David Chelsea's Blog, page 6

Modern Love Podcast: “Ah, To Be Old, Male, and Single.”

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Another of my New York Times illustrations has been repurposed for the Modern Love Podcast. From the website:

“Here’s a problem most of us never have: So many people want to date you — and send you baked goods — that you have to turn them away.

Well, that did not happen to Amy Cohen. But it did happen to her father. Amy writes about the difference between her father’s dating life and her own in her essay, “Ah, To Be Old, Male, and Single.”

David Chelsea is reading: Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey

by Mark Dery

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It’s read by Natasha Lyonne. She’s the star and co-creator of the Netflix original show “Russian Doll.””

[image error] Natasha Lyonne

Listen to the podcast here

Read the original essay.

ARE YOU BEING WATCHED? The Promo

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Just a heads-up that I’ve posted an Adobe After Effects video promoting my webcomic ARE YOU BEING WATCHED?- which ran from 2015 to 2017, and is still viewable on Patreon (and which is soon to become my next book from Dark Horse)- on YouTube and Patreon. The video takes the form of credits sequences for imaginary Reality TV shows such as KIBBLE KITCHEN and CLOSET CLEANSE, which appear as part of the story. I’ll be posting digital art created for the video in the coming weeks.

Watch the video on YouTube

Watch the video on Patreon

Read ARE YOU BEING WATCHED? on Patreon

Round Black Glasses: The Morph

The other day I blogged about the first Adobe After Effects project I posted to YouTube, a morph video of my son Ben’s Presidential portraits. Today, it’s another morph video, a survey of famous Round Black Glasses wearers both from history and popular culture, including Harold Lloyd, David Hockney, Sigmund Freud, Barton Fink, Mr. Peabody and Sherman, Edna Mode, Poindexter, Simon Chipmunk, and MTV cartoon star Daria. The video can be seen here.

David Chelsea is watching: Ruby Sparks

starring Zoe Kazan

I created this video primarily as a way of advertising my chops in After Effects, but also as a way of directing eyeballs to my webcomic ROUND BLACK GLASSES, which I drew as a 24 Hour Comic in October 2017, and which I posted on Patreon and Tumblr.

Here, I’ll save you the trouble of typing in the link. Just click here! If the comic moves you, please consider signing up as a sponsor on my Patreon page to support the work.

Ben also collaborated on this video- he composed the (awesome) score!

Coming soon: an After Effects project with no morphing!

Happy Presidents Day! Ben’s Presidents Morph In Adobe After Effects

I haven’t blogged about this very much, but one of my main activities this the past year has been learning to do motion graphics in the software program Adobe After Effects. It’s been a steep learning curve, but my efforts are beginning to bear fruit. This week, I posted two short videos to YouTube, both of them morph sequences created in After Effects. The first is a collaboration with my son Ben.

David Chelsea is reading: A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel

by Amor Towles

My son Ben began an ambitious painting project thirteen years ago at the age of nine in a school art class; when the teacher gave him a choice of several pictures to copy, Ben picked a portrait of George Washington, which he copied in black and white. When he took the same class a year later he naturally chose to paint the second President, John Adams, and a few months after that he decided to attempt a complete series of Presidential portraits, all in black and white like the first one. Ben has been at it intermittently ever since, and he is now up to the is up to the 27th president, William Howard Taft. As you can see, he’s gained a lot of proficiency since George Washington.

I decided to make Ben’s Presidents the basis for a morphing project in After Effects, scoring it to a music box rendition of The Stars And Stripes Forever. I have posted the results on YouTube here. I’m hoping this will lead to actual commissions. If, say, YOUR son has painted a series of Presidential portraits, I will be happy to turn them into a video morph.

Just for fun, here are a couple of in-between stages:

You can view Ben’s Presidential series here.

ESQUIRE, My Grandfather, And Me

David Chelsea is reading: A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel

by Amor Towles

My grandfather, Danny C. Marquez, was born in the Philippines and came to the United States to go to college in the 1930s. He got his engineering degree at The School Of Mines in Socorro, New Mexico, where he met and married my grandmother, Aurora Vigil, a local school teacher.

Danny C. Marquez in the 1930s

After graduation, he and my grandmother settled in Portland, where he worked as an engineer on the construction of Bonneville Dam. He served in the Navy during World War II in Washington DC, and after the War in the Philippines. I still have his Navy-issued watch, which has a steel band because leather disintegrates in the humid climate of the Philippines.

