Which still leaves the issue of suggesting strength. With this character, I have applied the same rule of proportions which I have discussed in the case of the previous one, but I have also approached a second principle: materiality.

When someone views a picture of a rock, they will at once perceive it to be heavy and hard. In the same way, seeing a person lifting a large stone immediately suggest that that person must have good physical strength in order to be able to lift such a stone. And by an extension of this notion - a being made of the same heavy stone, which is capable of locomotion must be possessed of at least enough physical strength to lift its stone limbs off the ground. So it is that the visual image of a large being made of stone should be sufficiently indicative of great strength.

But this brings us to the next point: how does one show that an item in an image is made of stone and not something else? Materiality is the key: the quality or character of being material or composed of matter. Visually, this trait is rendered via the use of shape, colour, lighting and texture. In the case at hand, stones in nature appear in all shapes and colours and can reflect or absorb light in any number of ways, so the component most useful to help set them apart is texture. In his book "Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist"[21], author and artist James Gurney discusses the use of texture to simulate materiality, covering technical aspects such as applying texture unevenly across the surface of an illustrated object in accordance to lighting so as to simulate the way in which the human eye perceives objects in reality.

In the images below, you can see my progression through the different phases of materiality, from the shape of the stones: rough and random, through the colours - in various plain grays of common rock and finally to the lighting and the texture, simulating uneven chips and wear around the edges, weather-beaten stains or discoloration and the very basic pores or igneous rock or metamorphic cracks.