Edmund Blampied is perhaps best known as an etcher even though he mostly preferred the technique of drypoint, which is a simpler, more immediate intaglio process (see The Art of Etching, 1925). But he was also a painter in oils and watercolours, which were usually based on rough sketches that he used to see if he could capture an idea and then develop it in preliminary drawings, many of which he then sold. For his early oil paintings such as Building a Cathedral at Annecy and 'Driving home inthe rain' he also did a preliminary oil sketch, usually on a smaller canvas. Later in life he preferred to work on the rough surface of canvas board.

Blampied made his reputation as an artist in London between 1920 and 1938, the year he returned to live in Jersey. He held several exhibitions of his work at the Leicester Galleries of his agent Alex Reid & LeFèvre, and later at Walter Bull and Sanders, including a show of humorous drawings in 1931 that Blampied called his 'Nonsense Show'. But the best exhibitions were of oil paintings in 1925 and then mostly watercolours in 1929, 1930, 1933 and 1935 in London and Glasgow. These paintings are uncommon, but turn up at auctions now and again. The unsold paintings in the 1930s were sent to the USA and were shown first at the Schwartz Galleries, and then by Guy Mayer Galleries, so there are examples in American collections and they come up for auction in the USA. After the war Blampied mostly showed his work at the galleries of T.R. Annan in Glasgow and at the Société Jersiaise, so paintings from this period can be found in many houses in Jersey and in the collection of Jersey Heritage.