My grandfather’s wartime watch

After returning to the States, my grandfather spent the rest of his career at Bonneville Power Administration. After retirement, he lived another thirty years before dying at age 88 in 1995, only a week after my wife and I had moved to Portland. As career paths go, my grandfather’s was pretty straight and narrow. However, he did have…. other ambitions. Going through his papers after he died, my mother ran across an envelope addressed to my grandfather from ESQUIRE Magazine, dated 1937, which would have been around the time he began working for Bonneville. It contained three full page cartoons in color, along with a rejection letter from the editors.

ESQUIRE Magazine, 1937

At a distance of 82 years, it is a little hard to see the intended humor in these, except for the mermaid one- that I KIND of get. To my professional eye, they look competently drawn. If I were a cartoon editor, I might have come to the same decision, but I would have encouraged this promising beginner to keep trying.

My grandfather appears to have given up on the gag cartoon market after his first attempt, but his grandson was able to fulfill this particular ambition forty years later. My first artwork to appear in a national publication was this cartoon for CHIC Magazine (Larry Flynt’s glossier, up-scale companion mag to HUSTLER) in 1977:

However, I have had no better luck than he did with ESQUIRE. I have tried to submit cartoons to the current cartoon editor at Esquire, but he has not replied to any of my emails. Perhaps I would do better to resubmit my grandfather’s cartoons.

Engineering and art seem to alternate as life paths in my family. My mother became a mosaic artist, then a graphic designer, I became an illustrator/cartoonist, while today my daughter Rebecca is following in her great-grandfather Danny’s footsteps, majoring in engineering at UCLA.

I have posted larger versions of my grandfather’s cartoons on my Patreon page. Here are the links:

Mermaid

Silk

Coal

American Bystander #9 Is Here!

The latest issue of AMERICAN BYSTANDER has just recently arrived. Considering the figure on the cover by Rick Geary, this issue may have been SLIGHTLY delayed in getting to me, but hey, who says Santa Claus is just for Christmas? This issue continues the high standards of hilarity the fledgling humor magazine has set for itself, with contributions by mainstays Shannon Wheeler, Roz Chast, Drew Friedman, S. Gross, Ron Barrett, Brian McConnachie, and Peter Kuper, a cartoon by newcomer Lila Ash, and multiple contributions by yours truly.

David Chelsea is reading: The Goat Getters

by Eddie Campbell

This issue marks my sort-of debut as a published poet (it depends on if you count the rhymed comics that have occasionally seen print as “poetry”). However, this case is unambiguous- my haiku appears without an illustration of any kind, and it doesn’t even rhyme!:

Also in this issue, another set of rhymed comics, some snarky “clerihews” composed about entertainment celebrities:

These clerihews were culled from a series I posted to my Patreon page a while back. This blog post gives you the lowdown.

And, as usual, I have a chance to illustrate another writer’s humor piece, in this case a reminiscence of Thanksgiving in 1971 by Dave Hanson. For this illustration I combined a pencil drawing of baby goats on coquille board with a watercolor painting, which editor/designer Michael Gerber painstakingly worked the type around:

Think they don’t make magazines like this anymore? Well actually, they do. Or they will, if they can build a subscription base. It’s impossible to sell advertising in it for a million reasons, so AMERICAN BYSTANDER sells subscriptions to pay the writers and artists. Check it out here.

Or, just order an issue. Every little bit helps!

RIP, Carol Channing

Caricature for the New York Observer, year unknown

Don’t ask. I have no idea.

Belated RIP, Joe Erceg

Joe’s House. Acrylic on world globe by David Chelsea, 2008. Not for sale. Photo by Tom Lechner. tomlechner.com/

2018 is winding down, and I have some unfinished business. The graphic designer Joe Erceg, a longtime friend, died this past June. From the Oregonian obituary:

David Chelsea is reading: Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys

by Michael Collins

Joe Erceg

“Portland native and award winning graphic designer, Joseph Erceg, died in his home June 16, 2018 at the age of 84.

Born in 1933, a descendant of Croatian immigrants, he was the eighth of nine children, with seven older sisters and one younger brother who all grew up in North Portland.

Joe had a talent for baseball and pitched for Central Catholic High School and continued pitching in college for the University of Portland where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He then served in the Army, after his discharge he used the GI Bill to pay tuition at the Museum Art School (now PNCA), where he later taught. His interest in automobile design is what led him to his discovery of graphic design which launched a long illustrious career in the field.

