Anzac Day rock painting ideas

April 22, 2022

For the first time in two years, people can commemorate the service and sacrifice of those who have served during the Anzac Day celebrations. We bring you some ideas to create rock painting and craft ideas to talk about this special day with your families.

Every year on the 25th of April, hundreds of thousands of Australians and New Zealanders around the world gather at dawn on Anzac Day.

Originally a commemoration of the landing of Australian and New Zealand forces at Gallipoli in modern-day Turkey in 1915, Anzac Day is a public expression of gratitude and reflection which resonates to the present day.

Sunset and poppies

Step one: Draw a simple field of poppies, create large poppies and some smaller ones. The idea is to recreate the horizon.

Step two: Using the yellow and orange brush tip paint pens layer and blend for a vibrant sunset. This will be the back of our rock.

Step three: Colour the poppies using red and the greenery using your favourite shades of green.

Step four: Create the line work using a fine tip black paint pen.

Step five: Add a small quote, such as "Lest we forget"

"Lest we forget" rock

Step one: Using a white paint pen, draw a set sun in the middle of the rock, the sun beams and a semicircle to mark the ground. For this design we added a cross to symbolize the graves, and a soldier standing next to it. We added the quote "Lest we forget" and two large poppies.

Step two: Paint the poppies using red. Use the same colour to go over the ground.

Step three: Using yellow, colour the ground and add some details to the centre of the poppies.

Step four: Use the fine tip silver paint pen (both on the Metallics set and on Classics) to outline the silhouette of the soldier, cross, poppies and letters.

Step five: Colour the sun beams using red, yellow and orange. Outline them with the silver pen.

ANZAC wreath wood slice

Step one: draw two soldiers holding a wreath, and poppies all around the edge of your wood slice.

Step two: colour the wreath using red and two different shades of green.

Step three: colour the soldiers. You can choose how much details to add to the people.

Step four: use red and green to colour the poppies on the edges of your wood slice.

Step five: using the fine tip black paint pen, outline everything in your design to make it stand out.

Poppy hill rock tutorial

Step one:

Using a blend of your green Life of Colour paint pens create a set of rolling hills with a pale blue sky in the background.

Step two:

Add a bright cheerful yellow sun in the centre of your rolling hills and add some yellow lines to represent sunbeams.

Step three:

Place random sized green stems for the poppy flowers in the foreground of the image.

Step four:

Poppy flowers add the next element for our commemorative rock, using a red paint pen with odd small shapes which we will later add more details to. At the base of the poppy flowers spread some tiny specks of red to represent more scattered poppy flowers.

Step five:

Fine detailing using the 1mm black comes last, starting with the centre of the poppy flowers then moving outward creating petals in assorted frilly shapes until all of the red has been included into the flower. Continue to place black outlines around the stems, hills and sun.