat or any easily defined shape.There's technically a pale pink watercolor background but since you might not have noticed unless I pointed it out, should that detail even be included? Maybe I should start over. I drew the traditional long curvy line, like one does. This line is thick and kind of greenish beige. I traced the outer edge with light purple & filled the inner shape with tiny light purple circles. Then I filled the other side of the line with orange stripes. It's a good rock. The longest side is about 2" so it's the perfect size to hold in your hand, or put in a pocket. Also, it has a really satisfying, almost-smooth texture. When you pick it up, your first impulse is to rub your thumb over it. I really wish you could have the entire rock experience, instead of just seeing photos. On the other hand, the people who find my rocks out in the wild probably have no idea that this thing they just found was on the internet so who's the real winner here? No, sorry. It's them. It's 100% definitely them.
Really? Is this going to be the time alt text on a video finally works?
The rock is green watercolor. A segmented caterpillar made of yellow red & purple circles curves all around the entire rock. The 1st comment will be a video of this rock slowly spinning in my hand. That should clear up any questions. I get so many questions. So much outrage. I mean, I get it. I suppose I could just be saying the back of the rock is a continuation of the same design. For internet points or whatnot. Never mind that every previous rock in this style has always done exactly that, every time. Maybe this time, someone is wondering if I really did do it. Again. Relax, friends. I would never do that to you. Let's go to the video:
Two rocks, both tattoos of #Pokémon, colored in with paint pens. A purple watercolor background has Jolteon, a yellow spikey creature somewhere between a fox and a rabbit. A brownish red natural background has Chansey, a happy looking round pink guy with axolotl style gills and an egg in his pouch. *** I've been meaning to do a post like this for a while. Let's find out if any of my moots play #PokeGo: 8652 3325 7948 pscindy42 Raids are boring, so I won't respond to invites unless I happen to have a task for one. I love sending & opening postcards. If you open every day, I will open & send every day. I totally overthink it in fun ways too, sometimes. If you send me a mural, I'll try to reciprocate. If you send something that I find unappealing, I'll get passive-aggressive and send you the blurry volleyball court or the badly lit park information sign.
A screencap of my most recent followers. My 1000th follower is so horny now and wants me to message her for fun
The rock is green watercolor background with a horizontal band of purple & yellow stripes. An orange wavy line wraps around the stripey band, alternating between passing in front of the stripes and behind them. It looks way fancier than it has any right to. I did the stripes first, then the orange. Then I went over the parts of the stripes that needed to be on top, then I did the same thing with the orange. *(It's not really my birthday. Shhh don't tell them)
There's a lot going on here, honestly. The rock is standing upright. It's pink watercolor, with a tattoo of possibly a mosquito outlined in green. A very cute brown cat named Farnsworth came in for a photobomb as I was taking the pic. I usually post the tattoo ones on FB because my family likes seeing them. Here, though, I decided that If I'm going to indulge my artistic pretensions online, I should at least stick to stuff that's 100% me. It's the difference between coloring and drawing. Besides, those tattoos that I bought 500 for $7.99 or whatever are probably AI generated and then that’s a whole conversation. It's a pretty good photo of Farnsie, though. Maybe I'm a cat account now.
This rock is kind of wedge shaped. In the 1st photo, there was a top view, so now it's on a different edge next to a quarter standing upright. I think the blue line must have been the original one. From this angle, it's yellow, blue, green pink. The watercolor background is purplish blue. It's a good background and I'm glad I didn't keep going and cover too much of it .
Aww yeah. Looky me, taking a pic from a different angle than was used in the group photo. I hope I remembered to think of that for the last rock. This is the smallest rock from the original pic, slightly larger than a quarter. The main line is kind of a dark blue. One side is outlined in silver, the other side of the line is yellow. The rock is a slightly reddish beige. I haven't done back views of rocks in a while. Please note that at some point I must have replaced my photo quarter with a WI one.
The main line is thick and purple. It looks like I decided to fill in and out from the main line this time, so most of the rock is covered. It looks vaguely like a geode, especially if you're not looking at it super closely like this. From this angle, we can see a little bit of kind of a yellowish watercolor background, orange, green, pink, red, purple, navy blue, yellow, light blue.
The outer line is teal, then it's maroon, greenish black, orange, purple, yellow, pink, green, light blue. The shape is obviously smaller each time, with less curves. The blue center is almost an oval.