While many people have claimed a rock as a pet as a child, most of those rocks didn’t actually look like a real pet. But artist Akie Nakata has managed to bring rocks to life with her detailed painting.

 

Many of her rocks take on the look of real animals, with brush strokes so small you can see each individual hair of the creatures she’s bringing to life. She doesn’t ever change the shape of the rock she’s painting, instead, she uses it as inspiration for each animal.

Her life-like creations have included a variety of animals ranging from hamsters, otters, seals, owls, birds, fox, raccoon, and many more. She is careful to choose the creature she paints on the rock based on how the rock feels in her hand and what spirit she feels is trying to come out of the rock.

 

She says she talks to the stone as she cradles it in her hand and she can feel the history it has experienced unfold. Each step of painting is part of her creations. Is the backbone of the animal in the right place, for example? The eyes are always painted on last. She tries not to force something on the stone that doesn’t feel natural.

The care she puts into her creations are easy to see. Once you see her creations, it’s hard to imagine that any of her beautiful artwork was every simply just a rock. 

While many of us see a pile of just rocks, it’s obvious that Nakata sees something much more. Many of us have attempted to paint rocks, but undoubtedly, most of us have fallen short of Nakata’s creativity and beauty.