Chris Howard's Writing & Art

Mermaids on the iPhone

Finished up painting another mermaid this morning--in the Brushes app on my iPhone.  This one's a little manga-ish, and have I mentioned how much I love the layering features in Brushes? I don't think I'd be able to do shading anywhere near as subtle without layers. 

Are you a Brushes user?  I'm wondering how many use a stylus?  I bought one, used it for a couple paintings, about twenty minutes and have never picked it up again.  I'm doing all of these drawings, sketches, paintings with my fingers.  Took me a bit to get it down, but I use the tools--brushes sizes, textures, undo, layers so much that I just couldn't work with the stylus--holding it and constantly shifting to change brushes, transparency, paint colors--all of this is so much easier with your fingers than with the stylus.

Here's the video:

Mermaid

I haven't painted a traditional mermaid in a long time.  I've penciled and painted bunches of "people from the sea," but my Seaborn don't have tails, in fact they make fun of the mermaid myths.  I actually started thinking about this in May for a contest running on dA that ended in June.  But I was finishing up my last book, and never got around to it.

I wanted a fairly realistic mermaid with jewelry, rings in her hair, maybe some cool tattoos, and clothes of course would be for those freaks who breathe air.  I wanted a mermaid who can kick Waterhouse's mermaid's scaly butt--with her tail. I wanted a mermaid who was stronger, edgier and maybe a little tragic, none of that combing long tresses and singing on the rocks--not unless it was clear that it's just a ploy to lure sailors to their dooms. Finally got around to completing the painting this morning.

A lot of this painting is about the light, bold white light coming from above.  As usual, I'm still tweaking, but it's pretty much done.  Hope you like.  Love to hear what you think.

So, here's the full work and some detail crops.  Click them for the full view.

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Cloud Goddess

Painted this one with the Brushes app on my iPhone while at the Dentist this morning--started sketching in the waiting room. 

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Mermaid on my iPhone (Illustration Friday: drifting)

Painted this in Brushes on the iPhone over lunch today, a little over an hour, a lot of save and duplicates, but I like the way this ended up.  I was planning to make the water a bit rougher, a little stormy, but...I ran out of time.

 
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BOSKONE

Had a great time at Boskone--my first Boskone on some panels, doing a reading and a signing.  I had my reading Friday night at 10:30--I read chapter 1 from Sea Throne to an audience of five.  Before that I took in the Graphic Novel (& comic) panel with Christopher Golden, John Langan, Stefan Petrucha, Alisa Kwitney Sheckley, Rene Walling.  Also caught the YA panel with Chris Golden, who just seems like a cool guy who's done a lot of cool stuff--comics, ya, mainstream fantasy, horror, you name it. 

Then it was off to the Uncanny Valley panel on the acceptence of human-like robots with Muriel Hykes, Robert Katz, Jim Kelly, Paul Melko, Allen Steele, and Charles Stross.  Stross I think beat everyone else at good barbed make-you-think comments.  Paul Melko (I started Walls of the Universe last Thursday) added humor--among other things--to an already fading Friday evening (Friday night seemed a bit subdued to me, as if everyone was tired from traveling, long day, etc.  I know I'd been working all day, and left right for the con, didn't get home until after midnight).

Saturday started early.  I had a 10 AM panel on Men Writing Women--it was me, Paul Melko, Joshua B. Palmatier, Alisa Kwitney Sheckley, and Joel Shepherd, with Paul Melko moderating.  (I'm considering this my first real con panel appearance. I've been on a panel at UMass Lowell, done a couple readings and signings--Pandemonium Books and Water Street Books, but this Boskone is my first con as a full panelist.  Really fun, BTW, even for us Introverts).  Good questions on gender behavior, how to write as a female character--and whether the writer even thinks explicitly in those terms while writing.  Skott and I spent the next hour talking to Alisa Kwitney Sheckley and Joel Shepherd (cool SF and fantasy writer from Australia in the US on an educational project with our Congress).   Alisa (of Vertigo where she worked on Sandman--how cool is that!--and a bunch of other stuff) has a novel coming out next month: The Better to Hold You. 

I was on the New Marketing Technologies panel at 12:00 talking about ebooks, podcasting web comics, creative commons licensing, and all the ways authors can sell their work and themselves using all the new tech out there, with Darlene Marshall, me, James Patrick Kelly, Dani Kollin, Eytan Kollin, Shane Tourtellotte.  I'll take this moment to say that Darlene Marshall is one of the best moderators around--that and all the insight and experience she brought to this particular panel.  Jim Kelly had a lot to say on this one--obviously--from ebooks to podcasting.  Eytan and Dani Kollin, brothers and collaborative authors of the forthcoming The Unincorporated Man, had us laughing, and jumped in with a wealth of web marketing and book launch experience.  (I'm really sorry I missed their Literary Beer, although I got a card from Dani just before that).  Looking forward to reading their first novel.

I did get to Jeff Carver's literary beer, crowded but a lot of good talk around the table, on marketing and publishing. Jeff also came to my reading, Friday night, which was very cool--thanks, Jeff!

Great art show this year.  I think having Irene Gallo and Stephen Martiniere as GoHs really brought out the artists.  Dan Dos Santos, Donato Giancola, a bunch of others were all there.

