My world got smaller when artist and art teacher Gary Faigin died this past September. Gary was not just a colleague that I knew for over 40 years, but he was also a personal friend. He and his wife Pamela knew me and Eve in New York, and we kept in touch after Gary and Pam moved to Seattle and Eve and I moved to Portland.
… » more

I’d like to alert my loyal readership to a recent reprint of my work in a specialty magazine: Railroad Heritage

This is the magazine of the Center For Railroad Photography In Art, which comes out twice a year. A page from my instructional book Perspective! appears in an article which takes up half of the magazine, a very comprehensive survey of the subject train tracks meeting at the vanishing point on the horizon by historian Gregory P. Ames, which includes an extensive cache of photos and illustrations using the train track vanishing point motif along with dozens of descriptions of the effect from literature, journalism and private letters.  I am honored to be included in this article.

… » more

I haven’t been doing much commissioned work recently, but I’ve been plugging away nonetheless, posting comics, videos, and sketchbook pages to my Patreon on a regular basis. On any given week I might post a book report comic drawn on a library call slip, like this one about Sarah Polley’s memoir:

… » more

I was recently approached by Sheperd.com to compile a list of books to recommend. What is Shepherd? Here’s what their website says on the subject: “Shepherd is like wandering around your favorite bookstore but reimagined for the online world… along with little notes from authors pointing out their favorite books.”

The recommendations on the website are all over the map. Some recent ones are: “The best young adult shifter romance books” “The best science fiction books in aesthetic universes” “The best historical fiction books about the Tudors” and “The best Christian romance with spiritual and romantic passion”. Since the Shepherd people had chosen me because of the popularity of my perspective instructional books, I decided that my list would be “The best books to make you a better artist.”

… » more

Well, you missed your chance to sign up for the PleinAir Live Global Virtual Event by Palm Sunday to save $500 off the retail price, but no problem- you can still register by April 11th and save $300! Go here and find out how!

I will be presenting a live-on-video online perspective drawing demonstration as part of the event. This will be similar to the perspective speed demos I have been posting on Patreon for the past year, but in real time and with my spoken commentary guiding you through every step of the process. Full disclosure: my demonstration will not literally be plein air, as in drawn outdoors. It will be a simple one-point perspective of an imaginary room. The organizers told me that was fine with them. I will also be responding in real time to questions in streaming chat. Since I am not a touch typist, I will be using my iPad’s voice recognition software.

David Chelsea is reading: Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World
by Steven Johnson

… » more

Today, Palm Sunday, is the LAST DAY to save up to $500 on the retail price for PleinAir Live Global Virtual Event! A lot of attendees wait until the day of the deadline to purchase- could that be YOU?

In case you missed my previous blog post, here’s a recap: I will be presenting a live-on-video online perspective drawing demonstration as part of the event. This will be similar to the perspective speed demos I have been posting on Patreon for the past year, but in real time and with my spoken commentary guiding you through every step of the process. Full disclosure: my demonstration will not literally be plein air, as in drawn outdoors. It will be a simple one-point perspective of an imaginary room. The organizers told me that was fine with them. I will also be responding in real time to questions in streaming chat. Since I am not a touch typist, I will be using my iPad’s voice recognition software.

David Chelsea is watching:
Boardwalk Empire: The Complete First Season

… » more

Got any plans for April? Here’s where I’m going to be:

David Chelsea is reading: Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous
by Christopher Bonanos

… » more

A month and change into the quarantine, and things have settled into a routine. Every morning I wake up around 6:30, have coffee and a frozen banana for breakfast (I’m trying to avoid putting on quarantine weight as well as using less toilet paper), feed Winston, post dreams to Facebook, and then work until noon, when I have… another cup of coffee (and feed Winston some dry food). Eve usually answers work emails for an hour or so in the morning, then goes outside to do stuff in the garden. After noon I usually put in a little time pulling weeds (the focus this week- bluebells!), work in the studio for a few more hours, maybe take a leisurely bike ride around the neighborhood in the afternoon. At seven, just before dinner, (and around the time Winston gets his third feeding- he’s a growing boy), Eve & I go outside and bang pots and pans or beat on a drum with our neighbors. Theoretically, this ritual honors essential workers, but mostly it just lets off steam. Then Eve & I watch TV: So far we’ve watched Season 3 of Ozark, Mrs. Fletcher, Avenue 5, Season 9 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Some of Dave and What We Do In The Shadows, and two and a half seasons of Better Things. I usually get sleepy and head off to bed between 9 and 10.

Some weekly events punctuate the Groundhog’s Day sameness. Saturday morning we do our weekly Zoom conference with scattered family. Wednesday evening garbage goes out. Various podcasts arrive on schedule to tell me what day it is. Ken Jennings’s Trivia Quiz email tells me it’s Tuesday.

I’ve been making little tweaks here and there to my Patreon page. Recently, I decided to add links connecting all the Call Slip Comics I have posted over the past few years. Cheer your confinement by recalling the bygone days of when libraries were still open! Now you can read the strips in order, starting from the very first:

David Chelsea is reading: Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me
by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell

… » more

With nearly everyone confined to quarters for the foreseeable, everyone has a quarantine story to tell. This is mine.

I was leading pretty much my normal life up to the week of March 9th. On Wednesday the 11th, I had lunch with my publisher- ordering actual food from a restaurant- and had a studio visit from a friend’s high school-age son in the afternoon. Thursday I had a date to go to the theater to see a performance of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time with my sister Teresa, but had one wary eye on the headlines- schools had already been closed, and the governor had banned gatherings of over 250 people. I checked the theater’s website that morning to see if the show was cancelled, and saw that a planned matinee was going ahead, but that the status beyond that was uncertain. A few hours later they cancelled the rest of the run.

I had my usual Friday visit on the 13th with my hangout buddy and sometime assistant Jacob Mercy, in which we were careful to avoid standing too close or god forbid, shaking hands, but that is the last social interaction I have had with anyone not in my immediate family. The store my wife Eve manages was slipping into closing by degrees- first, closing one day a week, then taking a planned two week holiday, then shutting until further notice.

Our daughter Rebecca flew home from LA on Tuesday the 17th- classes at UCLA had gone online, but she had intended to stay in the dorms through finals week, but we were worried that flights might be cancelled altogether. The three of us stayed in the house together, apart from a two-day trip to the coast, for the next ten days.

David Chelsea is reading: The Last Cruise
by Kate Christensen

… » more