David Chelsea's Blog, page 8
September 21, 2018
David Chelsea Talks WELCOME TO THE ZONE on WORDS & PICTURES
A week ago I dropped by the alternative radio station KBOO-FM to talk comics with host S.W. Conser on the long-running comics talk show WORDS & PICTURES. On previous shows I’ve promoted my 24 Hour Comics collections SLEEPLESS and EVERYBODY GETS IT WRONG!, the documentary 24 HOUR COMIC, and my instructional books on perspective, but this time I was there to talk about the new digital version of my 1995 graphic novel WELCOME TO THE ZONE, which I have been serializing on my Patreon page. Our discussion also touched on my time illustrating for the New York Times and The New York Observer (where I cashed checks from Presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner), 24 Hour Comics, and the uselessness of clients who insist on paying artists in the Coin Of Exposure. Since my appearance was on short notice, I didn’t have time to blog about it in advance, but the audio is archived here
David Chelsea is reading: Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway Revolution
by Todd S. Purdum
It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about WELCOME TO THE ZONE, but I have been putting up pages steadily week after week, and am now only 6 pages from the end!
WELCOME TO THE ZONE is a sprawling, multicharacter story taking place over two days and nights in a bohemian neighborhood based on the East Village. In one scene, a group of Japanese tourists visit a museum to learn about some of the Zone’s colorful history:
The trip does not end well for them:
Elsewhere a pot-delivering robot undergoes a series of transformations:
. . .which culminate in this scene of human-machine amour. It is scenes like this one that led the prudes at Patreon to classify my page as adult material:
Later, at a benefit for The Homeless, poet/rapper Tasha Tigerbaum unleashes her inner Karen Finley (if you don’t know who Karen Finley is, she was a 90s performance artist who liked to use foodstuffs like chocolate and yams as body paint):
Meanwhile, aliens from the Planet Borgon with a taste for human meat are delighted to discover that the local soup kitchen cook has used the soup to dispose of his murdered girlfriend:
Everything culminates in a police riot, in which Mugg (later the art pupil in my perspective books), temporarily loses his handle:
Real Estate developer Ronald Duck has been offstage for a while, but I promise he comes back in the next few pages! Want to know what it’s all about? Here are links to all the installments posted so far:
Patreon is a reader-supported site, but all comics content (except for a couple raunchy pages I’ve put behind a paywall) is free. If you like what you see, tell your friends, and $how Your $upport!
August 28, 2018
RIP, John McCain
I had remembered drawing a lot of caricatures of recently deceased Senator and Presidential candidate John McCain over the years, but I was only able to find a few in my archives. This group caricature from the 2000 New Hampshire Primary, drawn for INX, was the earliest. In case you don’t recognize them, the other figures are Texas Governor and eventual winner George W. Bush, Senator and former basketball star Bill Bradley, and Vice President Al Gore:
David Chelsea is reading: Planet Funny
by Ken Jennings
McCain squares off against W:
McCain was a self-styled maverick, who often fond himself at odds with the Republican establishment:
In this undated drawing from the New York Observer, McCain attends some event or other with Jon Stewart:
In 2004, McCain’s name briefly surfaced as a possible Vice Presidential pick for Democratic nominee John Kerry:
Finally, in 2008, McCain got the Republican Presidential nomination, leaving him the job of taming the elephant (spoiler alert: he lost the election to Barack Obama):
And that’s about it. I’ll have a LOT more old drawings to show when Hillary or Giuliani kicks.
August 16, 2018
RIP, Aretha Franklin:
2000 illustration from the New York Observer
August 6, 2018
RIP, Charlotte Rae
My Call Slip review of HAIR, a movie featuring actress Charlotte Rae, who just died:
David Chelsea is watching: Clueless
starring Alicia Silverstone
August 2, 2018
Modern Love Illustration: GPS For My Lost Identity
My most recent illustration for the Modern Love Podcast appeared yesterday. From the website:
David Chelsea is reading: Reset
by Peter Bagge
“Sometimes, the thing we love most isn’t a person. It could be a place, that we return to over and over again throughout our lives. Laura Dave writes about one of those places in her piece, “GPS For My Lost Identity.”
It’s read by Diane Guerrero. You can see her in “Jane the Virgin” and “Orange is the New Black,” and she’s also the author of a new book, called “My Family Divided: One Girl’s Journey of Home, Loss, and Hope.”
