Quarantine Continues

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

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Work In Progress: Assembled In Illustrator

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This week I put up two more pages of my continuing webcomic ARE YOU BEING WATCHED? on Patreon. These continue the storyboard sequence showing the history of the 24 Hour Comic, including my own part as the cartoonist holding the World’s Record for 24 Hour Comics– 17 so far:

David Chelsea is listening to: Bad Paper: Chasing Debt from Wall Street to the Underworld
by Jake Halpern

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Scott McCloud And Steve Bissette Make A Guest Appearance On ARE YOU BEING WATCHED?

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While I have not been blogging about it every week, I have been plugging away at ARE YOU BEING WATCHED?, my webcomic about Reality TV, posting two pages most weeks on Patreon. In the most recent installment, we are into Hour Six of the 24 Hour Comic session which is being taped for a Reality TV program hosted by David Chelsea, famous cartoonist. David is being shown storyboards for a proposed animated opening to the program, which would tell the story of the invention of the 24 Hour Comic by Scott McCloud, inspired by his friend Steve Bissette:

David Chelsea is reading: Chicago
by Glenn Head

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IN THE STUDIO: Raster Vs. Vector!

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Another episode of the ongoing podcast I do with Jacob Mercy just dropped on iTunes. In this installment, Jacob and I talk shop about the virtues and drawbacks of several computer drawing programs, most notably Adobe Illustrator and Clip Studio Paint (the software mysteriously formerly known as Manga Studio). We also get a preview of David’s new instructional book PERSPECTIVE IN ACTION, a discussion of cartoon dogs and what makes them funny, and some incidental chatter about Winsor McCay’s possible influence on Peter Max. Geek out!!

Listen in iTunes

David Chelsea is reading: Agony
by Mark Beyer

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Perspective Police!: Boxing The Sphere

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The twentieth anniversary of my book PERSPECTIVE! FOR COMIC BOOK ARTISTS is fast approaching , and it’s time to take care of some long-unfinished business.

A reader of this blog wrote recently to ask me to tell him how to draw a sphere correctly in perspective. He had touched a sore spot- I spend a lot of time in my book explaining how the instructions on how to draw a sphere in other perspective books are wrong, wrong, wrong, but I never lay out a method that is right, right, right.

David Chelsea is watching:
Tim’s Vermeer [Blu-ray]
Directed by Teller

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Perspective Police!: Plastic Man?

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Here’s part of the presentation I gave last Saturday at Stumptown Comics Fest:

My fellow cartoonist John Linton Roberson brought this one to my attention. It comes from a comic called Flashpoint: Legion of Doom #1, published by DC in 2011. (Superhero comics, like animated cartoons, are a group effort. The credited artists for this panel are Rodney Buchemi, José Marzan, Jr. and Artur Fujita.)

David Chelsea is reading:
Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
by Mary Roach

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