Daily Quick Sketch: Picture Book Character Mash-up

I had purchased new brushes for Photoshop last week, looking for brushes that give a more natural feel than the current brushes available in Photoshop. Grut brushes are pretty impressive because most of the brushes are not cookie cutter stamp and repeats.

Highly recommended, with over 300 brushes for just $20. The site even has a free sampler for you to try: Grut Brushes Link

Playing around with two of my picture book characters: Bladimir Blarfarg and Little Boo
And yes, Bladimir is the one going to the bathroom in the lake

YouTube's The Cozy Chair reads Bobby's Biggest Bubble

Special thanks to Rebekah of YouTube's The Cozy Couch for reading Bobby's Biggest Bubble!

She did an absolutely great job. She is also doing a bubblegum bubble contest. The best bubblegum bubble photo sent to her email (thecozychairclub@gmail.com) wins the book and gum! Wooo!

Daily Quick Sketch: RokSok, Son of Mudsok

Haven't drawn an underling in some time. These are characters to an underground world in a children's book I wrote a few years ago. The story is far from being polished. But I like to go back and add a few details here and there. I not only want the story to be fun, but also educational. Mixing non-fiction with fiction.

Roksok, the youngest son of King Mudsok. Image inked using a Kuretake brush pen.

The original pencil sketch

To see his dad, go here: LINK

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