Chris Howard's Writing & Art

On the Front Page!

Seaborn is on the front page of Addicted to eBooks!

http://addictedtoebooks.com/node/524

Cool!

I love this!

"The Complete Seaborn (Saltwater Witch - Seaborn - Sea Throne) by Chris Howard, www.amazon.com/... Completely amazing series! This combines my love of the sea with my love of all things creepy!"

Source: amazon.com via Margie on Pinterest

Saltwater Witch Chapter 7 is live!

It's all here:
http://www.saltwaterwitch.com/switch/

Kassandra speedpaint

About fifteen minutes goofing in ArtRage this morning.  I ended up sketching five or six figures in motion for some upcoming comic pages. Here's one.

Art, Mimesis and Aristotle

Our word, mimic, is rooted in the ancient Greek term mimesis, which has also entered the English language.  From Wikipedia:  Mimesis, the imitation of life or nature in the techniques and subject matter of art and literature

Aristotle demonstrated that mimesis is the characteristic that distinguishes art from craft--the fine arts from all other productive technologies.  Mimesis is the skill the artist employs to produce a work of art, the representation of specific slices of reality--slices chosen and carefully selected by the artist.  Aristotle develops this view of mimesis throughout the Poetics, and in typical fashion explores just about every aspect of its use in producing art. 

Plato was probably the first to lead Aristotle down the path of esthetics--the study of art.  As was often the case, Aristotle grasped the theme that his teacher introduced and explored it more thoroughly and beyond the scope of anything dreamt of by anyone at the Academy, many times in direct opposition to Platonic philosophy. 

This is the general view--that Aristotle learned much of what he was to later develop from Plato and the philosophical talk at the Academy, a view that I accept only to a certain degree.  There's little evidence that this was always the case, and in his study of art as well as biology there are other factors that probably influenced Aristotle.   He was the son of the physician and--according to tradition--friend to King Amyntus of Macedon (Father to Philip, grandfather to Alexander the Great).  Aristotle certainly had read and listened to performances of Homer and others long before leaving the North.  From early childhood, Aristotle may have spent time at the Macedonian court in Pella, and it's known that Euripides was welcomed there generations before.  With this connection and the possibility of a library of Euripidean works--and maybe some esthetic studies going on at Pella--one can at least speculate that Aristotle learned quite a bit about Greek drama prior to going to Athens.

Fourteen foot tall book covers...

I have been painting like a demon the past few days and although I’m still doing some detail work, I think it’s ready to be posted. First off, the format is a bit ridiculous...or maybe it’s ridiculously cool.  It’s certainly been a fun one to paint.  The actual size in pixels is about 2200 wide by well over 51,000 long.  (That works out to about 7.5 inches wide by over 170 inches tall)

I’m going to leave the purpose for doing this weird-sized illustration unclear, but if you want to you can think of it as a book cover that’s 9 inches wide and fourteen feet tall.  Or maybe it’s a scroll.  Or a fan-fold insert for a book...  How’s that?  Okay, I will fill things in a little more: I’m working on a publishing project that will go live this summer and involves kickstarter.com and possibly some partners.  I’ll leave it at that for now because there is still a lot of planning to do.

The concept is one continuous illustration going from seagulls skimming the surface of a stormy sea to (~51,000 pixels later) the floor of a fairly deep and dark part of the ocean.  In terms of ocean depth it’s about 6000 meters from surface to floor with some of the cool things you’ll find along the way.

Here are a few highlights (below), but it’s a big damn illo and you really should scroll through the whole thing:  http://www.SaltwaterWitch.com/switch/SeabornScroll

Finally, I want to call attention to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (www.whoi.edu) which operates the DSV Alvin, and my favorite aquarium on the planet, Monterey Bay Aquarium (www.montereybayaquarium.org) which has captivated and inspired me for decades.

I also posted this for IllustrationFriday: Heights.

Let me know what you think!

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New Maps and Charts page live on Saltwater Witch!

New Maps and Charts page live on Saltwater Witch!

Maps and Charts relating to the Seaborn, Kassandra, and her family. I will be posting more, but starting out with three items, a map from the House Rexenor archives, Kassandra's "hand drawn" map of the Nine-Cities, and Kassandra's family tree.

http://www.saltwaterwitch.com/switch/maps.php

Saltwater Witch Chapter 4 is Up!

