Jess Nite
I love to create art whenever I can.
I love to grow food, do puzzles, watch nerdy movies, and eat snacks. |
where it all began... In October of 2018, I embarked on a new challenge for myself: ROCKtober.
I have always been kind of an artsy fartsy person, but I never really thought I was "good" at it. And as a full time teacher/wife/mother I don't have a lot of time to practice or really just slow down and take a time for myself. So as a means of giving myself a chance to do that, I decided to try to use the Inktober (tm) prompts, but interpret them into dot paintings on rocks. |
why rocks? I don't remember when or even who posted an image on social media of a beautifully painted rock they had found outside as they were taking a walk around their neighborhood. It brought them such joy and it seemed like a perfect vehicle for my challenge.
At first I just used found objects to create the different sized dots like sticks, pencils, paperclips, chopsticks, before adding more "proper" dotting tools. |
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I started dotting rocks on my prep at school and some kiddos stopped by my room and the rocks caught their attention. After some discussions and later visits, I got them started on painting their own rocks. They suggested we try it out in actual class, too. Why not? So we started doing "Friday ROCKS!" days in my class where students could choose to paint rocks to leave around the community or in the school garden I help run.
For my students it became a mindfulness ritual, or a calming technique, or a "Mrs. Nite I just cannot today... I just need to paint my rock" kind of thing. All rocks are meant to be given away. Even as I start to expand my art into a little "business," I will never charge for rocks that I paint. If you see one out in the wild, free free to bring it home and spend some time with it, or leave it in a new location for it to spread joy to another person. |
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