You’re in for a real treat today! The fabulous Lou Withers is here with a wonderful and insightful tutorial on stamps and doodles which will open your world up to new possibilities and change the way you stamp forever. Using a stamp from the fabulous range from StudioLight, watch as Lou expands on a design to make something amazing… Take it away Lou!
Lou Withers
We are all guilty of just inking then stamping our stamps and calling it a finished piece of work… but there are many ways of experimenting further with your stamps. Don’t be drawn into thinking that when you buy a stamp, that’s it. I’m here today to show you how you can use your stamp as a starting point from which you can then extend the stamped image, developing it and making it your own amazing work.
The easiest way of doing this is to stamp your image, I would suggest you use something like a mandala that has: areas that you can develop, areas large enough to draw in, and designs can you like.
The stamp I chose was this:
As for the other bits you need – in this tutorial I used a Ranger Jumbo Archival Ink Pad (I chose this ink because it’s easier to control and doesn’t spread as much as other inks will). The pens you use are vitally important, if you don’t already, I recommend making sure you own a variety of pens with different sized nibs – I decided to use a set of UniBall PIN Fineliner drawing pens (specifically the 0.05mm very fine nib).
What I Did
First, stamp your image in an archival ink, then allow to dry. Then, using a drawing pen, I added designs and doodles to the empty areas of the stamp – I used designs from the original design so that it all coordinated and felt like a natural extension of the stamp.
From here, you can continue to extend the stamp using the same process of choosing designs and adding them to the outer edges, or even taking inspiration from it and using your own ideas that you think will go well with the original designs… you could keep going until you are out of room on the paper! Doing this helps you get over ‘artists’ block’, encourages your creativity and gives your stamps a new lease of life. Check out the finished piece below!
Tip – You can create your own stamped book of images that you can take with you and colour, doodle and draw at your leisure and anywhere.
Check out the full video tutorial below!
Wasn’t that just marvellous?! If you are ready to experiment with extending your stamps, then you can stock up on everything you need on our website!