I just uploaded Saltwater Witch chapter 4 with the new opening panel! Read it all here: http://www.SaltwaterWitch.com/switch

Saltwater Witch Chapter 3 is Back!

Opening scene for Saltwater Witch Chapter 3. All new chapters 1 and 2 are up on the site with new art, layout, type, and other good stuff. Hope you like!

Read it all here: http://www.saltwaterwitch.com/switch

Click for the full view!

Kassandra reads

I spent the last couple hours sketching and painting this one for the background of the "Kassandra Reads... (Comic Links)" page, which will contain banners and links to comics I like and read. This will hang off Saltwater Witch

Click for the full view:

All new Chapter 2!

Okay, I've posted the first part of Saltwater Witch chapter 2, with a bunch of new art, new type, layout, and almost everything else. This new edition of the graphic novel will run vertically (Chapter 1) or horizontally like chapter 2. Check it all out here: http://www.saltwaterwitch.com/switch (There's a link below the Chapter 2 image for a "Sneak Peek"--click that to see the latest stuff!). I'm still tweaking chapter 2, so you may see some changes being pushed to the site.

Preview pics of the first two panels:

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Easy perspective in Photoshop and GIMP

Here’s an example of a drawing I started tonight and then completed over a few hours.  This is a really wide opening scene for Saltwater Witch Chapter 2, with Kassandra’s school rolling into view and as you’ll see in the finished work, some interesting stuff going on beneath and around it.

I’m not going to do a perspective how to, or get into transparencies, layering, or any of the tools other than the brush tool (the one with the paint brush icon).  I’m posting this to show you how I do quick and easy perspective drawings using Photoshop or GIMP.  I’ll post some links to books on perspective at the end.

Tools
I assume everyone knows what Adobe Photoshop is.  Here’s Adobe’s site for those who want to learn more: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop.html
 

GIMP (http://www.gimp.org) is a really powerful, feature-competitive, and free drawing, visual design, image manipulation application for native Linux and Windows with a good solid version that runs under X on Mac OSX.  And it’s free.

I use Photoshop, but everything I’m going to explain works just as well and in the same way with GIMP.

Set up: layers and cursors
I usually create several layers for the drawing, one for the horizon line, one for the vertical lines, one for the lines that begin at the vanishing points, and maybe one for a reference image (I'm using my drawing from Saltwater Witch chapter 1 in the example).  Later I will create another to run some thicker lines over the structure, giving it shape.

Before I start any perspective drawing I change the cursor preferences to a standard (ugly in my opinion) “paint brush” cursor.  This helps me see where I’m clicking on the canvas.  I normally use the cursor that outlines the brush and shows its size, but for perspective drawing I’m using such a small brush, usually a few pixels wide, that I loose track of it. In photoshop I go under Display & Cursor preferences and change the Painting Cursor to “Standard”.  That’s it.

The Shift Key
It’s all in the shift key.  Here’s how this works.  Create a new canvas/image whatever your app calls it.  Make it fairly wide, at least 2000 pixels wide by a 1000 pixels high. (The example drawing I’m doing is 9500 wide, 2550 high).

So, here’s the whole trick in one step.  We’ll make a horizon line—one side of the drawing to the other.  Pick a nice spot on the left side about a quarter of the way up from the bottom, and then hold down the shift key, move your cursor to the other side of the drawing, and click. Release the shift key. Photoshop and GIMP will both connect two points every time you hold down the shift key.  With a couple tricks that I’ll get into next, that’s all there is to it. 

Vertical Lines
You probably want vertical lines for your perspective illustrations, but it’s not that easy with the shift-key method.  There are at least two ways to solve this.  I use both of them. In both Photoshop and GIMP (and other apps) the transparent layers have a nice checkerboard pattern, which will give an easy to follow vertical guide.  So, use the click-shift-click method to draw vertical lines. Another way is to use the Rectangle Tool and draw very narrow rectangles, basically two lines with an empty pixel between them. I use this method in the example drawing, but both work well.

