Proud to say I’ve been back on the sketchbook horse this month after a lengthy fallow period, so I figured it was high time to show my work. Behold! Some nudes from a figure drawing session last week (five- and one-minute poses, respectively):
There’s also a bundle of progress shots from my work on the Charles W. Morgan travelogue, random sketchbook pages, and the odd outfit sketch or two.
Gosh you guys: drawing for fun is FUN. Did you know? I forget sometimes. I’ll try to do another of these before too long!
Hi gang! First off: big thanks to all of you who came out last month to say hello at Emerald City Comicon. It was incredibly cool to see so many familiar faces and get comics into returning hands. I promise I’ll keep cranking ’em out so you’ll have more to enjoy in 2015.
Now: I have a whole bundle of audiovisual treats for you today, taken from various panels and speaking gigs I’ve done in the past few weeks.
First up is It’s Not Too Dangerous to Go Alone, a great panel run by Kenna Conklin of Geek Portland on having the guts to make your creative career happen. I got to speak alongside Erika Moen, Dylan Meconis, and Angela Webber, which was a treat in and of itself, but I also feel like we hit some great points about motivation and starting from scratch.
Second is Erika’s Freelance Like a Rockstar panel, with Steve Lieber, Dylan Meconis, and Amy Falcone. (I nabbed this recording on my phone, so the quality is a little less spectacular, but you can still hear everyone!) We discuss all the juicy freelancer topics like finding jobs, self promotion, pricing strategies, and *gulp* contracts. Valuable fun for the whole freelance family.
Finally, I got to participate in a panel on Setting Realistic Goals as part of the MakingComics.com Massive Open Online Course last week. I really enjoyed getting to digitally discuss project management, scheduling, and work/life balance with Jared Cullum, Jen Vaughn, Damon Gentry, Eric Shanower, Christina Blanch, and Patrick Yurik. Plus this one has video so you can see all our weird facial expressions while we talk.
Phew. That’s all from me for now — I hope these discussions are useful to you all!
Getting boxes from the print shop always feels like Christmas — the excitement, the possibility, the wondering whether that thing you asked for is really as cool as you think it is in person.
The answer is yes: it is.
These are my first proper postcards and I have to admit I went a little bonkers putting them together. If there was a bell, I added it. If there was a whistle, that too. These suckers are printed on silky smooth 16pt matte card stock with rounded corners and they look and feel SO GOOD. I couldn’t be happier. Here’s a closer look at the art:
As someone who tends to have a lot of art on her walls, I wanted something that would look lustrous and beautiful enough to display with or without a frame — even after going through the rigors of the postal service. These cards definitely fit the bill. They are both attractive and BEEFY.
I have packs of five available in my store, and I’ll also be throwing in a free card with any order for the next couple months! Shop around and stay tuned for the next installment of these prints — I’m hoping to roll out a whole sequence of nautical cards before the year is out. Have something you’d like to see? Drop me a line in the comments.
Some of you may recall I was doing some illustration work for the Vancouver Maritime Museum last month. Their Art of the Sailor exhibit opened this week, and Alina Anghel (of the Vancouver Trolley Company Blog) was kind enough to snap a photo of my giant poster on the wall!
The exhibit runs through October, so I’m really excited to see it in person when I visit for VanCAF in May. In the meantime, if you’re in the Vancouver area, be sure to stop in and check it out! There are a ton of educational and entertaining elements involved — including beautiful pieces of scrimshaw and many photographs of actual sailors showing off their ink. To learn more, check out this in-depth article on The Tyee blog.
I’m also excited to announce that the Museum will be stocking all three issues of Baggywrinkles in their store. There have been some delays, so they might not arrive for a week or two, but hopefully Vancouverites can pick up copies on site before too long.
As promised, here are the details for the two free workshops I’ll be teaching next week at Reed College. These puppies are open to the public and will involve SNACKS. Do I have your attention yet? Good!
First up is Freelance Badassery 101: Maintaining Enthusiasm in the Face of the Unknown (Monday, January 21st, 5pm-7pm). This is a long and fancy-sounding name for a very simple class. The goal is to help you figure out what you love doing, then empower you to do it more and do it better. It’s a class for anyone wishing to light a creative fire under their ass. It’s gonna have some nitty-gritty info about contracts and taxes and invoices and other business things that might be useful to a freelancer, but what comes first is the Work. And that’s what we’re going to tackle head-on. BYO creative self-doubt demons. They’ll be begging for mercy by the time we’re done. Facebook event with directions and other info is here!
The second workshop is Kickstarter Bootcamp: Harnessing the Herd to Make Your Creative Dreams Come True (Wednesday, January 23rd, 5pm-7pm). This will be a hands-on, practical info workshop for those wishing to fund their creative endeavors. The first hour will cover Kickstarter basics, then we’ll critique specific projects. If you have something brewing that you’d like feedback or advice on, bring it in! I’ll be spilling all the dark secrets I learned while riding out the True Believer Kickstarter (730% funded?! How is that even POSSIBLE?!) and incorporating lessons from other successful projects in the Portland area. Facebook event with directions and other info is here!
