The online home of Adventure Cartoonist Lucy Bellwood
Someone’s inking a comic! 
Also: taught a comics workshop at Reed this evening that went super well! Had an awesome group of students and even though I know I probably talked too fast, they seemed to dig it. Looking forward to showing the collaborative comic we came up with. Good stuff!
Planted 80 spring and summer bulbs in the garden yesterday. Happy.
Look! More goodies!
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.
NOT DEAD. STILL HERE.
Don’t believe me? Then have a full photo walkthrough of my major project for last semester’s Book Arts class! Untitled, Oct. 10th is a rendition of a poem by my dear friend Hallie McPherson (whose insanely powerful work can be found on her blog), illustrated, designed, hand-printed, and bound by yours truly. The project was a fantastic opportunity to delve further into letterpress, since I had to turn all my illustrations into polymer plates for printing, as well as setting all the type by hand and devising a new stitch for the binding that wouldn’t obscure the type. The process was incredibly labor intensive (both the paper and the covers were all dyed by hand) and I still have 4 more editions to bind, though the printing is thankfully done. All in all, I’m really happy with it, and doubly so that the poet now has a copy of her own, so I can finally splash it all over the internet!
[slideshow]
A more detailed description of the process will be up on the Bookmaking page by the end of the week, so if you’re interested in any of that feel free to check back on Sunday for goodies — and throughout next week for all the work that I haven’t had a chance to photograph yet! Yippee!
Who’s got two thumbs, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and is finally fucking done with finals for the year?
THIS GIRL.
Expect more updates now that there’s actually time for that sort of thing. The time is upon us for drawing and scanning and generally having a nice time of it. Woo!
To start the deluge, here’s a quick cover I created for the collection of IPRC collaborative comics.
We had our last critique session on Monday, with a visit from the extraordinarily talented Craig Thompson (!!!) and his awesome girlfriend, who works as an editor at Dark Horse. Getting to glimpse the phenomenal quantity of work that Craig produces was truly inspiring (and kind of terrifying) and seeing original inks for iconic pages from Blankets was akin to a religious experience. Also: Holy goodness, Habibi. That book’s going to be amazing.
Basically: There are some goddamn brilliant artists at work out there today.
My goal for the final was to complete the pencils for the next issue of Baggywrinkles, which I managed in the nick of time. The mere fact that I was putting aside academic work because comics had mentally taken a position of greater importance was thrilling, and led to some work that I’m super proud of. I’ll scan pages individually as next week rolls around so you can see how they changed from the thumbnails. Feedback from the class proved exceptionally helpful, and I think the final product is really going to benefit as a result.
For now, here’s a quick photo from the workbench:
Until soon!
More on the backlog of things I’ve been doing in the past month! One of our recent assignments was to illustrate a script written by one of the students in the prose class. I was fortunate enough to get paired with Michael Heald, a very talented writer who nonetheless had the merciful impulse to keep his script short and sweet. I am forever in his debt.
Heed no rumors of my demise, Internet. It’s just that glorious time of year known as “Finals,” and I have been a very busy bee. To prove that I am not just bluffing about this, and that even in the heat of papers and exams, I am still finding time for comics, here’s a very messy collection of thumbnails for Baggywrinkles Vol. 2, which will be penciled (come hell or high water) by the 13th, inked over winter break, and printed in time for Stumptown! Excitement abounds.
As time permits, I’ll also be rounding up photos of the book I illustrated, typeset, and printed this past month, featuring a poem by the insanely talented Hallie McPherson. The IPRC program has also had me hard a work on various assignments, of which there will be more evidence later.
For now, enjoy some nautical sneak peak material!
(Oh, and for those of you who care about layout and page spreads and that sort of thing, it’s worth noting that I was dumb when I started drawing this in my sketchbook and didn’t lay out the pages to reflect their appearance in the final printed pamphlet. Thus, pages 1 and 8 will appear on their own, and 2/3, 4/5, and 6/7 will be spreads.)
Less smudgy versions to follow as I get these onto Bristol!
It’s been a long haul, folks, but here we are:
I don’t want to contemplate how much time I’ve spent folding and punching and sewing this week, but the net result is 100 copies of my very first minicomic ready to be flung into your waiting arms — and I have to say, it looks pretty awesome. 3 bucks gets you 8 pages of nautically-themed goodness on attractive paper with a handsome cover and hand-stitched binding.
The next mountain? VOLUME TWOOOOOOO!
(…and a crazy letterpress edition of a friend’s poetry, several smaller comics about mythology and my colossal clumsiness, and a proposed project dealing with displacement and the dual citizen experience.)
STAY TUNED!
Well, as a reward for having laid out Baggywrinkles at long last, the Universe decided to bless me with the magical gift of a Facet Joint Syndrome flare-up last week. The details are unimportant, aside from that fact that it involved lots of pain. Fortunately, thanks to the magic of modern medicine, I’m slowly recovering motion in my neck — just in time for my trip to California! So, of course, printing will be slightly delayed. Again. *sigh*
The compensate, here’s a comic! This week’s IPRC assignment was to create a silent how-to comic in 9 panels. I chose a knot, of course, because who doesn’t love knots? Communists. That’s who.
Wow. Apologies for all the photos in this post, but there didn’t seem to be a better way to convey all this. Thank goodness for WordPress slideshows.
So here, in its entirety, is Tales from the Fragment. The first part of the slideshow is a walkthrough of the final product. Each new image corresponds to a folding out of one of the tabs or panels, if that makes any sense. The rest of the shots are all production related because, let’s face it, there’s something mesmerizing about seeing your work duplicated. Also: black toner hands of DOOM. It took forever to scrub that shit off.
There are few things that needed tweaking, spacing-wise, which will be corrected when I print a second run to (shh) sell through the site. For now, though, those copies will be going to the other members of the class.
[slideshow]
And as if that weren’t enough, I shirked academic duties today in order to stop being a wuss and finish laying out Baggywrinkles #1! The covers look amazing and I can’t wait to get it all assembled in the next few days. I’ll be sure to start squealing with glee as soon as it’s up for purchasing in the Emporium. Until then, no running with scissors!