Here's a screenshot with some of the structural lines drawn on a new layer:

Here's a much reduced final illustration, with a link to a sneak peak at Saltwater Witch Chapter 2--the leading scene with a few of the not quite finished panels:

Chapter 2 Sneak Peak:

There's a lot more to it!

This shows how the building was incorporated into the opening scene.

 

Info:
Perspective for Comic Book Artists by David Chelsea
http://www.amazon.com/Perspective-Comic-Book-Artists-Professional/dp/0823005674

The Art of Perspective: The Ultimate Guide for Artists in Every Medium by Phil Metzger
http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Perspective-Ultimate-Artists/dp/1581808550

Vanishing Point: Perspective for Comics from the Ground Up by Jason Cheeseman-Meyer
http://www.amazon.com/Vanishing-Point-Perspective-Comics-Ground/dp/1581809549

There are a bunch of Web and YouTube tutorials
https://www.google.com/search?q=perpsective+drawing

 

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Saltwater Witch Banners and Linking

I finished up a new format for Saltwater Witch last weekend--with new art, all new lettering.  It took me a couple weeks to complete, but I haven't had time to post about it until tonight. If you haven't checked it out yet, please do. I'd love to hear what you think. 

If you would like to link to to Saltwater Witch, I've created some banner images:

Right-click and "Save Image as..." and link back to http://www.saltwaterwitch/switch/  Or Here's the html if you just want to copy and paste it into your site:

Small

<p><a href="http://www.saltwaterwitch.com/switch"><img border="0" src="http://www.saltwaterwitch.com/switchbanner_155x60.png" alt="Saltwater Witch Graphic Novel" title="Saltwater Witch Graphic Novel" /></a></p>

Medium

<p><a href="http://www.saltwaterwitch.com/switch"><img border="0" src="http://www.saltwaterwitch.com/switchbanner_468x60.png" alt="Saltwater Witch Graphic Novel" title="Saltwater Witch Graphic Novel" /></a></p>

Large

<p><a href="http://www.saltwaterwitch.com/switch"><img border="0" src="http://www.saltwaterwitch.com/switchbanner_Large.png" alt="Saltwater Witch Graphic Novel" title="Saltwater Witch Graphic Novel" /></a></p>

Seaborn character study

I’m reworking a bunch of the Saltwater Witch graphical stuff—reformatting for printed pages and a bunch of drawing and painting to go along with it, and I came across one of my original character studies for the opening scene to my book Seaborn. Sort of an evil Kassandra. Okay, I did play around with it a bit, cleaned up some lines and brightened up the background.

 

The Wreath of Poseidon Art

I spent a few hours on this one today. Armies of the drowned dead, collecting heart-shaped stones on the beach. What do you think?

Unloading...

Not a Space Oddity but still right up there with other oddities!

Saltwater Witch is mentioned on The Comics Beat!  I’m in the most popular list on iBooks.  The first two chapters are free, and sure my work is listed as an oddity, but Anne Rice and I are the only one’s called out by name in the article (and in bold!).

The rest of the list consists of free oddities, like Chris Howard’s SALTWATER WITCH, interspersed with paid warhorses, like WALKING DEAD.

Sales chart: What's topping Apple's comics/GN iBookstore 
http://www.comicsbeat.com/2012/02/28/sales-chart-whats-topping-apples-comicsgn-ibookstore/

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Saltwater Witch Promo poster

I had a QR Code project going over the weekend for GBeCS--where my kids go to school.  It involved dropping the school logo into the center of the code and a bit of recoloring while maintaining enough of the code to be read.  From there I started goofing with my own QR code that will get viewers  to SaltwaterWitch.com (those with smart phones and a QR code reader app, which means just about everyone, right?).

Click for the full view!

Full piece

Okay, here's the full piece with the main character--the guy on the right, and the city and school in the background. 

Click for the full view

Wing Girl - character study

I did some sketching in my journal this morning, including this one of a character in an old idea for a story of mine--I was telling my son the story.  Scanned this one in tonight and did some shading in Art Rage.  I'm 35k words into my current book, the first in a new series.  It's a near-future thriller, and I've been saying I don't think I'll write fantasy again.  I've moved on--to the future. (I think I said those exact words several times at Boskone).  But you know how it is, a good story grabs you and won't let you go, demanding to be written. So, I'd put money on seeing this character in a book in the...near-future.

