Ten inspirational natural rock formations

As rockwork artists, we often find ourselves searching the web for reference pictures. Matching a habitat to an animal is usually the first stage when developing a project. Matching a species to a geographical locale is a high consideration as is rock texture, form and colouring. Nobody wants to see animals kept in concrete cages anymore and thankfully, forward thinking zoo’s now invest more time and money into species specific habitats.

This early research also works for other artificial environment reproductions wether it be an aquarium, theme park attraction or whatever. Often the client doesn’t know exactly what he or she wants. Gather a collection of reference images and it will prevent a lot of grey areas as the project develops.

The following ten images were accumulated whilst researching a project which required heavily stratified rock formations.

Angkor Wat head

Main Contractor : Houthoff Zoo Design

angkor wat head

Artificial Angkor Wat head.

I loved making this head recently in the giant petshop I talked about in a previous post. It is made from EPS  carved with a chainsaw and then shot with a render (shotcrete) the render was then carved to the final finish. The colours are an acid stain and acrylic wash with hand painted lichens expertly done by Susy V. The height, which you cannot tell too well by the photo is about 2.8m.