Do you want to make beautiful backgrounds to your comic stories? Then peel yourself away from the monitor and go see the natural order of things. Take your art supplies.

Here are some ink wash representations of different rock types we have down here in Texas, and probably somewhere reasonably close to where you live, too--at least, some of 'em.

Granite, gabbro, rhyolite, sandstone, siltstone, and shale--limestone, conglomerate, and coal--all can flow from your brush if you spend a few years studying the way light reflects from them and is absorbed by them.

I made these sketches a few years ago, meaning to teach a course in adult education about rock types and art. Next thing I knew, they asked if I could teach 13-year-olds. I should have run away screaming right then...but I did OK as long as they were moving. Didn't leave any time for art instruction, though.