Sketch Progression in Art Rage on the iPad

I see a lot wrong with this one, but here it is anyway.  This is all done in Art Rage on the iPad.  Drawing today at lunch and saving off the work into a set of steps to show my progress--going from a really loose scribbly form and using new layers on top of it to build up the definition, working on the face, hands, background, and finally some light shadowing.

Click for the full view:

Kassandra at the Beach

Sketching in Art Rage on the iPad, about 3 hours. Click for the full version.

Captain's Mistake

I wrote "Captain's Mistake" for the first science fiction and fantasy writing workshop Jeffrey A. Carver and Craig Shaw Gardner hold every year in Boston.  Go UltimateSF! This was--and is still--the ice-breaking exercise for the class, writing a short piece about a character with some kind of superpower.

Here's KJ's story Surface Tension for the same exercise.  I will post more links as others post their stories.

 

Captain's Mistake

     

      Lieutenant Thedford's fingers slipped along the quarterdeck rail, the rain drumming on his shoulders, pasting his collar to the back of his neck.  He fought the urge to turn around, to look at the candle's glow coming through the panes of the captain's cabin and the thing—her—behind them.  He heard her singing, long sorrow-notes, like something sharp sliding slow through the storm and wind.  A sound at home in so much water.
      He bit down hard, and pushed his face into the storm, releasing his clenched teeth to shout, "Soundings, Mr. Rawlings!"  
      The wind whipped the words away, rain running into his mouth.  He ducked his head and squinted against a gust, one hand holding his hat, no sign of the longboat in the roil of black water pounding the starboard gun ports, no sign of anything beyond a stone's throw.
      Thedford let his gaze drift along the swells under him, and then shoved half his body over the rail, snapping brass buttons onto the deck.    
      "Where are my damned soundings!"
      His fingers were white on the oak, his voice thin, and his words were swallowed by the wind and rain.  
      The deck lurched and he took the rail harder in both hands.  The hum of the wind in the lines made him look up, rainwater rolling off his face.  A foremast spar had already caught Captain Evans, and he didn't want another coming down on him.  
      Thedford scanned the dark for the longboat and his shallows gang, and failed to notice Livesey shouting past him until the midshipman grabbed his shoulder and leaned into his ear.
      "We're before it, sir!  She's going into the cliffs if we don't claw off." 
      Thedford stuck his nose up indignantly.  "Cliffs?  We're a league off the cape!"  He shoved Livesey away.  It was shallows on the approach he'd been worried about—enough to send out Rawlings to measure the depth.  "What bloody cliffs?"  
      A bright bar of lightning flashed and Thedford's gaze darted up, chasing it across the sky.  
      He saw them ahead, towers of pointed stone, looming over the topgallants, shorter lumps of jagged ship killers breaking surf at their feet.
      "Holy god."  The next half second felt like an hour passing, stalling for air, blinking, and clearing his eyes before he got the orders passed his teeth.  "Lee anchor, Mr. Livesey, and bring her head into the wind!"
      The midshipman jumped the stairs, running fore, shouting orders to the bosuns and mates.  "Drop anchor.  When she falls to lee, cut us free."  He waved madly at the loose mainsail, his screaming going high to compete with the wind.
      Shadows and men huddling around the fore lines, a muddy wash of human motion in the darkness at the bow.
      Thedford felt her—the sea—take Delphi's hastily dropped offering.
      The anchor hooked an outcrop ten fathoms under her, and the Delphi, a beamy frigate with thirty guns, lunged into a deep trough, her bow pinned down, a pivot in the raging sea.  Her stern swung up a steep slope of water.  The deck tilted and Thedford, leaning back to keep his feet, found his chin level with the quarterdeck railing, looking over his shoes along the waist of the ship, the forecastle hidden in a tangle of lines and debris and storm darkness.  
      Half of Delphi's cloth was on the deck or in the water, her foremast stripped of yards when the top came crashing down, taking the three spars with it, down onto Captain Evans and half the fore mates.  
