Author: Lucy Bellwood

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General Kickstarter Update & A Local Appearance!

Heads up, Portland friends! I’ll be tabling at the Portland Zine Symposium’s AmaZine Fest THIS SATURDAY (June 23rd) at the IPRC (1001 SE Division). The general idea for the event is a Farmer’s Market for zinesters, so come on down pick up a fine selection of fresh-pressed comics and zines. I’ll have Baggywrinkles 1 & 2 on hand.

What else is new in Lucyland? Well, after selling out of all my backstock at VanCAF, I’ve been facing a reprint avalanche of older titles on top of the new True Believer run. In the last three weeks I’ve printed, hand-punched, and sewn 500 copies of Baggywrinkles, cleaned up, laid out, and printed the first edition of Wherefore, and spent hours figuring out how best to prepare True Believer for the offset printing process.

I’m also gearing up to do a new run of Tales from the Fragment, which is the most labor-intensive comic I’ve made to date. Each copy needs to be scored in 13 places, cut out by hand, and folded into its final form. What was I thinking when I made this thing?!

More progress by the numbers…

I’ve painted a boat a day for over a week (here’s a sampler)…

Sketched in 45 special edition comics (more samples)…

Pinned 150 buttons to bits of card stock…

Printed and packaged 9 oversized prints and three original pages…

AND cooked one backer dinner.

 Remember, kids: real cartoonists eat vegetables for breakfast.

To wrap up, I’m currently in conversation with Portland’s own Modified Printing about the run of FIGHT FOR YOUR ART t-shirts, which is getting exciting, and I’m finally moving ahead with quotes from various offset printers for True Believer.

PHEW.

Of course, to top it off I got mega sick this week, so bear with me while I try to stop looking like this:

And on that cheery note, I’ll see you all next week! Stay heathy, comics lovers.

Art, News

Still Truckin’

Slogging ever onward through the deluge of orders. Custom prints wrapped up today, limited posters signed and numbered, offset print run in the works…it never ends! Just put in orders for t-shirts this morning as well, so if you’re excited to get some True Believer swag you’re in for a treat. To keep the blog active in the meantime, here’s the latest commission I churned out for a backer who happens to be both a doctor and violinist! What strange and wonderful times we live in.

Art, News

Live Wire! Radio & Other Escapades

Busy times, everyone! I’ve got a recap of the last couple weeks (including the awesomeness that was VanCAF) up over on the Kickstarter blog, and since I’ll be bum deep in fulfilling rewards for the next lifetime I’m going to let that speak for itself for now.

In the meantime I’ve been buzzing around Portland getting my draw on — most recently with the excellent folks at Live Wire! Radio, who were kind enough to invite me over to live sketch one of their shows. For those of you unfamiliar with Live Wire!, they make audio-based delights to enrich the mind and tickle the fancy of any discerning radio listener. I strongly suggest you check them out. This particular taping featured rock star guests like Lizz Winstead, Ted Rall, Daniel H. Wilson, Mike Russell, Star Anna, and Kasey Anderson, as well as Faces For Radio Theater, the house team of actors and entertainers responsible for keeping things real on stage. And here, in all their messy glory from my much-the-worse-for-wear sketchbook, they are!

Sadly, this was the last show of the season, but I’m looking forward to more of these in September. Keep an eye out!

I’ll leave you all with a couple Vancouver-themed pages from my sketchbook…

Until next time!

Main, News

VanCAF is Here! (And I Am Still Terrible at Blogging.)

News Item #1: I’M IN CANADA! As promised, I’ll be tabling at the first ever Vancouver Comic Arts Festival tomorrow and Sunday at the Roundhouse Mews in downtown Vancouver, B.C. I’ve made a handy map so none of you is in the least bit confused about where I’ll be located.

SO MANY STARS.

My fabulous tablemates are Sam Alden and Ryan Dirks, and we’ll be flanked by The Shanahan Siblings and Tony Cliff! I’m super thrilled to be seated next to such a bundle of talent. There are a load of other exhibitors (90 in total) and several panels to check out, so stop by and say “Hello.”

