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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Comic Art Battle at Cosmic Monkey

The Stumptown Comics Fest is something of a yearly ritual for me, a chance to meet the reading public and reconnect with out-of-town friends I otherwise never see (Maryland cartoonist Carla Speed McNeil immediately noticed that I was walking without a cane; I had forgotten that last year I was still getting over a broken leg.).
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Me at Stumptown Comics Fest 2006, photo by Joshin Yamada

l will once more be appearing this coming weekend at Portland’s annual Stumptown Comics Fest. My new book, Extreme Perspective!, won’t be published until next year, but I’ll be showing preview pages from it, selling old books, taking snapshots with my Palm Pilot and bringing something new- reproductions of hand-drawn envelopes from the series Letters To Geoff (minus their original addresses and stamps), which you can mail to your friends!
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l had a fine time at the 24 Hour Drawpocalypse last weekend at Cosmic Monkey, and managed to finish my 24 page comic in just 23 hours. (Then I discovered that I’d actually only drawn 23 pages because I had somehow skipped page 18, so I went back yesterday and drew a new page in an hour. Don’t tell Scott McCloud.) Here are some frames from my story, titled I Like To Riff:

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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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Last year at Cosmic Monkey. I'm in the green shirt. Photo by Tom Lechner.

I’m busy ruling panel borders today because I will be drawing all day and all through the night this Saturday and Sunday at Cosmic Monkey’s Spring 24 Hour Comic event. This will be my third appearance at a Cosmic Monkey session and (if I make it) my 12th 24 Hour comic, still a World Record till someone tells me different. Two of my previous 24 Hour comics have been published by Top Shelf, and others, such as Jesusland and Now Open The Box are viewable online.
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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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Portrait of Chester Arthur. Acrylic on canvas by Ben Celsi.

Here is the latest in my son Ben’s series of Presidential portraits.

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Sunset Grove

Rebecca writes: Sunset Grove is located on the eastern coast of Fictionopia. There are not many things in Sunset Grove, but there is a one-room school (Taught by Meredith Rowsy) and a town square/chief’s house. The chief is Brandon Helter, with his wife Melody and his children Alexis and Joseph.
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