Author: Lucy Bellwood

Main, News

Baggywrinkles 1 & 2 Now Available Online! (Fo’ free)

If you’ve been out there itching to show your friends the magic of Baggywrinkles without having to buy tangible copies of the comic, then boy howdy is this the post for you! I’ve just made both issues available online in their entirety because I love you all and really, it’s about time.

Furthermore, the amazing Joe Follansbee (author of the Fyddeye Guide to America’s Maritime History) recently put up an interview with yours truly on his site! To learn more about how I got involved in all this sailing and comics stuff in the first place, check it out over here.

I had a wonderful (but brief) trip out to see the Lady Washington and Hawaiian Chieftain this past weekend in Oxnard, CA. We had a lovely breeze for our three-hour sail, and it was a huge treat to be aloft and out on the water after so much time away.

Finally, I’ll be returning to Portland this weekend to reprint both issues of Baggywrinkles and make a bundle of new buttons. If you’d like to buy buttons on their own to distribute to nautical friends or decorate your own peacoat/ditty bag/fisherman’s hat, they’ll be available in the store next week in packs of three for two bucks (plus shipping).

That’s it from me. I’ll see you all in a week!

Art, Main

My Grandmother’s Beast (Part 1)

First off, happy festive season to all you blog-following types. It’s been a sunny one down here in California, but soon enough I’ll be back in the Pacific Northwest slogging away at the drawing board.

In the meantime, I’ve been remiss about getting these files optimized for the web, but here, at last, is my most recent project! This was a challenging story to tackle, since it deals with my grandmother’s battle with Alzheimer’s. I wanted to attempt a full-color rendering technique and practice my watercolor skills (still woefully lacking) while sticking to a relatively simple page layout. I believe the result is more illustrated story than comic, but it was a learning experience nonetheless. I’ll post the story in four updates of a few pages each, since they’re so minimal. Here’s the first!

News

Freedom (from school), Censorship (on the Internet), and Everything Inbetween

Exactly eight minutes ago I sent in my last paper of the semester. I’m officially done with school for the next five weeks, and boy howdy does that ever mean it’s time to post some comics. Thank you all for hanging around as I’ve blundered through the last of my classes.

However, before I can post more comics, I wanted to make a brief post about something that will impact every single person viewing this page (or checking their email, or reading the news online, or promoting their webcomic, or blogging about their travels).

The ████ of the ████████ █████ in ███████. ████ ████████ ██████████!

Oh, wait. You can’t see that? Yeah. Here’s the problem. The Stop Online Piracy Act (otherwise known as SOPA) will be going through the House Judiciary Committee in the next couple of days. For those of you who aren’t familiar with SOPA, it will essentially destroy every trace of the Internet as we know it now. The Act gives any corporation and the US government the power to censor the Internet. To see the uncensored text, and to do your bit to make sure that this thing never sees the light of day, please take a second to hit the big ol’ button below:

Uncensor This

I not normally a big fan of promoting stuff like this through my personal sites, but this thing is important. It’s crucial. And I’m going to do my damnedest to make sure it doesn’t impact the way I express myself, whether through comics or anything else, via the net.

Thanks, everyone. Stay tuned for more frequent updates, a couple interviews, and some exciting news about next year!

Main, News

Wherefore Show Opening!

Exciting news, dudes! The first 12 pages of Wherefore, the graphic novel I embarked on over the summer, will be in a show opening this Thursday at Reed College!

The shindig goes down at 4:30 pm in the Art Building (for those of you not from the Reed Community, enter in the East Parking Lot (SE 36thish and Woodstock) and head for the blue-roofed building in the NE corner of the lot), and the work will stay up another week or two. The exhibition will include pages from the original script, sketches, studies, penciled pages, and the final inked product, offering a complete overview of my process. I’ll be giving a brief presentation about the creation of the work around 4:45 and it would be excellent to see your smiling faces there. I haven’t yet decided how to go about posting the pages on the web (if at all), so this might be your only chance to see them for a while.

The project was made possible by the Kaspar T. Locher Summer Creative Scholarship, which goes out to four Reed students every Spring. The other three recipients will also be presenting work, so if you make it you can also look forward to awesome paintings, poetry, and a documentary shot in Peru. Cool stuff all around.

That’s all from me for now. Hope to see you all this Thursday!