Painting on a Giant Rock

Last August when I requested my dad hunt down and haul up some flat river rocks for me to use to make the walkway for my Little Free Library, he found and hauled back a giant rock to his house to decorate out front in his yard.  He been bugging me ever since to paint their family name and house number on the rock. I put him off due to the weather until this summer but then had to pay it forward.

I spent not quite 4 hours sitting on grass painting this rock. Of course when it came time to paint it my parents got fancy and requested a deer and a sunflower to be placed on the rock also.  So, here's how I did it:
1. Requested my mom clean off the rock so it would be ready to go.
2. Bought "Sticky" primer. Supposedly sticks to all surfaces. Put primer on the rock where I wanted to paint.
3. Used a pencil to sketch on the image designs and lettering.
4. Used rustoleum indoor/outdoor glossy black to outline all images and to outline and fill in all letters and numbers.  This was the biggest pain as it took about 3 coats in order to not be streaky.
5.  Then I used regular acrylic paints in yellow and brown to paint the images. 
6.  I finished by putting a few coats of polyurethane on the entire rock.

Overall it turned out well. My parents seem to really like it and others that have seen it like it. I wish I would have used some more variation in the deer as far as whites and lighter shades of brown as I would have liked it to contrast the black outline more. In addition, I would have painted the horns with more brown if I had bothered to go into my parents house and look at the many deer heads my dad has up to see what color they really are.  * I had no color images to go from so I just worked from memory and tried to keep the images and colors used simple.