Chris Howard's Writing & Art

New direction and proposal

Here are the first few panels of something new. It's science fiction, not our world.  I'm playing with a sketchy/palette-knife-ey 70s SF book cover style, not a lot of line work, but with lots of color.  This world is very alive, the main character's a botanist.

I'm working on a proposal right now, with several pages, character studies, and the story. 

I've been thinking about layout, and I'm probably going to run the pages in two equal size blocks that will resize nicely for an iPhone or Droid app full screen.

What do you think? Am I heading in the right direction?  Click for full view.

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Time, there's only so much of it

Happy birthday, Saltwater Witch.

I had two very important reasons for starting—and for a year now—putting all this creative effort into my web comic Saltwater Witch, a graphic version of my novel of the same title.  One was to develop my graphic storytelling skills, and the other was to publicize and hopefully sell more copies of my book Seaborn. 

A year later, I have accomplished the first—well, you tell me.  I certainly think so.  To me, the quality difference between the first pages and the last is somewhere between staggering and light years.   

But I don't know if I've moved the meter at all on the second.  I'm sure there are a few readers who liked the comic and went out to buy Seaborn—THANK YOU for that, but in general I don't think putting 10 - 12 hours a week into drawing, painting and giving away Saltwater Witch made any noticeable difference in sales.

As fun as it is to paint and write, that's 10 - 12 hours I'm not spending on books and short stories—or on some other graphical project. (I have a couple in mind). That's time I'd like to spend on the normal painting I've always done—character and scene studies for my current writing projects.

Are you a Saltwater Witch reader?  I'd really like to hear from you, hear what you think of the story so far, anything! I know I get 25 – 50 visitors a day to the site, another hundred (according to Feedburner) subscribed to the feed, and another 30 - 40 / day on Drunk Duck web comics community, where it's done pretty well, given a bunch of comments, been featured, breaking into the TOP 10 comics. 

I'm not planning to stop, but to slow way down, and open up some time for other projects.

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Seaborn Armor

They're from the sea, so of course it's scaly armor.  Believe it or not, I made these for one purpose: pajamas.  Yes, my wife Alice wants pajamas like the armor Kassandra's wearing here, and so I looked around for a service that will make custom printed fabrics, and found SpoonFlower.com.  I just ordered a two yard tester with the "Kassandra Armor" pattern, but I have now painted and tiled four different kinds of Seaborn armor.

They also make nice tiled backgrounds for your Twitter profile, or any web page.

Click the images to see a full page of them tiles--looks really cool.

Kassandra's Armor:

House Dosianax Armor (the king's house):

House Rexenor Armor:

House Telkhines Armor (the old royal house)

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Victory Dance --pajama update

Last night I continued painting details into one of my favorite Saltwater Witch panels.  here's my latest. I've also created a "Kassandra Armor" fabric design at http://www.spoonflower.com with this pattern--click for full view:

Saltwater Witch - Victory Dance

I know, I know, I say it every week...but again, I really mean it this time: this is my favorite set of pages, I think the best work I've done so far.  I think it's also because I love painting the  underwater scenes--lots of contrast, dark blues--my favorite. Go check it out.

It's all here: Saltwater Witch.

Like them all, but my Favorite page is last:

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Saltwater Witch - in the deep blue sea

Painted the final two panels and posted the next set of pages for Saltwater Witch tonight.  I really wanted them done and up before The Villains Corner show tomorrow night. 

What do you think of this one?  Yeah, Ephoros was a little cramped inside the school.

Click for the full view.

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SWitch styles and 3 out of 5 done

Tweeted about this one last night, finished up around midnight.  I'm heading back into a sketchier style, and although I'll probably regret saying this, I think I have found the "look" for Saltwater Witch.  And it's this—below, a little bit stylized but mostly realistic, with the line art showing through—sometimes in bold lines, sometimes thin.  Keeping the watercolor look. My original thought was an oz-ish full color underwater, muted tones/sepia/black and white above the water.  I pretty much ditched this thirty pages back, going to full color on the surface as well, and I'll probably continue with color.

This is the last panel for the next page set--going up Friday afternoon before the 10PM show at The Villains Corner.  You going to listen in, participate? Please do!

I'd love to get some feedback on styles, or anything else.

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Face Painting

Put this together last night, a bit of How-to on what I do when drawing and painting faces.

Saltwater Witch Wallpaper

Took my favorite panel from the last set of pages, flipped it sideways, and sized it for your desktop.

Three sizes, right-click to download:

SaltwaterWitchWallpaper1280x800.jpg

SaltwaterWitchWallpaper1600x1200.jpg

SaltwaterWitchWallpaper1280x1024.jpg

Here's what it looks like--click to see the full 1280 x 800 version:

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Kitchen Witch with wings of red bell pepper and green onion stalks

I was thinking of painting something for Christmas, bright reds, something magical--and I hadn't had lunch yet.  So, I'm doodling with one of the panels I painted for Saltwater Witch chapter 8, and I came up with...Kitchen Witch - with wings of red bell pepper and green onion stalks.  A bit goofy, I know.

But, tell me, would you hang one in your kitchen? I printed a couple proofs and they came out nicely.  Should I have prints made for Christmas presents?

Click for the full view:

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