Chris Howard's Blog, page 91
May 31, 2012
Just a little wavy sketching
I'm goofing with wave patterns. Here are a few:
Surf's up!
May 29, 2012
Warm up sketching
I spent a bunch of time over the weekend drawing, warming up for another go at Saltwater Witch--that's the graphical version. I'm currently in the middle of chapter 12, and now I mean to push things several chapters beyond that. There's some kick-ass stuff coming up, but I won't share anything before I post the pages. However I will share some scanned pages from my sketch book, mostly faces, heads, some poses.
Click on the image for the full view:
Chris
May 28, 2012
Saltwater Witch Goodreads Giveaway!
Saltwater Witch
by Chris Howard
Giveaway ends June 28, 2012.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
Enter to win
Full Description: Author giveaway of two signed copies of Saltwater Witch along with an illustration from the Saltwater Witch graphic novel. Kassandra comes from the sea, but she has no memory of saltwater, seagulls, or an incoming tide. She's never seen an ocean, never heard the thunder of surf. She's an exile, betrayed by her own family, sent as far from the sea as they could arrange—somewhere in the middle of Nebraska.
Enter to win one! It's free!
May 11, 2012
May 7, 2012
I love this!
"The Complete Seaborn (Saltwater Witch - Seaborn - Sea Throne) by Chris Howard, www.amazon.com/... Completely amazing series! This combines my love of the sea with my love of all things creepy!"
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Source: amazon.com via Margie on Pinterest
May 6, 2012
Kassandra speedpaint
About fifteen minutes goofing in ArtRage this morning. I ended up sketching five or six figures in motion for some upcoming comic pages. Here's one.
May 2, 2012
Art, Mimesis and Aristotle
Our word, mimic, is rooted in the ancient Greek term, mimesis, which has also entered the English language. From Wikipedia: Mimesis, the imitation of life or nature in the techniques and subject matter of art and literature
Aristotle demonstrated that mimesis is the characteristic that distinguishes art from craft--the fine arts from all other productive technologies. Mimesis is the skill the artist employs to produce a work of art, the representation of specific slices of reality--slices chosen and carefully selected by the artist. Aristotle develops this view of mimesis throughout the Poetics, and in typical fashion explores just about every aspect of its use in producing art.
Plato was probably the first to lead Aristotle down the path of esthetics--the study of art. As was often the case, Aristotle grasped the theme that his teacher introduced and explored it more thoroughly and beyond the scope of anything dreamt of by anyone at the Academy, many times in direct opposition to Platonic philosophy.
This is the general view--that Aristotle learned much of what he was to later develop from Plato and the philosophical talk at the Academy, a view that I accept only to a certain degree. There's little evidence that this was always the case, and in his study of art as well as biology there are other factors that probably influenced Aristotle. He was the son of the physician and--according to tradition--friend to King Amyntus of Macedon (Father to Philip, grandfather to Alexander the Great). Aristotle certainly had read and listened to performances of Homer and others long before leaving the North. From early childhood, Aristotle may have spent time at the Macedonian court in Pella, and it's known that Euripides was welcomed there generations before. With this connection and the possibility of a library of Euripidean works--and maybe some esthetic studies going on at Pella--one can at least speculate that Aristotle learned quite a bit about Greek drama prior to going to Athens.
April 29, 2012
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 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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April 17, 2012
New Maps and Charts page live on Saltwater Witch!
New Maps and Charts page live on Saltwater Witch!
Maps and Charts relating to the Seaborn, Kassandra, and her family. I will be posting more, but starting out with three items, a map from the House Rexenor archives, Kassandra's "hand drawn" map of the Nine-Cities, and Kassandra's family tree.
http://www.saltwaterwitch.com/switch/maps.php
