Coloring classes and kits are fun but sometimes you don’t want another art lesson, you need more realistic digital stamps for blending and technique practice. Amy Shulke launches a new home for her line art and sketches. Sketch-Garden.com images are perfect for your independent artistic coloring projects.

You’ve taken the coloring classes…

You’re getting pretty darned good at blending and shading with Copic Markers and colored pencils…

Now you need line drawings, digital stamps, and coloring images to practice all the great techniques you’ve learned.

Introducing our latest adventure: Sketch Garden

For years, I’ve had a back-log of projects and a drawer overflowing with fun sketchy doodles.

I’ve got more ideas than I know what to do with.

But classes take time… lots and lots of time. Time to think up the lesson, time to match the lesson to the right image, time to color it, time to plan the presentation, time to prepare all the stamps and learning aids…

Whew!

Then my assistant Lisa asked me one day, “Why do you think everything has to be a class? Can’t we just offer great practice images?”

And at that moment, Sketch Garden was born.

Digital Stamps & Line Art for Realistic Coloring

Our goal for Sketch-Garden.com is pretty simple: Great line art for serious coloring projects.

I know how hard it can be to find realistic coloring images.

When I teach a class using cling, clear, or even digital stamps from other artists, it often takes me weeks to find a few that will work for realism.

I’m not kidding. When my host-store receives a new catalog, I spend hours going though it to find something, anything that’ll work for classes.

Even when I find a stamp company or artist with realistic images, most of what they release each season doesn’t work for my style of art lessons.

And I hate to say it but coloring isn’t as trendy as it once was. Many stamp companies have disappeared or they’re releasing fewer images.

It’s not just the googley-eyed cartoon worm crawling up the stem of a rose that ruins the potential of an image— realistic stamps are like a perfect storm of ideal characteristics.

• First, the stamp has to be drawn accurately. If the stamp artist draws something wrong, it’s very hard to color it right.

• The stamp needs to be large enough for us to color with realism. Two inch stamps just don’t have space for realistic details.

• No sentiments or background items touching the image.

• No filled-in areas— all cells and spaces must be colorable.

• Minimal texture marks and no decoration.

• Thin outlines, drawn with single lines rather than “artistic” sketchy, skippy, or scribble lines.

I know how hard it is for you to take one of my rose classes and then apply that same technique to other rose stamps… because finding suitable rose images is really, really hard.

I want Sketch Garden to solve this issue for you.

Every image we release at Sketch Garden is the total artist approach. Every digital stamp looks exactly like the kind of preliminary drawing I’d do for my own photo-realistic projects.

Never be limited by stamp art again.

Transparent Backgrounds, Disappearing Outlines

In my classes at VanillaArts.com, I give students the class images in several formats. My goal in doing multiple stamp versions is to keep the focus on the lesson, not your printing process.

But easy-print options actually hold you back.

• What if you want a larger image?

• What if you want just the blossom with no stem?

• What if you want three roses instead of one?

• And what if you want the lines to totally disappear underneath your coloring?

At Sketch Garden, we’re giving you the most versatile version, true digital stamps.

PNG files are flexible.

• PNGs work with everything from photo-editors to word processing documents

• Enlarge the stamp without pixellation

• Tilt or mirror the image as needed without distorting the page size

• Transparent backgrounds allow for re-grouping

• Easily crop away extra parts

• Black lines can be adjusted to your ideal disappearing gray line using opacity settings

I know a lot of people are used to white background .JPG files. Try the .PNG. I’m sure you’ll grow to love the versatility.

visit us at Sketch-Garden.com

We’re adding new images as fast as I can draw them. More coming soon!

And hey, become a part of the Garden Team.

We’ll be featuring guest artists and Garden fans in the Inspiration section. Share your Sketch Garden project and your supply list, we’ll celebrate your artwork and color palette in the blog. All mediums welcome!