David Chelsea's Blog, page 49
March 1, 2011
Master Of My Domain Name
The Other David Chelsea
When I launched this website two and a half years ago (with the very able help of Brad Smith and his crew at Hot Pepper Studios) I naturally intended to put my name on it, only to find that the web address davidchelsea.com was already taken, by an Italian porn actor with the same name. Who knew? I had no choice but to settle for the more generic but available dchelsea.com, as well as a few variants like davidchelseainlove.com, and so it has been ever since. Well, good news- a few days ago my friend Jacob Mercy informed me that my namesake had relinquished his hold, and the domain name was once again available. One credit card payment to Godaddy.com later, the name was mine.
David Chelsea fans looking for my site can now skip Google and type my name directly in the address bar. What has become of the other David Chelsea is not known; but a Google search lists his "active years" as between 2002 and 2007, so presumably he is retired and has no further need of a website. My apologies to any Douglas, Donald, Daphne or Delia Chelseas out there, but I am hanging on to dchelsea.com as well; at this point the name is too firmly established to give up, and it's the one listed in the bio in my new book Extreme Perspective!
February 28, 2011
Can't Stop The Girl With The Keyhole Eyes
Three more frames from "The Girl With The Keyhole Eyes", an upcoming comics story for Dark Horse Presents.
February 15, 2011
Extreme Perspective Day!
Today, February 15th, 2011, is the official publication date for my new book Extreme Perspective! For Artists: Learn the Secrets of Curvilinear, Cylindrical, Fisheye, Isometric, and Other Amazing Systems that Will Make Your Drawings Pop Off the Page. Theoretically, you can walk into your nearest bookstore and buy a copy today. In the meantime, here's a review worth reading by Johanna Draper Carlson from the website Comics Worth Reading.
February 12, 2011
Prospettiva!
The publication date for Extreme Perspective!, my new book from Watson-Guptill, approaches. Presumably it will be in stores on or after February 15th, but in the meantime you can pre-order on Amazon. Meanwhile, my previous book Perspective! is now available in an Italian language edition from Turin publisher Vittorio Pavesio. I haven't seen a copy yet, but the preview page below appears on the publisher's website.
February 10, 2011
Letters To David
I've been doing a lot of posts lately about envelopes I've sent to friends over the years, and I thought it also might be fun to show some that I've received. All of these examples are from the 20th Century- I'm still in touch with all of these people, but the Internet Age has put an end to the snail letter.
When l shared an apartment in New York with my high school friend Tim Hill, another school friend, Will Spray, sent envelopes depicting us both. Will put a self-portrait on the back of one.
Another school friend penpal, Caitlin Maynard.
The above two letters are from yet another school friend, Norelle "Zook" Pratt.
A friend I knew in New York, Tasha Vinikow, kept up a correspondence after she married and moved to Washington.
For a while my most prolific correspondent was former college roommate Will Schroeder, whose envelopes overflow with cartoons as well as scribbled thoughts that must have come to him after he sealed the flap.
Hardly any of the professional artists I've exchanged letters with decorate their correspondence the way I do; one exception is Toronto cartoonist Colin Upton. In this series of postcards Colin twits my pretensions to being a perspective know-it-all.
February 9, 2011
Commercial Announcement!
Notice to potential commercial clients and other people who love storyboards: I have long had storyboard samples on this site, but I just added an extensive portfolio with more recent examples to the Comics Lifestyle website. You can view the album here. Feel free to visit often- I'll be adding more to it from time to time.
February 6, 2011
February 5, 2011
Isometric Exercises: Great Minds Think Alike
Detail from "Playtime" by Joe Matt
Following up on the recent post about my own illustration and comics drawn using isometric projection, here is a survey of work by other artists using isometric methods (not all of which conforms strictly to formula, but these guys are cartoonists, illustrators, photographers and fine artists, not architectural draftsmen).
The great Dutch artist M.C. Escher exploits the visual ambiguity inherent in isometric in this symmetrical but discordant composition. The left half of the scene is an overhead view, and the right half is seen from underneath. By the way, according to strict isometric construction, the buildings seen through the window at upper left should be at the same scale as the architecture in the foreground. Escher undoubtedly knew the rule, but chose to disregard it- or perhaps we are seeing a miniature through the window?
Here Escher combines a perspective top half shading imperceptibly into an isometric bottom half. The isometric cube pattern serving as floor tiles is a clever touch.
"Gasoline Alley" creator Frank King specialized in spectacular Sunday pages, including this backyard scene.
"Playtime" by Joe Matt
Autobiographical cartoonist Joe Matt usually documents his love life, but here he puts himself through an isometric obstacle course.
