Painting With Rubber Stamps

From the book "Enliven Your Paintings with Light"
by Phil Metzger

Rather than paint a wallpaper design (like that in Empty Rooms, right) with brushes, Edward Gordon uses rubber stamps. First he draws the design he wants in pencil on paper and then darkens the design using a fine felt-tip pen. He shrinks the design to the size he needs on a photocopier. At an office supply store he has a rubber stamp made from the reduced drawing. In this case Gordon had two stamps made, because the wallpaper design included two interlocking images.

He paints the wall area nearly to completion and coats the area with Liquin. Once the Liquin is dry he can test colors and values for the wallpaper images - the Liquin layer allows him to remove the test paint easily without damaging underlying paint. When satisfied with his mixtures, he spreads paint evenly on his palette, presses the stamp into the paint, and applies the stamp to the painting. If dissatisfied, he wipes the paint off, adjusts and tries again.

You can use this method henever you need a repetitive design on a plane parallel to the picture surface. It will not work for a wall in perspective, because the parts of the design are not all the same size.

"Empty Rooms"
By Edward Gordon