Official Home of Chris Howard

Official home of Chris Howard, author of Seaborn, Salvage, Saltwater Witch, and a bunch of other books, stories, and essays—published through Juno Books, Masque Books, Prime Books, Penguin, and others. I'm mainly a writer, but I also run a studio called Lykeion where I illustrate books and comics, paint cover art for books, working with individual authors and publishing houses.

Featured Books and Short Stories by Chris Howard

Astronomy

I focus primarily on narrowband deep sky imaging, nebulae and supernova remnants, some of it in RGB color, with the occasional dip into lunar and planetary photography. See my astro blog and Youtube channel.

Art

I work in digital, watercolors, ink, charcoals, and other traditional media. My art has appeared on dozens of book covers, art cards, interior illustrations for publishers, authors, and Kickstarter projects. You can also find my art in Shimmer, BuzzyMag, various tabletop RPGs, and on the pages of books, blogs, and other interesting places.

Mine!

TheMagicalTeachersofHarryPotter-DaniDickie

'Bent out of shape about aquaculture'--that's the title, a total of nine hours in ArtRage5. Basically, Kassandra hops aboard and an argument breaks out about sustainability and fishing. The young fisherman is passionately and aggressively shouting his case against it, while the old dude in the background is like, 'get me the boat hook. I'll end this right now'. They're both afraid; change can hurt. And, of course, both fishermen will lose this argument. I've been working on this painting for weeks, and the idea for several months, thinking about sustainable fisheries and how weird it is that we--essentially--hunt in the wild for fish. I don't think we do that for any other food--oh, shut up truffle enthusiasts in the back! We certainly do not hunt for anything else on the scale of the fishing fleets around the world. I mean, come on, we were farming vegetables and grains 10,000 years ago. There aren't plenty of fish in the sea, since we're pulling over 100 million tons of them per year out of the sea. It's about time we farmed all our fish, and took care of what remains of the world's wild fish populations.

Recon

The Collector

Auckland Allies 5: Memorial Museum by Mike Reeves-McMillan

Discworld character studies

Sergeant Angua of the Ankh Morpork City Watch. She’s one of my favorite characters in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. Delphine Angua von Überwald is the only werewolf in the Watch–that we know of.

Sergeant Detritus of the Ankh Morpork City Watch. Another one of my favorite Terry Pratchett characters. Detritus is a troll who’s pretty green as we follow him through the book Men at Arms, but he’s already a sergeant in Feet of Clay. One of the weapons he favors is a re-purposed siege crossbow named the “Piecemaker” that he’s modified to shoot multiple bolts at once.

I'm continuing the painting series of my favorite Discworld characters. I started drawing Cheery on Saturday, which would have been Terry Pratchett's 70th birthday. So, with a little sadness, I chose Corporal Cheery Littlebottom, a disgraced Alchemist who quickly becomes the forensics expert in the City Watch, and goes on to spark a gender revolution. We first meet Lance Constable Littlebottom in the book Feet of Clay. She's a new recruit in the Watch. She's originally from Überwald, and was in the Ankh-morpork Alchemist's Guild for a while, but was a bit careless with the volatile compounds and kicked out. She's like a one woman CSI department, so their loss is Ankh-morpork's gain. Even though she's not a main character in any of the books, Cheery is definitely one of my favorites.

We first meet Sam Vimes as a miserable Night Watch captain in Guards! Guards!, when he’s scrambling to keep his sanity as a lowly copper, when all he has are the scraps that remain after the guilds and nobles have divided up the wealth and decided what law and order will look like. As you’d expect, it’s been beaten into a shape that best suits them. He’s often drunk, unable to do his job, but if you stick with Vimes, you see that he knows the streets of his city like few others, he understands the motives of the Ankh-Morpork guilds and aristocracy like an insider, although he'll never be one. Above all, he’s just a good guy who has never had it easy, but who has learned something at every turn, from his humble beginnings to his marriage to the most powerful woman in the city. We can rely on his solid moral core, and even the need to “go spare” when it’s necessary. That’s Sir Samuel Vimes, Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, Duke of Ankh–also known by the lofty title, Blackboard Monitor.

Carrot Ironfoundersson was raised in a mine near Copperhead but ends up making the journey to the great city Ankh Morpork to join the Watch. Commander Vimes and a few others in the Watch possess a strict and streetwise morality, Carrot enters with an edition of The Laws and Ordinances of the Cities Ankh and Morpork--and he's ready to use. What makes Carrot unique--and so different from anyone else wielding a book of laws--is his ability to interpret a law and balance that against an examination of his own perspective and the motives of others to resolve any problems. It's this simple wisdom that usually carries him through the fray--that, and his joyful spirit. Carrot approaches his position in the Watch with such cheer and honesty that everyone around him has no choice but to get swept up in the sheer force of his upbeat will. His genuineness and optimism balances out and sometimes runs roughshod over the cynicism and distrust that's the baseline sentiment of the Ankh Morpoork City Watch.

Havelock Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork. Lord Vetinari is the definitive benevolent dictator. He's an honored graduate of the Guild of Assassins, rebel fighter against Homicidal Lord Winder, killer of tyrants, and friend (possibly more) of the vampire Lady Margolotta of Überwald. Pratchett kept his cards close with Vetinari, and all of us--readers and Ankh-Morpork citizens alike--remain in the dark about most of the details of Vetinari's life, habits, vulnerabilities. This may be one of the reasons Night Watch is one of my favorite Pratchett books--because we get to see Havelock when he's a young man, at school, learning the guild craft of assassination and camouflage. We get to see a side of the future patrician that we'll never see again, but after one read of Night Watch the character hints and pieces of his nature you pick up will follow you and fill in the shadows of every scene with Vetinari in every other book. He's one my favorite fictional characters.

A new one for my series of Terry Pratchett Discworld character studies: my favorite witch, and quite possibly my all-time favorite Terry Pratchett character, Esmerelda Weatherwax, 'Esme' as Nanny Ogg calls her, and 'Granny Weatherwax' at some point to those living around Ramtops. She is said to embody all three roles in a coven (maiden, mother, and crone), and although she's always pictured as the last, in the book Lords and Ladies, we get a glimpse of just how badass she was when she was younger. So for this study I wanted to paint her as she was in her mid-fifties, out for a stroll through a mountain meadow with her favorite swarm, at a time when she earned the name 'Aaoograha hoa' from the trolls (She Who Must Be Avoided).