Chris Howard's Writing & Art

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Chris Howard's Writing & Art

 

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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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!

Cephalopod Awareness Day, it's right around the corner

Wait, there aren't any corners in a Cephalopod's world, right?  Cephalopod Awareness Day is on the 8th of October, of course.  Here's my contribution--take and post at will. 

Sigh...I remember my first Cephalopod Awareness Day like it was yesterday... Actually it was only a few years ago--2007. I think I heard about it first on Pharyngula.

 

Favorite Monsters

Do you have favorite characters who are monsters?  One of my most likable characters is Ephoros from Saltwater Witch.  I don't want to give anything away but I will say that I get more readers asking me about Ephoros than almost any other character.

I'm slowly making my way through the panels and art for Saltwater Witch chapter 2, redrawing and re-lettering everything.  It's going to be good.  If you haven't seen chapter 1 yet, here it is:

http://www.saltwaterwitch.com/switch

And here's Ephoros:

[illustration] Friday Wallpaper

This week's Illustration Friday topic is "shadows". I painted this one of a pensive Kassandra from my book Seaborn for the background of my web site SaltwaterWitch.com, but it makes a great background for any desktop. I've cropped it and reduced it to a variety of standard resolutions for a variety of devices.

Pick yours, download it, and set it as your wallerpaper!

Links below the image to sizes.

1600x1200
Seaborn-Wallpaper-1600x1200.jpg

1280x768
Seaborn-Wallpaper-1280x768.jpg

1280x960
Seaborn-Wallpaper-1280x960.jpg

1024x768
Seaborn-Wallpaper-1024x768.jpg

768x1024 (Portrait - iPad/tablet)
Seaborn-Wallpaper-768x1024.jpg

320x480 (Portrait - Phone)
Seaborn-Wallpaper-320x480.jpg

Here's the 320x480 image:

 

"Between Two Worlds"

Charcoal, watercolor pencils and watercolors on Birch plywood, 13 x 24 in.

Detail crop:

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