Chris Howard's Writing & Art

[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:

 

Cover for Seaborn Omnibus

I designed and painted the new cover and art for all three books, Saltwater Witch, Seaborn, and Sea Throne, all under one cover.  (See links down left side of page).  See the full cover--front, back, and spine--at the bottom.

Click for the full view! 

CLICK FOR THE FULL VIEW:

Saltwater Witch Launch Contest

Saltwater Witch, Seaborn, and Sea Throne book covers:

I'm giving away 20 signed and numbered limited edition accordion folded prints (signed series of 100).  See the images of the contest art at the bottom of this post. Each comes with a signed info document (see the single green-shaded image below).
 
Here's how to play—it's easy, there are only two steps:
 
1. Do one of these:
 

• Buy a copy of Saltwater Witch, Seaborn or Sea Throne through any of the stores, services, or platforms linked below. 
• Post a review of Saltwater Witch, Seaborn or Sea Throne on any of the stores, services, or platforms linked below.
• Spread the word about any or all the books through your blog, Facebook, or site.

 
2. Let me know:
 
Send me an email or comment here, telling me which of the three things above you did and that you want to be entered into the drawing.  Just say, "I got Saltwater Witch for the Kindle. Enter me in the drawing for a print.", or "I reviewed Seaborn here..." (My email is [email protected])
 
I will draw five names a week for the next four weeks.
 
A few more rules:  you can enter multiple times. For instance, you can enter once for each book, once for each review, once for each spread-the-news post. Unless you win one of the prints, you remain in the pool for the next drawing.

Happy reading!

Saltwater Witch | Seaborn | Sea Throne

Saltwater Witch | Seaborn | Sea Throne

Saltwater Witch | Seaborn | Sea Throne

Saltwater Witch | Seaborn | Sea Throne

Seaborn (Juno Books Print Edition)
Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble
Mysterious Galaxy | Google Books
Alibris | BookFinder | WorldCat

 

Onward and downward!

Click the pics for the full view:

 

 

Okay, it's official... It's a trilogy

With Saltwater Witch (the novel) going live, it's now three books, "The Seaborn Trilogy". New cover art (see below), new book (Saltwater Witch), and an even newer (still in the works) omnibus edition with all three books in one, with transitional stories, journal entries, and other good oceany stuff.

How do you read?

Saltwater Witch | Seaborn | Sea Throne

Saltwater Witch | Seaborn | Sea Throne

Seaborn (Juno Books Print Edition)

Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble
Mysterious Galaxy | Google Books
Alibris | BookFinder | WorldCat

 

What do you think of the new covers?

 

F$%king Skeletons

They're undead--so they're tough to kill...again, and they fight dirty, pulling hair, getting all Stooges with eye-pokes and trying to hit you on the head with hammers.  And when do they attack you?  When you're trying to get your ass out of ice cold water.  Typical.

Definitely click the image to get the full view--with detail

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"Between Two Worlds"

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

Detail crop:

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Real Mermaids are into Black Flag

My first drawing in Sketchbook Pro--just installed it from the Mac app store.  I use SBP on the iPad, and love it.  Almost looks like a 19th Century advertisement for French Soap.

Click for the full view!

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Talking heads...they never bring good news

Just posted the latest page--page 228 (Page 211 in image file names, but that's because I have a bunch of page 12a and 12b's, and it messed up my nice consecutive order).

I'm really happy with this art.  Finally...finally! I'm getting to the point where I can draw and paint a whole page, then letter it in under four hours. I started last night, spent a couple hours, and I just spent another hour and a half this morning. 

I'm also playing with the lettering again.  I really thought it would be cool to have an upper/lower case font which sort of looked like Kassandra's own hand, but...what do I know?  It didn't turn out that well, wasn't nearly as readable as a any of the good comic fonts out there.  (Blambot's the best source I've seen for lettering and effects text)

Anyway, here's the latest page--or maybe you'd better go see it all at SaltwaterWitch.com

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Saltwater Witch page 209 is up!

Finished painting this last night, about three hours in Art Rage. Spent another hour lettering. Just posted the page on Saltwater Witch, Kassandra looking over the army that is going to be sent to kill her. They don't need to eat, they can't disobey, they fight until they're "dead", and there are a freakin' crapload of them.

209 pages...go read it all!

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Saltwater Witch Chapter 11 is up!

The first page of chapter 11, that is.  Hope you like it--and you're ready for more!

I'm continuing the art style, layout plan and page size (768x1024 pixels) from the first chapter. I still think the graphic novel would be so much better if I could repaint everything in between, but...time, time, time.

New to Saltwater Witch, or ready to read more?  Read it here.

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