David Chelsea

Pretty amazing book, goes well beyond most tutorials found in other books. Most impressively, although he does not actually cover curvilinear perspective in this book, he steps up a foundational knowledge for learning it by debunking common myths about parallel lines and the horizon when drawing conic sections. If that made no sense, just know that if you ever want to do really wild perspective drawings (like the Earth from an airplane or the ceiling and floor of a room in the same picture), you will not have to unlearn any bad practices from reading this book.… (mere)

This odd little autobiographical book appeared during an odd little time in U.S. comics. The Art Spiegelman modernist gang was vying for respectability, and had good reviews and production values, but hadn't yet crossbred with the last wave of undergrounds to form today's small-press scene. Superhero publishers were coasting on the buzz from a few innovative books and timidly venturing into other genres. And then down in the weeds where no one looks but total geeks, there were a bunch of unconnected weirdos each with a black-and-white series in traditional flimsy comic format, each with a different idea of what alternative comics were. Many of these, even more than today, decided to write about themselves; Spiegelman's [b: Maus|15195|The Complete Maus (Maus, #1-2)|Art Spiegelman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327354180s/15195.jpg|1658562] was part of the reason, but [b: American Splendor|240065|Best Of American Splendor|Harvey Pekar|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347450546s/240065.jpg|42982] was lurking in the weeds before that, and [a: Justin Green|617206|Justin Green|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] pioneered the "incredibly embarrassing confessional" version even earlier. Anyway, you could take this kind of thing in all different directions, rude or neurotic or hard-boiled, it all seemed like fair game. Some stayed in for the long haul and became important artists, like [a: Julie Doucet|92471|Julie Doucet|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1460375712p2/92471.jpg] and [a: Chester Brown|157127|Chester Brown|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1241728466p2/157127.jpg]; some produced a brief run of memorable work, like [a: Dennis Eichhorn|352685|Dennis Eichhorn|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]; some just did one interesting thing and then more or less stopped. This is one of those.

The book is about young David, aspiring illustrator in Manhattan from Portland in the '80s, pretentious and needy and horny, age 20 going on 45. (Autobio-review note: I first saw this book when I was 20 and in Manhattan, but after one look, I couldn't stand to read it; I identified too much, except he knew how to get laid a lot.) The "love" in the title is pretty much sex and arguments, with a series of careless and/or damaged women - almost everyone David knows is as selfish as he is, though some of them have a better grasp of the world. He bounces around between cities and beds and is constantly surprised by betrayals the reader sees coming a mile away, including his own. Once he gets into something like a feasible relationship, the book slows down and then leaves off in a hurry, with a postscript to let you know he's now wiser and married.

This is all nearly as awful as it sounds, except that it's extremely well written and drawn, and funny - basically a compassionate-but-merciless satire of a particular floating world, a little like Martin Amis's [b: The Rachel Papers|18828|The Rachel Papers|Martin Amis|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1403172672s/18828.jpg|1981277] and nearly as good, lacking only a plot. Chelsea has a great ear for dialogue, using it to sketch out the characters right away, and as obnoxious as they are, he gives you enough of their point of view to make it more than just "David vs. the Crazy Girls." And even without a plot, there's a good sense of time going by as other people in his crowd move on with their lives. It's all well supported by the art, which looked unusual then and still does: realistic and precise with a great individuality to the faces and bodies and environments, and skillfully laid out, but just unpolished enough to make it look like something made in an obsessive spree by a young guy not sure of what tools to use.

In one funny scene that might or might not have been intended as self-satire, David tries to sell an early version of his comic to a magazine that's clearly supposed to be Spiegelman's Raw, and he can't understand why those snotty elitists won't publish his work. He doesn't get that they're just doing a totally different thing - his story would've looked ridiculously out of place in Raw. But there was a lot of that mistake going around then, the idea that "good comics" was just one big genre that would all fit together somehow. I'm glad it's not like that, and if misfit critters may hop out of the weeds with just one story to tell, I say bring them on.… (mere)

This is a great hands-on book about everything perspective and a bit more: from the basics of point perspective to the novelty (for me) of stereo and motion perspective techniques.

I was already familiar with the basics of perspective but never ventured to further research or experiment (I found the theory and technical part of it too complicated), but this book has what i needed to spark my interest and that is: DIY projects for every technique, lots of pictures illustrating every step (the book looks like a comic book: meaning that the illustrations are the book, not just scattered random images) plus simple explanations that a kid or teenager could understand. This last point was my favorite, if a graphic novel format makes my brain more comfortable while learning, so be it. - I got my e-ARC though NetGalley - I want a papercopy now.… (mere)