Chris Howard's Writing & Art

Saltwater Witch Chapter 7 is live!

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

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>