Diane GuerreroI had a 24 Hour Comics session coming up the week I was assigned this illustration for the print New York Times column. Hoping it would inspire to come up with some ideas, I used the basic premise of the column in the comic I drew that weekend, ID. Author Laura Dave became hapless protagonist Aurora Dove:
My plan didn’t exactly work- the ideas I came up with for the illustration were no better than my usual- but I did get a pretty good comic out of it. You can read ID in my second 24 Hour Comic collection from Dark Horse, SLEEPLESS:
July 18, 2018
Dead Astronaut Drops!
The other day, this announcement turned up on my Facebook wall:
“i have taken it upon myself to release the album Matthew has been dwelling on for the past 3 years
in a long-drawn-out debate regarding how and when to release it, time escaped us, and the initial pride of his (and his mates’) hard work swiftly dissipated into a query of whether or not this album continued to represent him. i will admit that his voice, his guitar skills, and even his writing style have evolved immensely since this recording – but i think it’s still something the world deserves to hear
you’re my favourite artist. don’t kill me”
David Chelsea is reading: View Master
by Gretchen Jane Gruber
The message was from Chloé Edelman, the aforementioned Matthew’s fiancee, and the cover subject of Matthew’s previous album, which I did the cover illustration for:
I don’t pretend to know the whys and wherefores of what led up to this album’s release, but I am happy that it leads to the to the release of my cover illustration, which I think is one of my better efforts. The title DEAD ASTRONAUT inspired me to do something in the style of a science fiction pulp magazine of the 1930s:
Below is my first rough pencil sketch (the idea came from a minor episode in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy):
Here is a more refined pencil sketch:
Here is my finished painting:
And the finished cover with type:
Follow this link to download the album. Happy listening!
June 27, 2018
Modern Love Podcast: The Hunter-Gatherer, Parking Division With Jason Alexander
One of my Modern Love column illustrations from 2007 ran with the podcast last week. From the website: “Finding the right partner can feel impossible. But not as impossible as finding the perfect parking space in New York City. Andy Raskin describes the search for both in his essay, “The Hunter-Gatherer, Parking Division.”
David Chelsea is reading: Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous
by Christopher Bonanos
It’s read by Jason Alexander, of “Seinfeld” fame. He will be directing a production of “Native Gardens” at the Pasadena Playhouse in September, and in concert with the Bay Atlantic Symphony in Atlantic City on September 29.”
here.
June 1, 2018
ARE YOU BEING WATCHED? Logo #1: Cellar Dwellers
My first foray into Adobe After Effects, this animated logo is taken from the Cellar Dwellers chapter of ARE YOU BEING WATCHED?, a graphic novel about Reality TV which ran from 2015 to 2017 on my Patreon page, and which is forthcoming in book form from Dark Horse Comics. My eventual plan is to make animated logos for all the Reality shows in the story as a video promotion for the book. I got a major assist on this one from Milan Erceg, After Effects wizard and director of 24 Hour Comic, the recent documentary I appeared in. I did the illustration and lettering, but Milan added the creepy blur-in effect and lots of digital noise to simulate the look of a vintage TV show. My hope is to eventually acquire enough chops to be able to do this kind of thing on my own with no help. Wish me luck!
May 23, 2018
RIP, Philip Roth
Less than a week after I went through my box of caricature originals for Tom Wolfe, I hauled the box out again to unearth images of Philip Roth, who died yesterday. These caricatures were all printed in The New York Observer. Roth with Steve Martin:
David Chelsea is reading:
Nemesis by Philip Roth
With John Updike:
My favorite Roth books were The Counterlife, The Plot Against America, and Nemesis. One of these days I’ll have to read Sabbath’s Theater: 
May 16, 2018
RIP, Tom Wolfe
Here are some caricatures of the late author Tom Wolfe drawn for the New York Observer:
David Chelsea is listening to: The Female Persuasion: A Novel
by Meg Wolitzer
The point of this caricature has been lost in the mists of time, as has the identity of the second head. Sean/Puffy Combs?:
One reason I never became a fine artist is that I read Tom Wolfe’s book on Modern Art, The Painted Word, at 15, and could never take the gallery scene seriously after that. Before the book appeared in print, a lengthy excerpt appeared as the cover story in Harper’s. The cover of that issue and the book use the same idea, but I think the magazine did it better. I suspect the book cover cartoon is by Tom Wolfe, who had his moments as a cartoonist:
Also a belated RIP to Austin Powers actor Verne Troyer. I found this NY Observer caricature while I was looking through a box for Tom Wolfe drawings- encountering a lot of Tina Brown, Martha Stewart, and Rudy Guiliani caricatures along the way. I had the grim thought that some of these people I drew are going to outlive me:
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