I Pick The Best Books To Make You A Better Artist

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.”

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Perspective Police!: Boxing The Sphere

boxing

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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Ask Mr. Perspective: Three-point Three Ways.

3ptx1

Fumitaka Kotani writes from Japan:

Hello. I bought your book “Perspective! for Comic Book Artists” 3 years ago, and I have drawn many drawings using your guide book, but still I can’t understand the three-point perspective part, especially when you say “lines can be used as horizontal line and each grid can be used 3-ways”.

David Chelsea is reading:
Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet
by Andrew Blum

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Prospettiva! Parte Due

Here are some frames scanned from the copy which arrived last week of Prospettiva! Per Disegnatori Di Fumetti, the Italian edition of Perspective! For Comic Book Artists, published by Vittorio Pavesio Productions in Turin. The little Italian I remember is insufficient for me to fully savor the translation, but it is a big thrill to know that my book will be available in the country where perspective was discovered (and I will definitely look for it in the shops when the family visits Florence and Venice this summer). A big thank you to translator and Facebookfriend Gianni Castagnetta, who let me know early on that this project was in the works (ordinarily I don’t find out about foreign editions until after the fact- sometimes not for years).

David Chelsea is listening to:
Easy Beatles (Various Artists)

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Stumptown Previews #4: More Perspective Grids

lGrid by M.C. Escher
Grid by M.C. Escher

I’ll be giving a talk and demonstration of drawing on perspective grids Saturday at Stumptown. Here is part of what I’ll be talking about.

David Chelsea Is Watching:
“True Grit”

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