Both workshops will take place in the Gray Campus Center at Reed College (3203 SE Woodstock Blvd.). The GCC sits in the central Quad and also houses the College’s dining hall. Parking is available in the North Lot (enter on SE Steele and SE 33rd) or the East Lot (enter on SE Woodstock and SE 36th). The workshop will be held in the Campus Center conference rooms, GCC B, GCC C, and GCC D. Most anyone should be able to steer you towards them, if campus maps prove unhelpful.
If you have any specific questions, feel free to email me at lucypcbellwood(at)gmail(dot)com!
So, as some of you may know, I attended a rehearsal of Don Giovanni earlier this week, courtesy of the Portland Opera. The company runs this great outreach program where cartoonists come and live sketch rehearsals in the days leading up to the show. I’m no opera buff, but the experience was fantastic. Stellar cast, dramatic staging, and no shortage of saucy thrills. If you’ve been wanting more bang for your operatic buck, this is the show for you.
Unfortunately, these sketches fail to capture the pathos and emotional torment of the show itself. I have, instead, chosen to focus mainly on the boning. There’s a lot of that.
Don Giovanni, his peasant rival, Masetto, and Masetto’s ridiculous hat.Leporello, unwilling servant to Don Giovanni. This was the happiest I saw him in the entire production.Most of the time he looked like this.With good reason.Giovanni spends a fair amount of time attempting to blame Leporello for his own sexual dalliances.Masetto is rarely pleased with Giovanni’s party tactics.Frustrated by his master’s shenanigans, Leporello threatens to leave Giovanni’s service.Giovanni, however, convinces him to stay and switch clothes with his master, in order to go seduce some more babes. The disguise is somewhat lacking.Meanwhile, Giovanni completely fails to impersonate Leporello.Leporello learns that being Don Giovanni has its upsides.Meanwhile, the grisly evidence of Giovanni’s murderous tendencies (displayed to their fullest at the very top of the show), continues to slide down the set.Don Ottavio, fiance to the ravishing Donna Anna, is shocked when his beloved expresses her attraction to Don Giovanni.At Giovanni’s party, he tries a new tactic.Donna Anna, however, is too busy belting it like a rockstar to notice her fiancé’s change of attire. (Seriously. The women in this show fucking KILLED IT.)In the process of lamenting her father’s murder at the hands of Don Giovanni, she makes an alarming discovery.The Commendatore sings accusingly at Don Giovanni from beyond the grave! (Or does he?)Leporello fears the Commendatore’s fiery gaze, but Giovanni knows the truth.Don Ottavio makes a last ditch effort to grab the attentions of his beloved.The Commendatore rises from the grave to deliver a striking revelation! (Also Giovanni gets whisked away to eternal damnation and there’s a big moralistic finale or something I wasn’t really paying attention to anything but the Merkin Mystery at this point.)
And they all lived happily every after!
***
Seriously, folks, with the flippancy of my goofy sketches aside, I suggest you all go check out this show. I had a wonderful time. To sweeten the deal, those of you in the know (i.e. everyone reading this blog) can get your tickets for the Thursday (11/8) show at 50% off! Head over here and enter the password MOZART to get in on the action.
If you enjoyed this you can find other excellent commentary, artwork, and cheap gags from the evening’s cartoonists and live bloggers on Twitter under the hashtag #pdxgiovanni.
This week I revisited an exercise given to me by my awesome mentor Eben Matthews almost ten years ago.
In one of our early meetings Eben asked me what my least favorite thing to draw was. Like any budding 13-year-old artist I immediately pulled a face and said “hands.” He smirked and told me to come back with 100 of them drawn by our next session. I glowered and grumbled, but truth be told it was a deeply valuable exercise that stuck with me for a long time (even after he made me draw 100 feet the following week, the scum!).
While recently looking at lots of inspirational animation captures of beautifully rendered, expressive hands, I realized how long it had been since I’d drawn those first 100 and decided to do it again. I sketched a lot of them during classes, but also used various photo references and even some of the animation stills to get an idea of how to effectively simplify the anatomy.
Rather than a week, this took me about five hours altogether. It feels so good that I may have to start doing it more often. A decade is a little too long.
As you can see, I devolved a little at the end there and started drawing eyeballs and classmates — one of whom happens to look an astonishing amount like the female protagonist of Dylan Meconis’ spectacular comic, Family Man. Who knew?
And, to round things out, here are a couple quick sketches of puppets from the amazing John Frame exhibit currently showing at the Portland Art Museum. Strange, fascinating stuff if you get the chance to go see it.
That’s all for now! I’ve got some really exciting news and projects on the horizon, but I can’t share them quite yet, so I’ll try to keep the little illustrations coming.
This was a freelance calligraphy project I completed last year for Open Meadow, a local program empowering at-risk youth in North Portland. I have a good friend teaching there right now and it sounds like a pretty awesome place. You can find out more about their work at http://www.openmeadow.org/.
The piece was done with various round Speedball nibs, Dr. Ph. Martin’s Black Star India Ink (for lettering and ink washes), and a Pentel Pocket Brush.
