Portrait of Grover Cleveland. Acrylic on canvas by Ben Celsi.

Ben has been busy through the summer attending sleepaway camp, learning to surf, and working on various projects including his Scratch game opus Hotel Griven and a video thriller called Apple Jack The Ripper: The Cereal Killer, but he has also found time to add one more to his series of Presidential portraits.

Grover Cleveland is best known for serving two nonconsecutive terms (making him both the 22nd and the 24th Presidents) and for appearing on the $1000 bill, but he has a few other, lesser-known distinctions: he was one of only three Presidents to be married in office, he proclaimed Labor Day a national holiday, and in his second term he secretly underwent emergency surgery (aboard the yacht Oneida) to have a cancerous growth removed from his mouth.

The schizophrenic appearance of Ben’s portrait is his way of combining the younger Cleveland of his first term with the older one one of his second.

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.

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.

New York Times piece, 2005

Rebecca Eckler

Next, Eve poses with plastic bags under her shirt for another Modern Love piece, by Canadian writer Rebecca Eckler, about a flirtation she indulged in during her pregnancy. This illustration drew the attention of the gossip site Gawker, which noted that the model in the drawing does not resemble Eckler, insinuating that the Times had intentionally substituted a more glamorous blonde for the brunette author. Not true; when illustrating personal essays like this one I almost always try to make the central figure look like the writer, when I can find reference, but in this case copy arrived without any author’s name on it, so I was free to use my glamorous wife.

New York Press piece, 2004

l did not have to change Ben’s sex for this New York Press illustration, just invent a screen door for him to stand behind.

New York Times piece, 2006

Lastly, Rebecca poses for this slightly creepy Modern Love piece, about a coed who agrees to go out on a date with her professor.

Thanks, Eve. These have been the best twenty years of my life.

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.

Photo of young David by Joe Erceg.

For reference, I shot digital photographs, rotating the camera around to capture all aspects of the scene, while trying to keep the lens as much as possible at a fixed central point. I then loaded all the photographs into Lightwave, a 3D animation program, where I assembled them into a virtual collage approximating the shape of a sphere. Since Joe wanted to show multiple rooms in one image, I adopted the M.C. Escherish device of combining three different views, with gravity running in three directions.

Reference photos assembled in Lightwave

Joe provided the canvas, a large metal sphere that was originally the support for a world globe jigsaw puzzle. Work on it took over two years, in between freelance deadlines. To keep the overall task manageable, I proceeded as if filling in a jigsaw puzzle, painting the pictures on the wall first, then the windows, then the plants and furniture, and finally the walls and ceilings. To save time setting the globe up every time I wanted to work on it, I set up a second studio for myself in the basement.

Joe's House, unfinished. Photo by Tom Lechner.

Tom Lechner created this panoramic version which you can view immersively, as well as an earlier one based on an unfinished version of the painting.

Joe's House Panorama

I am interested in doing more commissions like this one. Hopefully the next one won’t take two years.

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.

Some pages from the story, which I colored using a Copic Airbrush, were featured last year on the Copic website.

Caricature from the New York Observer, 1990s

When the temperature hits the 90s in Portland the most comfortable spot in my house is the basement. Last week was a scorcher, so I decided that  the moment had come for a major cleanup and reorganization down cellar. This involved sweeping away years of cobwebs, throwing away burned-out fireplace grates and towel racks ripped out during bathroom renovation, and finally unpacking the last boxes remaining from when Eve and I moved here in 1995. Inside one of them was a handful of old letters with decorated envelopes I sent to Eve over the years, which I’m adding to the batch my friend Geoff Seaman gave me after he moved last year. The top envelope is a portrait of the lovely Eve done before we were married; the four faces on the long narrow one belong to the vocal group The Bobs. I’ve also included a couple of envelopes sent to my grandmother, which my mother recently found in a box in dead storage.

I’ve sent hundreds of letters over the years, and I’m hoping to  eventually get enough together for a collection like Folon’s Lettres à Giorgio. Former pen pals within reach of this blog are hereby invited to help in this effort by scouring their attics and sending me scans.

When Robots Fight,

His Biggest Mistake,

and The Do(ugh)nut Man.

Also, belatedly, Lena Horne:

Both caricatures from The New York Observer, year unknown.