I delivered the art and layout files some time ago, but this makes it real- seeing my new book Extreme Perspective!- right across from Christopher Hart’s latest, Drawing Fantastic Furries- in a catalogue from Watson-Guptill, my publisher, which arrived in the mail yesterday. Note the publication date on your calendars: February 15, 2011.
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New York Times piece, 2004

Wedding Day, 1990

Just in time for Eve’s and my twentieth wedding anniversary, here is a selection of illustrations in which I have used our family as models (a tradition which goes back at least as far as Norman Rockwell). First, Eve and the children pose for a Modern Love piece in the New York Times, about a family abandoned by the father. It appears that Ben is a bit grumpy at having to stand in for a nine year old girl.
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Joe's House. Acrylic on world globe by David Chelsea, 2008. Not for sale. Photo by Tom Lechner. tomlechner.com/

This is the largest and most elaborate spherical painting I have done to date, and the first actual commission. It was painted for Joe Erceg, and depicts the interior of his house. Joe is possibly my oldest friend, in that he knew my parents before I was born. Since the 1960s Joe has been one of Portland’s leading graphic designers, and now runs his firm Joseph Erceg Graphic Design with his son Matt. Longtime Portlanders may remember the giant butterfly painting designed by Joe which once covered the side of the Fleischner Building in Old Town.
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Snow Angel, the story I originally drew for the cancelled anthology Snow Stories, now has a new home at Dark Horse Presents. The first issue of the new print incarnation of Dark Horse’s flagship anthology is due to appear in March. Read all about it in this interview with publisher Mike Richardson, which includes a sample page from Snow Angel along with work by Paul Chadwick, Michael Gilbert and Robert Love.
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Also, belatedly, Lena Horne:

Both caricatures from The New York Observer, year unknown.

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Double hemisphere painting by David Chelsea adapted from photographic panorama by Tom Lechner. Acrylic on paper, 2008.

I based this view of Portland’s Ira Keller Fountain on a 360º panorama by photographer Tom Lechner, which he had printed on a paper model of a rhombic triacontahedron, a thirty-sided geometric solid approximating a sphere. Originally known as the Forecourt Fountain, it was designed by the architect Lawrence Halprin and dedicated in 1970,  You can view a large image of the painting here.
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Spring Street Studios by David Chelsea. Panoramic photo by Tom Lechner.

This is one of my earliest spherical drawings, from 1995, my last year living in New York. It was drawn (in rapidograph on a styrofoam ball coated with papier-mâché) at Spring Street Studios, a life model drawing space in Soho.

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Nude drawn using camera lucida at Hipbone Studio.

I have just posted a portfolio of pencil drawings done using a camera lucida at Comics Lifestyle. About ten years ago an article about David Hockney’s controversial theory that great artists from the Renaissance on had used lenses, mirrors and other optical devices to project images for tracing made me curious to try it for myself; the camera lucida was one of the devices mentioned in the article (Hockney insists he sees signs of its use in lngres’s penciled portraits), and my friend Steve Abrams happened to have one sitting around that he wasn’t using. He generously agreed to let me have it for an extended loan.
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