Joe was a long time fixture of the Portland design community. His refined sense of shape and structure resulted in iconic logos for many companies including Columbia Sportswear and AirWest Airlines (before its purchase by Howard Hughes). In addition, his graphic work was seen and honored in a myriad of branding campaigns, one of which was for the original Lloyd Center, Portland’s first, large shopping mall, built in 1960. Joe’s discriminating, aesthetically imaginative design for the University of Portland Alumni Magazine, won numerous national awards. Never one to confine his work, he also created visually distinctive books for The Collins Companies, The Murdock Charitable Trust, and Walsh Construction, among others.

He was an avid photographer and part of Minor White’s workshops in the late 50s and early 60s. With an eye for the unusual, Joe was a collector of art, neon signs and an assortment of curious and eccentric pieces. The last 20 years of his life, he created inventive assemblage box art in the style of Joseph Cornell, Arman and Edward Kienholz.

Joe was married to Elsa Warnick from 1968 to 1984. He is survived by his sons, Matt and Milan Erceg, Milan’s wife, Shawna and Joe’s grandson, Easton; sisters, Millie, Mary, Rose, Helen, Virginia, Genevieve; and brother, Donald.”

Longtime Portlanders may remember the giant butterfly painting designed by Joe which once covered the side of the Fleischner Building in Old Town:

My own history with Joe predates my birth. My father, Richard Celsi, was born the same day as Joe, December 17th, 1933, and they went through high school, college and the Army together. When my sisters and I were young, Joe and his brother Donald were “Uncle Joe” and “Uncle Donald”, and of course my family attended Joe’s wedding to Elsa Warnick in 1968. Joe’s younger son Milan was my assistant on the first perspective book, and years later my daughter Rebecca and I appeared in Milan’s debut film as director, the documentary 24 HOUR COMIC.

Here is Joe’s birth announcement from THE OREGONIAN. Evidently his parents had second thoughts after the paper appeared, because his name is listed as “Matt”. Joe would later name his first son Matt.

Photo of young David by Joe Erceg

The photograph of me and the one below of my mother were taken about the same time in the early 1960s.

Lolita Celsi, early 1960s. Photograph by Joe Erceg.

I later used the one of my mother as the basis for an illustration for the New York Times Modern Love column:

Modern Love Illustration for the New York Times.

I also used this photo as the basis for a decorated envelope sent to my mother when she was getting her ESL degree in Hawaii:

As a graphic designer, Joe gave me several illustration commissions, and he eventually commissioned the largest and most elaborate spherical painting I have done to date, a view of the first floor of his house showcasing his various collections, on a large metal globe. For reference, I shot digital photographs, rotating the camera around to capture all aspects of the scene, while trying to keep the lens as much as possible at a fixed central point. I then loaded all the photographs into Lightwave, a 3D animation program, where I assembled them into a virtual collage approximating the shape of a sphere. Since Joe wanted to show multiple rooms in one image, I adopted the M.C. Escherish device of combining three different views, with gravity running in three directions.

Here is an equirectangular projection of the entire painting:

Joe provided the canvas, a large metal sphere that was originally the support for a world globe jigsaw puzzle. Work on it took over two years, in between freelance deadlines. To keep the overall task manageable, I proceeded as if filling in a jigsaw puzzle, painting the pictures on the wall first, then the windows, then the plants and furniture, and finally the walls and ceilings. To save time setting the globe up every time I wanted to work on it, I set up a second studio for myself in the basement.

Joe’s House, unfinished. Photo by Tom Lechner.

Tom Lechner created this panoramic version which you can view immersively, as well as an earlier one based on an unfinished version of the painting. It’s almost like a visit to Joe’s house!

RIP, Penny Marshall

Found in a box- this suppressed drawing of Rosie O’Donnell and Penny Marshall from the New York Observer. Too soon?:

Modern Love Podcast: A Young Man’s Game With Stanley Tucci

Here is my most recent illustration for the Modern Love Podcast, which went up this week. From the website:

David Chelsea is watching: Summer Of Sam

directed by Spike Lee

“When Rand Richards Cooper was in his 40s, he was faced with a question: How late is too late to first become a dad?

His essay is called “Fatherhood, I Now Learn, Is a Young Man’s Game.” It is read by Stanley Tucci, who has starred in movies like “The Devil Wears Prada,” “The Lovely Bones,” and “Julie and Julia.” His new movie is “A Private War.”

Stanley Tucci

Listen to the podcast here.