Did I mention it’s FREE?

New Item #2: I have been seriously rubbish at making sure this blog stays updated with all the Kickstarter news of the last few weeks, but I promise there’s a big post coming up with all the juicy gossip. In brief, I managed to graduate without falling on my face, I’ve spent the past week addressing and shipping HUNDREDS of envelopes, and I’ll be reprinting True Believer (already?!) next week!

That’s all for now! I’ll leave you with this extremely attractive portrait of me stapling the first limited edition copy at Gann Brothers printing last week.

Delicious.

 

Main, News

24 Hours

You guys remember when I was all excited about having hit $3,000 on the Kickstarter? Well, I’ve been remiss in not posting on the blog these past weeks, so things have gotten a little out of control.

The campaign closes in 24 hours, right before I receive my diploma and graduate from college. Currently, the figures stand as follows:

– $11,000 in pledges

– 300 backers

– 730% funded

I’m kind of speechless at the moment, but I hope you can glean some sense of my mood from the following sequence of images:

Thank you all for chipping in and making this such an extraordinary experience. I’ll be sure to post something a little more eloquent after things settle down next week, but for now I am full of gratitude and sunshine. Keep being your amazing selves.

Art, Main, News

Portrait Sketches – Spring 2012

The semester is almost over, which means it’s time to throw the fruits of my classtime labor up on the Internet for all to see. I was feeling frustrated with my ability to capture good likenesses of people, so for the last three months I’ve been drawing students from two of my conferences at Reed. Here’s the compiled batch of them.

In other news, for those of you following the progress of the Kickstarter campaign, things have gone through the roof. We hit our fundraising goal in just FIVE HOURS, and then kept on climbing.

2 Hours In

 

24 Hours In

With such extraordinary results, I’ve had to rethink my goals for the campaign. It’s looking like the excess funds will go towards a brand new, long-form project, which is really thrilling. Expect an update on that soon.

For now, to everyone who has spread the word, chipped in, and helped fuel the stratospheric success of this project:

I can’t thank you enough. Let’s make the remaining time even more amazing.

Main, News

Off to the Races!

Ladies and Gents, the True Believer Kickstarter Page is Officially LIVE!

I have been overwhelmed by the support and enthusiasm I’ve received from you all so far, and now it’s time to translate that hype into action. Check out the campaign, make a pledge (even $1 helps, and nets you a shoutout right here on the blog!), or, if you’re down and out, simply share the project with friends. You can talk about it, Tweet it, Tumblr it — whatever floats your boat. The more people we can reach, the less everyone needs to chip in in order for us to make it over the $1,500 mark.

Thank you all so much. I can’t wait to see where this goes.

Main, News

True Believer Kickstarter

Prepare Yourselves

At 8am on Monday, April 23rd, the True Believer Kickstarter Campaign goes live. I know the video says Friday, but we were alerted to the fact that people have these things called “weekends” where they’re generally off enjoying the sunshine rather than trawling the web for worthy new projects to back. This makes sense to me now that I think about it.

So while we wait, a little about the campaign: I’ll be trying to raise $1,500 to print 200 copies of True Believer. The comic will be 36-pages, with full-color covers and interiors. 100 of those copies will feature limited edition two-color screen printed covers with French flaps by Matt Davison of Dueltone Printing. Aside from pre-ordering copies of the comic, I’ve included a number of Kickstarter-exclusive rewards that include handwritten postcards, custom sketches, limited edition prints, and even dinners and studio tours with yours truly.

So what does this mean? We’ve got two days to get the word out as widely as possible. You can share posts about the project with friends on Facebook, point people to the Facebook fan page so they can stay in the loop (facebook.com/Baggywrinkles), plug the project on Twitter as #truebeliever (you can find me under @Lubellwoo), follow me on Tumblr (tumblr.com/lucybellwood), or let me know if you have suggestions for media sources to contact with the press release.

I’m so thankful to all of you who have expressed your enthusiasm and support for this project so far. I can’t tell you how excited I am to get this thing into your hands.

Now let’s DO THIS!