At 3:00 PM I took in the Sketch to Finish panel with Dave Seeley, Dan Dos Santos, Donato Giancola, and Stephen Martiniere.  This was an AMAZING panel, each artist running through and explaining progressive steps in their work.  I've seen some of these presentations and videos online (probably linked from Irene Gallo's blog), but it was extra cool to have the artists there and filling in the details.  I picked up a lot in this panel and the art panel I was on Sunday--things like using many more layers in Photoshop than I do now--Stephen Martiniere said he regularly used 50 and sometimes as many as a 100!  I don't think I've ever done any digital work with more than twenty layers--and I thought that was excessive.  I also loved Stephen's use of highlighting and methods for building a scene. 

Sunday morning, bright an early, I was on the Clothing in SF and Fantasy Art panel with Alan F. Beck, Elaine Isaak, Margaret Organ-Kean, Ruth Sanderson.  I think what made this one especially cool were the differences we brought to the panel.  A couple of us were mainstream F&SF authors (me and Elaine Isaak), with three pro artists.  I did some research and note taking before the panel.  I thought this was going to be a tough one--turned out to be fun and enlightening. Not sure what the others throught of me advocating for natural origins in clothing.  (With my own characters in Seaborn, I drew from marine life, fish scales, crab carapace armor, etc).

At noon, I was on another art panel, this time with the incomparable Stephen Martiniere, Dave Seeley and Alan Beck.  This one had the unfortunate title, Drawing with a Mouse, but ended up as an overview of digital art, with advantages and disadvantages of the medium.  Good questions in this one as well, even if it did occasionally plummet into strange technology and storage solutions discussions.  For me, what was really weird was being on the panel with Irene Gallo in the audience.  Yeah, I'm still stunned--yes, shocked and stunned. 

Ended Boskone with a book signing at 2:00 PM with Ann Tonsor Zeddies.  I signed a couple copies of Seaborn, and spent the rest of the time talking about web comics, art, and Japan.

Great con, missed a lot of authors this year.  Hoping Boskone draws them all back next.  (I know several people were sick for this one, so hoping we've cured all disease for Boskone 47!)
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A question about reading and filtering

I'm just thinking at the keyboard, and I'll say it: I think one of the most gratifying things for a writer is a reader who understands your characters.

I've been thinking about how people read books, and how we, in some cases, see the words, the characters, tropes, through our SF lenses or through our medieval fantasy spectacles.  I think contemporary fantasy has had some trouble getting a footing--even with a third of the shelf space that now seems to be devoted to urban, contemporary fantasy, steampunk, and other forms of our genre that do not contain a single elf and aren't set in Medieval Europe (or similar world).

When I sent the first three chapters of Seaborn around to the workshop--at the time I was in the writing workshop Jeff Carver and Craig Shaw Gardner run every year here in Boston--nearly everyone thought it was SF.  And when I said, "no, I'm writing fantasy," they said, "look, here's a woman scuba diving--how can you have scuba gear in a fantasy novel?"

You can...

I think it just makes reading it a little harder, and don't expect everyone who browses the F&SF shelves to get what you're trying to do.

If you're using tropes--common themes--like vampires, summoning demons, pirates, dragons, witches lighting candles, sorcerers chanting--all of which I love BTW (everyone knows I have a total thing for witches and demons), you're writing with some cultural (or popular) momentum.  When you write about something a little off the genre map (in my case, humans who breathe underwater) or types and settings that just don't sit well with a lot of people, I think it makes everything--describing, categorizing, shelving, marketing your story, characters, and their motives that much more difficult.

Part of me wants to think that SF readers are happier--than fantasy readers--to accept something way off the mark, but I'm not sure about this.  And I'm even less sure about SF readers when they read fantasy.

What do you think?

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Andromache - journal sketch

Sketched this last night, pencil in my journal.  I was planning to do some character studies of Andromache, but ended up running with a flatter stylized portrait. Click for the full view. 

Seaborn review

Fallen Angel reviews SEABORN.  Good stuff, including the need to take notes: "...There is a lot going on in this book, that at times made me feel like I needed to take notes just to keep everything straight ..."  And I'm glad my gender ambiguity plan is a success.  The reviewer refers to me as "Ms. Howard." 

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Saltwater Witch - first five pages

Did some painting and repainting today, and then spent an hour in layout mode, arranging the first five pages of Saltwater Witch, using a separate layer for each element, art, overlaps, balloons, text.  This has been really fun.  There are a few language problems, and some of the panels aren't finished, but here they are anyway. 

Click to see the full sized images:

...and couple pages from chapter 3, some crazy stuff going on here:

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A Halloween Treat from Juno Books

Five frightening classic tales--all written by women--that should send a shiver or two down your spine.

FIVE CLASSIC GHOST STORIES: A HALLOWEEN TREAT FROM JUNO BOOKS includes "Let Loose" by Mary Cholmondeley (1890), "The Striding-Place" by Gertrude Atherton (1896), "The Lost Ghost" by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1903), "Kerfol" by Edith Wharton (1916) and "Spunk" by Zora Neale Hurston (1925).

Download now: http://www.juno-books.com/Juno_ghost_stories.pdf

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