BlameThePixel!

Hey guys (mainly Pope).
I need some help with spraypainting this huge ass rock. I dunno how to do it. It's been painted over hundreds of times before. What kind of spray paint can I use? What's an effective way of getting a design onto this rock?

If it's a large, large rock you would be better off buying a bucket (or two) of paint and covering it in that first because using spray paint for it all can be more expensive.

What sort of design do you want on it? Stenciling it on will probably be the best method. I made a brief stencil guide a while ago, you can see it here. I wouldn't use acetate as a stencil material if you're going to stencil a round surface. Paper is probably the cheapest and most effective way but the image you stencil will be compromised if all the stencil doesn't adhere to the rock's surface.

Alternatively you could design your image onto a big sheet of paper either by printing it on on tiled A4 sheets and fix them together or, a bit more effort, create the stencil of the design and spray it on to whatever sized sheet of paper you want. Once you have that, you can wheatpaste (a glue made from flour and water) it onto the rock. I use this recipe (ignore the sugar part, it does nothing), works a treat.

The thinner the paper, the better, so newsprint is ideal for wheatpaste. Means that if people try to rip it off, the paper will come off in tiny, tiny, little bits. Still, a bit of scrubbing or hosing will remove it relatively easy. Stenciling the rock directly will last a helluva lot longer and be harder to buff. If you do wheatpaste it up, be sure to brush a coat of wheatpaste over the design once you've pasted it on, it'll protect it marginally from UV fading and rain hugely.

On a side note, what brands of paint can you buy? It always confused me where you lived. Throughly and deeply confused me.

If you are genuinely from Canada then the best stuff you can get is german Montana, preferably the gold range...roughly USD$6 a can. Belton, spanish Montana and Krylon (or Rusto, one of those is exclusive to Australia, I can never remember) are other good brands.

Skate shops are usually good for spray paint but there's plenty of places to order online...you can get stung badly for the postage and packaging though (what comes to a good USD$20-25) however there are sites that will price postage based on how many cans you order instead, which is good for small orders.

Well for this rock, we were told we're only allowed to use spray paint. They said 4 cans of paint will cover it .

Thanks for the stenciling guide, it will probably give us a bit more inpiration more things we can do to that rock.

I think the wheatpaste thing is going a bit too far, because whatever that's painted on the rock can be painted over in 48 hours (probably not though, because people are lazy)

We've already bought paint from a hardware store... I still have the reciept. I'm guessing I should return it and go get much better paint?

btw, info on the rock if you have time to spare:

http://www.ucalgary.ca/currentstudents/rockhistory/

Haha, that's a sweet rock. Yeah, 3-4 cans sounds about right, it's not as big as I thought.

What brand paint is it? It'll probably do the job and if you don't expect it to be around for more than a month (but potentially gone within 2 days) then you might as well go with the cheap stuff. The more professional brands just last longer, drip considerably less, aren't thin (so the colour behind doesn't show through) and can't be covered over with paint as easily because they absorb the buff to an extent.

What are you painting on it? : D

I really don't know what brand of paint it is, I know it's the stuff that you can spray onto your barbeque to readd the color to it. Considering you said that the color probably is gonna be thin, I probably wanna go for the more expensive stuff.

It may be a while for me to get that rock... very recently, the school announced that they're no longer accepting credit cards as a form of payment for tuition. If someone doesn't use the rock as a form of protest about it, I will (with my friends D.
Original plan was to put:

2+2=3
-Business

just because I'm an engineering student, and we don't like the business students (except for me, I end up dating them
). I'm really trying to think of something a bit more creative, now that I've got real inspiration and some kind of guide. Something informative and funny at the same time, just like that one guy who painted "MASTURBATION IS MASS GENOCIDE"

I live in Berlin, so we have graffiti.
I never did it because it's trashy. (imo)

New plan. Gonna rock roll the school.

never gonna give you up
never gonna let you down
you just got rock roll'd!

Then a stencil of Rick Astley's dancing somewhere, and rock roll'd all over the rock. Epic?

Epic-awesome.

you live in berlin? omg i love berlin! i had a "holiday trip" there for 7 days... ill never forget it

I didn't tell you already? oO
You live in Hannover or bibi does?

me not