Chris Howard's Writing & Art

Cloud War...

Or what I really want to see when I use Google Earth.  I spent 5 - 6 hours on this one over the weekend, and did some detail work to finish up last night.

Click for the full view.

SaltwaterWitch.com Poster 2012

Kassandra with her scale armor coming apart and floating away.  I worked on this last night, finished up the type for some prints over lunch today.  It's actually a good sized piece, about 26 inches tall.  Check out the full-sized image, because it looks a bit fuzzy in the reduced size.

 

Undead Character Studies

I did one last night, another tonight--the guy with the sign, gearing up for a big battle with these guys in the next few chapters of Saltwater Witch.  Large crowds aren't easy to draw or paint, and I'm going to take some time to get this right.  I'll definitely be posting more from the army of the drowned dead.

Click for the full view.

Realistic Kassandra and Friends

Here's another approach: paint every panel, a more realistic Saltwater Witch for the next chapters. This is the opening Chapter 13 panel, Kassandra having a serious discussion with Jill and Nicole (not pictured--she's straight on, view over Kassandra's shoulder in the second panel). Takes a lot longer to paint one--and consequently a lot longer to paint an entire chapter of panels, but with painting I have many more advantages--for one I can have the characters be far more expressive, a hint of a smile, a huge range of emotion, not just happy, sad, enraged, determined, etc. Downside is that it could take me six months to complete a chapter.

Click for the full view:

Stylized Kassandra and friends

I'm playing with the idea of doing the next Saltwater Witch chapter in a different style--something like the following character studies.  In the first one, that's--right to left--Kassandra, Jill, and Nicole.  The second image was my first Kassandra study.

Kartoon

Listen to the sea...

It has some important things to say.  Painted this tonight, about four and a half hours.  I've had this idea planned out for a while, with sketching and different ways of communicating with the oceans. In one I had her using a long strand of seaweed, but I didn't like the way it was turning out, and went back to my original, listening in a seashell. Click the image for a slightly larger version.

Superhero Kass

...with backup from Ephoros.  Just goofing with some ideas.

DERELICT cover art

I spent about 6 hours last night working on the cover art for Derelict by LJ Cohen--Lisa. Here's it is!

Watercolors and salt

Playing with watercolors and salt-texturing, basically you sprinkle salt (I like coarse) over wetter areas of the piece and when it dries you scrape it off and it adds a cool rough blossoming texture.  I did a couple watercolor speed paints in Sepia and Prussian Blue, a bit of Viridian, and then poured on the salt.