Monday, 30 October 2017

Davey Sell thanks to Molly Martin for the interesting info about the artist life..



First — saw your Hedgehogs on FaceBook (linked from blog) and they are just as dear and bright as can be! Love them!
I am writing because I googled my ex-husband, David Sell, a cartoonist, and your blog came up and I wanted to thank you for a nice piece and also to add some info of my own, if you like.
You are correct that he also did Mum's the Word and Krazy — whatever they'd give him, be it pictures, lyrics, wise-cracks, you name it!
Davey worked and lived in Belgravia, London both at cartooning and managing tenants in beautiful Chesham Street, when I met him. He was raised in Nottingham, went to "High Pavement" school (oh those names!) He came to California with me (he called himself my "souvenir") in 1979, and we married in 1980.
He was such an incredible artist that one of my favorite games was for him to start drawing and see how long it took me to figure out what the picture even was — somehow he could just keep me guessing... and then came the dawn — brilliant!
He did a few gentle/silly semi-political cartoons for for the UNiversity of California at Berkeley's paper The Daily Californian, in about 1981 and did a few sex-pot strips for some big-bosomed x-rated magazines, including Fling magazine... (I remember one called Sheer Luck Holds. Watson was a woman... it was full of awful puns, of course — the ending punchline was "Alimentary, dear Watson" concerning the last bit of the alimentary canal... )
He went to work for an advertising agency, Ketchum Communications, in San Francisco, and even got one of their "Right Way Awards" for innovation and being consistently beyond expectations, but then got laid off when things slowed down.
Davey had been working on a Death with Dignity campaign
sadly he passed away in 2009.

 (he never knew his Persian father, but his Mum was a Postmistress from York who'd been blown off her bicycle by a doodle-bug during the war.)
Among the images googling David Sell Cartoons I found what can only be a self-portrait of Davey drawing Tony Blair, I believe also an homage to another cartoonist... (in the style of...) though I can't quite pin it down!
Anyway, if you care to select a few things to update your info on him, that would be great — I leave it to your discretion, but thought you deserved a fuller picture as it is obvious that you are giving it your All and aiming for accuracy in your blogs, which is greatly appreciated!
Best — Molly Martin

Thanks Molly for the extra info about this unique drawing style artist.

2 comments:

Niblet said...

It's good to be able to put a name to this artist after all these years. David had a very distinct and appealing style. Pity he didn't do more work in comics.

Peter Gray said...

I agree a very interesting unique style..