UPDATE Daily Quick Sketch: Cap'n Billy Buttons

UPDATE
So what's a pirate character without a parrot? I originally had a parrot on his shoulder, but really dislike the way it looked. I like this new little guy . . . introducing Cap'n Billy Buttons and his parrot companion, Pockets.

A new update: changed Mr. Buttons' colors slightly and added a new parrot, Pockets 

The original pencil sketch for Pockets the parrot

- - - Originally published on 4/7/18 - - -

Here's a character design for my picture book manuscript, Pirate Dreams. His name is Cap'n Billy Buttons, one of the supporting characters that join the main character in the story. He's is a kind soul that is trying to live up to the role of being a pirate.

A digitally colored version of the Cap.n Billy Buttons sans parrot

Cap'n Billy Buttons isn't taken seriously by other pirates, mostly because of his name. So he runs a crewless ship. Because of no crew, Buttons has to do everything on the ship, including the laundry . . . (which apparently he knows nothing about as you can see from the shrunken clothing he wears.)

Hand inked version of Cap'n Billy Buttons with (eech!) parrot (that needs to be revised)

Mermay 2018: Flying Fish Mermaid

This is the first year I'm doing the annual #MerMay online event where artists submit daily images of mermaids. I don't have the time to submit a new image every day, but I will be doing images at least once a week.

The final color image including a school of flying fish, created using Photoshop

My idea for these images is to create different types of mermaid based on their "fish-ancestry". I've more ideas for octopus, shark, whale and lantern fish mermaids . . . ( this is probably going to get very weird as I go on . . . )

The original pencil sketch sans fish

I'm thinking of doing this polaroid concept for all the mermaid images

Arrrggghhh! It's Another @#$% Quick Sketch Video: Spider-man Swing!

Posting this old time-lapse video of Spider-man swinging I found recently while cleaning a few hard drives. Created in ArtRage Pro and video edited with CamStudio and MovieMaker.

UPDATE Daily Quick Sketch: Piggin' and Grinnin'

UPDATE: I never liked the framing I did in this image, so I eliminated the background coloring.

Originally posted on 3/11/15:
Today's quick sketch was inspired by the blog: Dueling Banjo Pigs, a blog run by illustrators, Guy Francis and Stacy Curtis.

I seem to have jumped on the bandwagon long after this blog first started, but when viewing the blog and it's many banjo-playing pig images . . . I felt like tossing one on top of the already impressive 700+ picture collection pile.

Fully colored digital image of Piggin' and Grinnin' for the "Dueling Bango Pigs" blog site

Doing this image was a lot of fun. It's nice to just jump into doing a fun sketch with nothing but a suggested topic (a pig and a banjo.)

Inked version of the pencil lines created in ArtRage Pro

NOTE: Anyone can submit to the blog, professional or beginning artist. The blog is purely for fun. Even if you don't want to submit an image, it's worth seeing all the variations people have sent over the years. Visit the site here: http://banjopigs.blogspot.com/

Original pencil sketch from one of my sketchbooks

Daily Quick Sketch: Fox on the Run

Not sure why I sketched this image. Maybe it's because I need a fox character for a picture book manuscript I'm working on, or it's because I was watching Guardians of the Galaxy II again (which has the song Foxon the Run by Sweet in its soundtrack.)

Fox on the Run digitally colored using flat colors

I'll be using some of the features of this fox character for my picture book based on the famous pangram, The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog. 

Original pencil sketch which angle was changed to show more speed and movement

Daily Quick Sketch: Fishface

No idea when I did this sketch, but I found this old scanned pencil drawing in one of my archive drives. I dropped it into Painter 2018 and gave it a few color layers and added some color lines. I believe this was created with a small drawing program called Krita.

FishFace, quick colored version of an old pencil sketch image

Krita had a nice interface and it did a great job of simulating a true sketching line on a tablet. But it had glitches, which would sometimes lose artwork from system lock-ups and/or program crashes. So I stopped using Krita for that major reason.

The original pencil sketch

Like most of the things I find, I threw it on this blog for safe keeping. Never know when I might need a character whose face resembles a fish.

Finally got my website updated!

The new website design is up, and it has a new name: www.jimromer.com

It's been about five years since the last update. Adding my animation clips to the video page will take some tweaking to get all those old Flash files to work correctly. Plus, I'm still digging into my archives to find some ancient stuff for the About Me page. All of this will take some time, but for now, there's enough completed for the new site design to go active.

The new website design's homepage

I'm planning to have the newer website design link to www.jimromer.com. My primary domain, www.arrrggghhh.com, will stay as is for now, (which is mostly a promotional site to sell my picture book.) I'll be focusing on branding my name instead of the Arrrggghhh Ink Publishing.

I hope to get published the traditional way. Self-publishing a book was exciting and rewarding, but it's not the way to seriously do picture books. Doing a picture book is hard enough without doing it all alone. So in 2018, I'm a returning member of the 12X12 challenge, writing a new story each month.

A definite plus to the site is the new video page and I'm also planning to add animation clips

To see the new update, head over to www.jimromer.com