Cobra Student Oil Paint Tamping Test...

If you wonder what this is...well, let me tell you it is the result of oil paint tamping or is it printing?
@jompiy uses this technique among many others and tried to explain how to do it and....

What can I say, I just thought I’d give it a go… Yesterday, and outdoors, mind you, because even the smell of Cobra water-mixable oil paint smells like oil paint. On top of that, I don’t have much space to have a bit of a mess about, and the door panel – made of plywood about 15 years ago – can no longer be left lying around somewhere in the house. I started by scraping it clean and leaving it to dry in the sun. Incidentally, this panel had already been stained a few years back. I was hoping this would work in my favour, as @jompiy had already mentioned that it’s going to cost an awful lot in oil paints. And that was a good reason for me to go for the student version, which I was able to buy cheaply for 3.95 per tube.

First, I marked out a section of the board with paper tape, roughly the size of a sheet of paper – in my case, bamboo paper. I then squeezed paint straight from the tube onto the wood and spread it around a bit. I think I can safely say there was a thick layer of paint on there. So I spread it out a bit here and there because I didn’t want it all to seep out from under the paper at the edges – though this did happen in certain places anyway.

I then drew on it using one – or actually several – pencils, as well as a blending stump. I tried rubbing it with a palette knife and with my hands. I can say that the result was dismally poor. There’s hardly any sign of a print, and there are even whole sections of paper with no paint on them at all. On the wood, it’s also clearly visible that the paint has disappeared there. So I added more paint for the next print and repeated this several times, but the result didn’t improve.

I then tried again with thinner paper, but apart from seeing a lot of oil from the paint on the back – which had been absorbed into the paper – I could see very little paint transfer and certainly not the image I had in mind.

To be perfectly honest, I actually find the print left behind on the wood much nicer.

So my question to @jompiy is: what am I doing wrong here? Everything? 🤣
The technique itself is interesting; it’s a sort of stamping, and quite a bit of time goes into the drawing. Two virtually identical prints would be interesting and would indeed save some paint. I say ‘some’ because that piece of wood uses up a lot. That’s not a problem in itself, as I suspect this will eventually be the one I’m most pleased with.

Unfortunately, I don’t think my result on paper is anything to write home about. I have, incidentally, kept the first three prints, and I’ll definitely be keeping and adding to the ones on the wood as well.

You learn by doing, or come up with other ideas. In any case, plenty of ideas are running through my head now that I’m writing this down.

In any case, I’ve now covered half the panel with gesso (and I’ve used up the rest of that too). I’m going to have another go at this, in the hope that it’ll use less paint – not just with oil paint, but also with acrylics and, who knows, perhaps even gouache.

What I do wonder, though, is how thick the paper is that’s being drawn on. It seems to me it would be rather difficult to do this on the back of thicker paper. Or is the drawing done on tracing paper, perhaps baking paper (?), whilst this lies on top of the oil paint and is used as a stamp? That actually seems a bit more logical to me.
Incidentally, I can see the pencil lines on the failed prints, but this has no further effect on the paint or the final result. Perhaps treating the card or paper of my choice with gesso would also ensure better adhesion of the oil paint.

For the time being, the three prints are lying on a large piece of cardboard in the cellar to dry, and the wooden board is now on an old garden table; it weathered the night well outside, leaning against the wall (a precaution against the forecast rain).

My question is also whether this has been tried on canvas.

Materials used:

• Piece of plywood
• Cobra student oil paint,
• bamboo paper 24*34 cm - 250 g/m2,
• brush #11,
• palette knife,
• Jaxon paper 24*32 cm - 120 g/m2
• tape
• my hands

I didn't mix the paint with water.
Most likely this will be continued...

_8.9.26