Chris Howard's Writing & Art

The Wreath of Poseidon

This will be available soon! The Wreath of Poseidon is basically Saltwater Witch remixed by my daughter Chloe and I.  This version of the story is in 3rd person (Saltwater Witch is in 1st), and this version is a bit longer, contains more story, including some scenes cut from the original. We went back to the original 3rd person story I wrote in 2003 with some help from a nine-year-old Chloe (She's seventeen now).        

Seaborn Battle

I spent another four or five hours last night finishing up this one.  I'm still doing a bit of detail work, but this is pretty much done.

Click on the pic for the full view!

What I'm working on...

Here's a painting I'm working on, a really big complex thing with a bunch of figures--seaborn and orcas--engaged in underwater combat.  Still a ways to go, but here's a detail and a much reduced version of where things stand at the moment. So far about twenty hours of work, mostly in Sketchbook Pro and Art Rage, but I've also incorporated sketches from Brushes and Sketchbook on my iPad.  I'm about halfway done.  So much detail in this one.

Detail:

Saltwater Witch Comic in ePub

Chapter 1 of Saltwater Witch is now available in ePub format!  Open in it iBooks, Nook, Adobe, Stanza, or any of the ePub readers out there. I will be following up with the rest of the available chapters--1 through 11 with a bit of 12.

 Saltwater Witch Chapter 1   (7.5 MB)

 

iPhone app for Seaborn

Finally. It's months late but I submitted it to iTunes Sunday night, and expect to see it in the app store soon—within the next couple weeks. I'll keep you posted. 

This is pretty much a straight port of the Seaborn iPad app to iPhone.  The main difference is the "Art Portfolio", which points to my online portfolio. (One collection to maintain and it's always up to date).

I was halfway through development of a Seaborn "universal app" which covers iPads, iPhones, iPod Touches, but dropped that path a couple months back and moved to two separate apps because there are different features and presentation methods--some of them significant--I will be adding for each platform.  (e.g., I may move the iPhone version to the Cocos2D framework and include games and other cool things).

Seaborn iPad app

233 pages of Saltwater Witch are back up

With updated pages! I put these back up last night but forgot to tell anyone. I haven't put up the new pages I'm working on--the rest of chapter 12, but you should notice some updates through the first couple chapters.  I'm still a bit embarrassed about a lot of the art and lettering in chapters 2 through 8, and I'm working on new panels for 12, and redrawing existing pages as I get time.

See Saltwater Witch chapters 1 - 11 + the first page of chapter 12 here.

Here's a new page from chapter 2 followed by the old page--I just realized Kassandra is pointing the wrong way in the old page.  The windows should be to her right:

Mermaid drawing tutorial

I spent a few hours putting together a step by step guide to drawing mermaids. I did this for the Mermaids Group on deviantArt. Mermaids have become more popular than ever--there's even a "World Mermaid Awards" con in Las Vegas next month.

I did all the art on the iPad in the Brushes app, using the Pogo stylus. One of the cool features of Brushes is the ability to generate a video of every pen and brush stroke, so you can show off any painting from beginning to end.  I posted the video on Youtube here.

Here's the finished piece (warning: breasts)

Here's the video generated by the Brushes app:

Here's the Step-by-Step tutorial--click for the full view (very long)

 

 

Tarot Wallpaper

I had this strong feeling you were looking for tarot card themed wallpaper for your desktop. Here you go. This is the art for my latest book Teller, which will officially be out next month.  Three different sizes to choose from, but one of them should work for just about any aspect ratio you're running.

Click the one that fits your sceen best--then save it and set it as your wallpaper.

The first one is 1280x960 and obviously works well for 1024x768 and other resolutions with a similar ratio. The second one, 1280x768, is for wider screens, and the last one if for tablets (portrait, 768x1024)

 

TELLER Final Cover Design

Sorry for the number of posts and subtle variations on this one. I think this is it!  The book launch is on schedule for the end of the month.  Stay tuned!

Holiday over...

Check out the updated first chapter one of Saltwater Witch here: http://www.saltwaterwitch.com/switch

More on the way!