About

Jim'll Paint It is a single topic blog where a man named jim solicits suggestions from readers of humorous or strange situations to paint in MS Paint. The resulting pictures are prized and often shared on social media.

Origin

James Murray posted the first three pictures on Jim'll Paint it on February 21, 2013. The images assumed what would become the standard format for the posts: a letter written to Jim from a reader detailing a situation, along with Jim's presentation of the situation as depicted in MS Paint.^[1] For example, this letter:

was accompanied by this image:

Spread

The first instance of Jim'll Paint It appearing on Reddit was shortly after the creation of the blog, on February 28th, 2013 when a user named chazbo7 posted a link to an Imgur of his suggestion for Jim to /r/pics.^[3] The post received 5 points (70% upvoted). In addition, the blog was featured in the Guardian and the Independent, two different British newspapers, who called them "nostalgic" and "bizarre".^[4][5] Murray published a book of his work entitled Electric Dreams: The Collected Works of Jim'll Paint It with Faber & Faber on October 2nd, 2014; the book reached #470 in Amazon Sales Rank: Graphic Novels.^[6] Since then, the blog has been featured on Reddit and other social media sources many times.

Various Examples

External References

^[1] Tumblr – Jim'll Paint It

^[2] Wikipedia – Jim'll Paint It

^[3] Reddit – A guy named Jim will paint anything you request using only Microsoft paint. This was mine and a friend's suggestion.. It's pretty amazing.

^[4] The Guardian UK – Jim'll Paint It: crazy pictures on request using Microsoft Paint

^[5] The Independent – Jim’ll Paint It: The man who drew too much

^[6] Amazon – Electric Dreams: The Collected Works of Jim'll Paint It