Author: Lucy Bellwood
As I work on compiling all the color and ink files today, I thought I’d throw up a finished preview page so you guys can get a feel for how things are shaping up. More to come soon!
Also, this happened.
Oh man, dudes. Things are heating up.
In the final few weeks before True Believer hits the printers, I’ll be coloring up a storm, making buttons, designing business cards, investigating screen printing, and also trying to format that other weird written thesis thing I was supposed to have written by now. Just kidding. I wrote it. Mostly. But that guy needs to go into LaTeX and boy howdy I do not know how to work that program yet. Still, baby steps.
I thought I’d drop a few images in here from the next stage in the process. You can see the whole beast on the wall here:
Which I will now proceed to color using this completely delightful Indigo I picked up at the art store this week.
Here are a few tests:
And here’s a page of ink lines printed at 10% grey with watercolor shading:
I’ll be scanning these in and merging them with the digitized line art to create the final images, which should look something like this:
I can’t tell you how excited I am to pull all this stuff together. The coloring will go much MUCH faster than the inking (thank God), so hopefully I’ll blow through 31 pages in the next week and get this thing printed! In the meantime, I’ve got a few illustrations to stick up in the coming days, as well as a requested post about my perspective on the art/writing divide in comics.
Stay tuned!
In other news, I apparently can’t decide on which Instagram filter I like best.
A little bit of pre-comic art to whet your appetites. This is the image that will be appearing on the promo cards for my thesis show, where I’ll be displaying original pages from True Believer! I’ll also have copies of the comic for sale in the gallery. If you’re in the Portland area, keep your ears peeled for dates and times.
And now…BACK TO INKING!
More arts! A while back I did an illustration for folks over at the Reed College Annual Fund. They’ve just launched a fundraising campaign to get recently-graduated alumni to donate to the college. This is what I came up with for their branding:
If you look closely in there you can spot a number of Reed-related gags (I think 6 in total). See if you can find them all!
Has this image compelled you to fling money at my alma mater? Great! You can check out the campaign here.
Stay tuned for some preview art from True Believer later this week as I wrestle with the second half of the inking process!
Too busy for words, but here’s some quick illustration work to be going on with!
So, you guys may’ve noticed that things have been a little quiet here on the comics front. Fear not! Things are happening and this post will hopefully clear up a few questions about where my energy’s going these days and when you can expect to see some new sequential work.
I’m currently neck deep in my 34-page thesis comic (tentatively titled “True Believer”), which should be out in time for Stumptown this year. I wrapped up the pencils last week after a grueling page-a-day push through February, and am now taking the opportunity for a little downtime over Spring Break. I’ll begin inking in the next few days, then do color, layout, and printing in April. This is, of course, on top of full-time school commitments and a few freelance jobs, so there may be delays, but the progress in February was really encouraging. I’ll be posting some more pictures as I start inking so you can get a sense of what it’ll look like.
In the meantime, the blog will be featuring (surprise, surprise) more illustrations! I’m making the shift from my little Pentel Pocket Brush to the real deal Windsor & Newton Series 7 for this project, so I’m trying to do as much freelance work as possible with the W&N to get the feel of it.
Thanks for hanging in there, everyone! I’m getting really excited to share this new work with you. So excited, in fact, that I’ve taken to walking around like this:
And with that burst of absurdism, I bid you adieu.
I know, I know. I said this was going to be done long ago, but the wait is finally over! You can now purchase Baggywrinkles-related buttons to confirm your place at the head of the seafaring cartoonists’ community.
Choose three buttons from the image below and they will miraculously appear on your doorstep in short order.
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Single Button Pack (3 buttons)…$2.00 + Shipping
[There’ll be a field where you can specify which buttons you’d like before you complete checkout!]
The Whole Shebang (9 buttons and a doodle)…$5.00 + Shipping
