In doubt about what to get your loved ones for the holidays? Who isn’t? Well, here are some timely gift suggestions to fill those empty stockings:
David Chelsea is reading:The Clancys of Queens: A Memoir
by Tara Clancy
First up, my latest how-to book, PERSPECTIVE IN ACTION, published this June by Watson-Guptill. “Author and artist David Chelsea takes readers through the major perspective-related developments in history, teaching them how to re-create these same experiments by leading artists in all fields (including drawing, painting, and sculpture). Covering a wide-range of mediums (pen and ink, paint, chalk, digital art, woodwork, and more), Perspective in Action gives readers a more hands-on approach to perspective, as opposed to the usual theoretical presentations found in other books.”
Next, why not get someone a DVD copy of the acclaimed documentary 24 HOUR COMIC? 8 artists confined to a comic book store (one being me, and another my thirteen year old daughter Rebecca), partake in Scott McCloud’s 24 hour comic challenge. Each attempting to write, draw, and complete a 24 page comic, in 24 hours. Directed by Milan Erceg. Also available streaming on iTunes, Amazon Prime, and Hulu, but won’t that special person on your gift list want a physical copy to stick on a shelf?
The next item is a bit specialized, which will make it the perfect gift for that theater director friend who is so hard to shop for. When stage director Will Weigler analyzed nearly 100 stories from people about their most unforgettable experiences at the theatre, he realized that even though the plays were very different, they all had one thing in common. After discovering just what it was that made them so astonishing, he turned the results of his research into a vocabulary of staging strategies that anyone can access to powerfully express the stories they want to tell through theatre. Combining theory with application, THE ALCHEMY OF ASTONISHMENT is a useful resource for scholars, educators, students, theatregoers, and theatre artists of every kind. For those who facilitate devised theatre with communities, this book and its supplementary deck of teaching cards offer professional artists and the people with whom they work a shared language that will allow them to meet as equitable partners in the creative co-authorship and staging of dynamic and compelling plays.
Will’s book makes the list because his book comes with an accompanying set of “teaching cards”, some of which I illustrated, using a digital technique approximating the look of 19th century wood engraving:
Autobiographical comics fans (and who isn’t one?) will delight in the following title from Bloomsbury Comic Group, a critical analysis by comics professor Andrew J. Kunka of all the giant figures and seminal works of this burgeoning genre. Two pages of my own autobiographical work EVERYBODY GETS IT WRONG! arguing that autobiographical comics should be drawn from a first person shooter viewpoint, are included in the appendix, along with a four page comic by a cartoonist named Ryan Claytor arguing the contrary:
Lastly, why not catch up on THE AMERICAN BYSTANDER, the newish humor magazine which just put out its fifth issue? I have comics or illustration work in every issue, beginning with #2. Current and back issues can be ordered from their website, or get a subscription!
Click these links and order stuff! Thanks to the Amazon Associates Program, a small portion goes to the Feed And Clothe Ben And Rebecca fund:
THE ALCHEMY OF ASTONISHMENT is not yet on Amazon; order it here.