      Thedford's eyes lifted to the dim shapes of men scrambling aloft to work the mainsail and topsail, smears of motion and ghostly blocks of gray loose against the black sky.
      "Rotten fucking voyage," he grumbled. 
      One of the cook's boys climbed the stair, saluting comically, his voice squeaky as a bird's against the storm's roar.  "Lieutenant Thedford, sir!  Mr. Livesey sent me.  The longboat's lost.  Took water off the starboard quarter.  The sea took all hands but one.  Mr. Livesey has pulled Mr. Rawlings aboard."
      Thedford glared down at the little scoundrel, his stomach climbing into his throat as Delphi's stern dropped into the trough with the bow.  "With my bloody soundings I hope to god."  They wouldn't do him a bit of good, but it was the only thing he could think to say.
      The boy fled, nodding vigorously.
      Thedford looked up at another figure fighting the stairs, and puffed out his cheeks at one more nail in his coffin.  The surgeon, a thumb-streak of blood across his forehead, climbed to the quarter one handed, something sharp and metallic in the other, catching another shred of lightning with a glint of red.
      Thedford frowned at his approach and made an effort to put the surgeon off.  "Whole night's gone to hell, Michael.  The captain.  The thing in the captain's cabin.  Abysmal time for news."
      "Better now than spoil a finer moment, sir."
      Thedford sighed.  "Dead?"
      "Four, including the chaplain.  Billy's lost his leg."  He paused.  "Captain's dead, sir."  He pointed midships with the bone saw, blood and rain drooling off the teeth.  "The foresail spar caught him crosswise the pelvis, split him near in half."
      Thedford had the presence to pull off his hat and let the rain run through his thinning hair, off his nose and chin.  
      He nodded at the surgeon and jammed it back on his head as Livesey and—what was left of his soundings gang—Rawlings, salt-soaked to his bones, came up the stairs.  
      "Apologies, sir."  Rawlings half bowed.
      "The longboat?"
      "She's gone.  Granite, like rutting Satan's teeth, sir, come out of the waves in front of me.  Another right behind me, right through the boards.  Caught Harry Weel under the chin and took his head off."
      The Delphi rocked savagely and Rawlings choked off his report, grabbing madly for the rails.  
      Timber squealed.  The hull shuddered, shaking men from the rigging, and Lieutenant Thedford found himself skidding on his chest, face first across the quarter for the portside.  
      A shaft of stone fired out of the depths, drove through the sea's surface at an angle, catching Delphi midway through the upper deck between the main and fore.  An ugly splintery wound opened in the ship's side above the waterline.     
      Thedford crawled to his feet on the opposite side of the deck, his face bone white, brows arched and angry as if his orders hadn't been carried out.  "Get us away, Mr. Livesey!"  
      The midshipman jumped into action, then stopped at the stair, and gave Thedford a mutinous look.  "I think it'd be wise to let her go, sir."
      The lieutenant fixed his hat, face stiff with rage.  "Are you mad?  She's still sound.  I told you to get us away from these rocks.  Deeper water's all she needs.  I've timber and carpenters."
      Livesey stared back with a look that made it clear that he'd always considered the lieutenant a bit slow.  "Not the Delphi, sir, but her.  Captain's mistake."  He pointed at the candle's shuddery glow from the captain's cabin.  "Never should've hauled her aboard.  She don't belong above the waves.  Nothing but trouble—sea-trouble, if you know what I mean, sir—since we brought her into the air.  It's time to put her over the side, time to send her home."     
      

      

Boskone 49 Art Show Layout!

I worked on this over the weekend, and I believe this is it:

http://www.saltwaterwitch.com/Boskone49ArtShow

Bet you didn't know about...

The War of Jenkins' Ear 

Nine years of war and I've never heard of it? And with such a wild cool name?  How is that possible?

It was a "conflict between Great Britain and Spain that lasted from 1739 to 1748, with major operations largely ended by 1742. Its unusual name, coined by Thomas Carlyle in 1858, relates to Robert Jenkins, captain of a British merchant ship, who exhibited his severed ear in Parliament following the boarding of his vessel by Spanish coast guards in 1731."

Here's Wikipedia entry, have at it!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Jenkins%27_Ear

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