David Chelsea's Blog, page 50

"Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same"

Writer-director Madeleine Olnek's film was just screened at Sundance, and got this positive review in Variety. You can view the trailer for it here. However, years before it was a film, "Co-Dependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same" was a play performed at WOW Cafe in New York (and the same actress, Susan Ziegler, played the lead role). Coincidentally, I was just looking through a box of old drawings in search of something else and found the poster I drew for the theatrical version in 1992.

Letters To Amy

I'm one step closer to that comprehensive collection of decorated envelopes I have been vaguely planning- the other day my friend Amy Schoppert dropped by from Tacoma with a paper sack full of envelopes she saved from the years we sent each other snail letters (Amy is Amy Schoppert now; when I went to school with her she was Amy King, but for most of the years we corresponded she was Amy Lear. It's complicated.). I'm in the process of scanning them all, but here are a few favorites.

Most of the envelopes in this collection fall into categories I already described in the post about letters to my friend Geoff Seaman: pictures of lovers and friends like the above image of Amy with her baby daughter, self portraits like this red/blue anagyph of me in the shower, and celebrities like Susan Sarandon (seen here in Atlantic City).

Others in the batch stretch the limits of what the post office will deliver, like this hexagonal envelope showing the kitchen of my New York apartment in isometric projection.

Among my favorites is this one from 1985 which riffs on the stamp.

A few images from my wild youth are so explicit that I wonder how they got through the mail. I won't be posting the other side of THIS envelope.

Hawaiian Sketchbook

Screw Pine Fruit

Did you miss me? I was on vacation with my family in Hawaii last week, visiting my mother, who just got a degree in Linguistics from Hawaii Pacific University. I didn't bring along any work, but I did take a sketchbook:

Palm Trees

Chinese Hat Island (with face drawn by Ben).

Hotel Balcony With Pigeons

Anapest: The Christmas Story

Santa saves Christmas!

Here is the latest installment in my very irregularly appearing series Anapest, finished just in time for the season. Happy Holidays!

Sketching With Copic

Frame from Snow Angel

The first issue of the new print version of Dark Horse Presents won't appear until next April, but readers who would like an advance look at my contribution, a comics story about a superhero named Snow Angel, can check out this book. University of Oregon arts professor and Copic Marker product rep Kenneth O'Connell has put together Sketching With Copic, a nifty collection of art drawn with Copic materials. My own story qualifies because I used a combination of watercolor and Copic airbrush to achieve a lushly colored effect. You can preview the entire book online here, or purchase a copy here.

More Keyhole Previews

More preview frames from The Girl With The Keyhole Eyes, a comic which will appear next year in Dark Horse Presents. This story is a memoir which freely mixes fact and fiction, or maybe just fiction and fiction.

Minty Green Houses

I'm working on a project which is hush-hush for now, but I hope to be able to tell you about it soon. In the meantime, here is a post about one of my odder side projects, an effort to to photograph all of the Minty Green Houses Of Portland before they are painted over. Minty green has been my favorite house color for a long time, but I only started taking pictures this summer, posting the images to my Facebook page at a rate of about one a day.

When I started out, I had thought this particular green, which I regard as the quintessential Portland house color, was losing ground to more muted Martha Stewartish shades of sage and jade, but there are still plenty to be found. Almost any drive down a Portland side street will turn up a couple of examples, and I can usually fill a week's quota in an hour or so. I just passed the one hundred mark and I've decided to quit for a while, if only to give my Facebook friends a break- I have had a lot of positive comments, but some people express bafflement at my interest, and there have been a few comments along the lines of "You have WAY too much time on your hands".

I have posted large versions of ten of my favorite houses to Flickr, starting here. My preference is for frontal views without cars or trees in the way, and while some houses appear to be recently painted, minty green is such a currently unfashionable color that many are in a picturesque state of dilapidation, clearly in need of a paint job that is unlikely to be another shade of minty green.

Work In Progress: The Girl With The Keyhole Eyes

Preview frames from "The Girl With The Keyhole Eyes" a new version of my 24 Hour comic from April 2009, which will be published next year in Dark Horse Presents.

By the way, if anyone's curious, the winning bid on the auction for my Wonder Woman painting: :US $117.50

Wonder Woman Day Update

Wonder Woman Day V is tomorrow, but my contribution is already up for auction on Ebay, and racking up the big numbers- high bid as I write this is $62.11. Meanwhile, I am one of the artists quoted in an article on the "Good News" website Tonic.com about the event by John R. Platt .

Tea Party Trick Or Treat

Caricature for Inx