Illustration by Joost Swarte
Like Escher, Dutch cartoonist Joost Swarte bends the rules when he sees fit; the lines in this illustration follow isometric angles, but the figures seen out the window are at a smaller scale than the man at the table.
New Yorker cover by Chris Ware
"Jimmy Corrigan" cartoonist Chris Ware hardly ever uses perspective; instead he favors a variety of paraline drawing methods, including isometric.
Illustration by Scott Teplin
New York illustrator Scott Teplin mixes meticulous rendering with visual wit. This tidy apartment doubles as the letter 'F'.
Photograph by Scott McCloud
Photographs can have an isometric appearance, provided they are taken with a sufficiently powerful long-distance lens tipped at the right angle. This shot of Toronto by Understanding Comics author Scott McCloud would not look out of place in "The Sims".
January 31, 2011
Letters To Amy, Part Two
Here are more decorated envelopes sent to my friend Amy Schoppert over the years. In addition to the usual raunchy nudes and portraits of movie stars (Buster Keaton) and friends (manic East Village poet Matthew Courtney) this batch includes some pieces that push the envelope of what can be sent through the mail, like the round envelope up top and another on sandpaper (I remember it wasn't easy to get the stamp to stick to that one).
The photo collage is in 3-D- just cross your eyes until the duplicate images fuse.
Sometimes one doesn't have time to draw something from scratch: here I pasted in an early sketchbook version of a scene from my first book David Chelsea In Love.
This 6 inch wide envelope contains a bumper crop of tiny penciled faces. No need to guess at the date- the enlarged detail below shows 1980 Presidential candidates Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and third party guy John Anderson.
January 29, 2011
Isometric Exercises
Theater flyer, 1984
That hexagonal envelope in my recent post about letters to Amy got me to digging out other images I've done over the years in isometric projection. Wikipedia defines it as "a method for visually representing three-dimensional objects in two dimensions in technical and engineering drawings. It is an axonometric projection in which the three coordinate axes appear equally foreshortened and the angles between any two of them are 120 degrees".
Cube in Isometric Perspective
The cube illustration should make it clear. All three visible sides of the cube are equally foreshortened and the near corner where they meet exactly overlaps the opposite corner. Because the cube is viewed as if from an infinite distance, all parallel lines remain parallel throughout the picture and do not converge on a vanishing point.
Chinese Print
Isometric projection has a long history. Far Eastern art used a parallel line system approximating isometric until perspective was introduced from the West. Isometric has been popular in engineering and architectural drawing because measurements along each of the three major axes are at the same scale. More recently, isometric images turn up frequently in video games and online graphics. My new book Extreme Perspective! includes a chapter explaining how to draw isometrics as well as related parallel drawing systems.
Image from The Sims
(Sometimes the term "isometric" is applied in error. Rand McNally's Isometric Map of Manhattan is actually another kind of architectural drawing known as a plan oblique, or axonometric. The telltale difference is that the city streets meet at right angles and form rectangular blocks, not the rhomboidal ones you would see in a true isometric).
Not Isometric: The Map With The Buildings
I learned about isometric as part of studying perspective, and I use it on occasions when perspective is not required. I like the simple construction (no vanishing points) as well as its godlike point of view. This flyer for the theater company Bad Neighbors is an early example.
Frame from Extreme Perspective!
Isometric is a natural for comics- the insistent diagonal lines automatically tie the design of a page together, and because there is no perspective distortion at the edges, a single scene can be extended across multiple panels. It is a particular godsend in 24 Hour Comics where time is of the essence. The yard sale story with Mugg is a sequence from my second 24 Hour Comic, which is collected in the book 24 Hour Comic All-Stars. The all-isometric story Now Open The Box from 2008 is viewable on the Top Shelf website.
Frame from Extreme Perspective!
I have also used isometric for illustration assignments, such as this Modern Love piece for the New York Times (another yard sale!). The Mathemakitty illustration for Cricket Magazine was set up in CGI, and even though ease of construction was not a factor (I could have set my virtual camera up anywhere and simply traced the rendering) I chose to take an angle that resulted in an isometric view because it seemed "mathematical". By the way, I am proud of the extra care I took in this piece- in addition to details called for in the text, like "isosceles ears" and "triangle nose," I added a few mathematical touches of my own, like an Escher-style cat tessellation for the wallpaper, a Fibonacci spiraled tail, a Moebius strip of yarn, and a bell around the cat's neck with the silhouette of a bell curve.
Opening page from 24 Hour Comic
Page from Now Open The Box
Illustration for New York Times, 2005
"Mathematikitty" Illustration from Cricket Magazine
Mathematikitty detail
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