The online home of Adventure Cartoonist Lucy Bellwood
So a while back I hinted that I’d soon be contributing some work to The Nib, Matt Bors’s comics portal over on Medium.com. That day has finally come! I went to check out Float On, the nation’s largest sensory deprivation tank center, and made you a whole comic about it. If you’ve ever wondered what happens to a work-addled freelancer’s brain when you cut off all its access to outside information and stimuli for 90 minutes, this one’s for you.
Click through to read the whole story on The Nib.
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!
Yes! It’s here! Convention season! Madness! Excitement! Comics! Emerald City Comicon, the Pacific Northwest’s biggest comics event, is THIS WEEKEND and I want YOU to come out and say hello. 
The show runs all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at the Washington State Convention Center. Hours are 10-7 Friday and Saturday, and 10-5 Sunday. Also: event tickets are sold out! So I guess this is really a post for those of you who are already planning to be there. You can find me tabling with a slew of folks from Periscope Studio at Table Island 1214 (see the ginormo map at left) with my shiny new swallow postcards, a brand new issue of Cartozia Tales (#3! At last!), print editions of Grand Adventure, the full suite of Baggywrinkles comics, and many other goodies. I’ll also be on two (yes, TWO!) panels: On Saturday: It’s NOT Too Dangerous To Go Alone: Finding the courage to do it yourself “How long have you been thinking about starting that comic, game, or band? Feel scared? Join the club! Just don’t let it stop you. Learn how navigate through self-doubt, motivational issues & lack of know-how on your way to victory!” With Erika Moen, Dylan Meconis, Angela Webber, and Kenna Conklin Room: HALL C (610) Time: 11:20AM – 12:10PM And on Sunday: Freelance Like a Rock Star “Do you fantasize about being self-employed but you just don’t even know where to start? Shh, shh, little friend, no more tears – this group of seasoned pros is here to share their hard-won knowledge with you so you can freelance like a rock star, too.” With Matt Bors, Erika Moen, Steve Lieber, and Dylan Meconis Room: 2B Time: 4:00PM – 4:50PM See you in Seattle, friends!
So this is something of a new game for me: in a few weeks I’ll be speaking on a panel of creators as part of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) run by MakingComics.com. The CEO, Patrick Yurick, was actually at CCS the same summer I went through my Comics Conversion and started doing this stuff for living, so it’s pretty neat to see where the two of us have ended up after four years.
The course is free and open to the public, with a pretty minimal time commitment and a rockstar line-up of creators ready to talk about four key topics as each week of the course goes by. It’s like a panel discussion where you can log in and ask questions in real time. The course is perfect for those of you looking to launch a comic or learn more about the process of going from idea to finished product.
Here’s the flier for the week I’ll be participating:
Look at all those cool dudes! We’re gonna get technical up in this business — motivational techniques, time management, maintaining momentum oooooh yeahhhhh. However! To attend the talk you’ll need to register for the course (again: FREE) before this Saturday. If you’d like to learn more before you register, or take a gander at the other weeks’ guests, click here — there’s a great FAQ about how the MOOC is structured and run.
Hope to see you online April 9th! And be sure to register this weekend to participate.
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.
Had a lot of fun illustrating this exclusive postcard for the Vancouver Comic Arts Festival last week. It’s funny how certain pieces really showcase the concept that “Everything’s a Remix”. There are a couple influences here that I’d feel remiss not pointing out: the concept for this piece is totally a spin on a shoot my photographer friend Peter Chee did a couple years ago. His original subject, my pal Tess Myers, is a metalworker, so the halo featured all her tools. I loved that photo and have always wanted to do something similar for illustration or comics.
The second influence is definitely Erika Moen’s saintly portraits, though they have the benefit of real gold leaf (shiny!). I love Erika’s comics, but I’ve also been really inspired by her mixed media collage illustrations. I have all this fancy paper at home that I never really play around with anymore (I used to be more of a book arts gal), so this was an excuse to try something a little more illustrative.
Anyway, keep an eye out for these at VanCAF 2014! I’ll be exhibiting there in May.
Last weekend I was super thrilled to visit the Oregon Children’s Theater to live sketch their production of Zombie in Love — a world premier musical based on the children’s book written by Kelly DiPucchio and illustrated by Scott Campbell.
OCT invited Mike Russell and I to come draw one of the performances, and it turns out they also invited Scott Cambell himself to visit and see the show! Watching all the kids in the audience just mob him to get autographs in their zombie books after the show was super cool, as was watching their eyes widen while Mike drew for them.
I also got to show my sketches to Scott, which was a big thrill considering I’ve been reading his stuff since I was in middle school. The first time I met Scott I was a little babby comics fan at the Stumptown Comics Fest in 2009, and somehow here I am five years later introducing myself as a cartoonist. It is unreal.
So not only did I get to say hello to Scott, but he also brought Graham Annable (another longtime inspiration) along for the ride, so I got to meet him and hear about his upcoming feature with LAIKA (The Boxtrolls!) and see his beautiful live sketches as well. You can see Pat Moran’s lovely photos from the meet and greet after the show right here, and Mike Russell’s hilarious live sketches right here.
Aaand here are mine!
The show was totally charming — I even enjoyed the musical numbers, which usually aren’t my thing — and the actors were all astonishingly good. Also: so many groaner puns. It was great!
Thanks to OCT for inviting us. I look forward to seeing more of their productions this season!
At last! I’m so happy to finally share this story I drew for Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover last month (was it only last month?) for their all-ages, Eisner Award-winning series Bandette. The main issues of the comic have been interspersed with these short stories showcasing various supporting characters from the universe. I picked Commander Pippins — how could I not? — because his sideburns are fabulous and his mustache is vast and I have a soft spot for characters with silly names. Paul wrote this lovely script and I had a ton of fun bringing it to life.
Be sure to check out Bandette on Monkeybrain Comics, and read the rest of the Urchin Stories, drawn by various artists, right here.
In keeping with various artistic resolutions, I’ve been making an effort to drag myself back to figure drawing on a weekly basis this year. So far so (semi-)good! Here’s a selection of pieces from the last couple sessions:
I’ll try to upload batches of these periodically as I keep dragging myself in. It’s hard practice, but I’m really glad I’m going. Onward!
I was beyond stoked when I found out that our “fun bonus” feature for Cartozia Tales Issue 4 was going to be STICKER SHEETS. I go nuts for stickers — who doesn’t? So I spent all day Tuesday drawing this sheet of some of my favorite characters: a Philosopher Bird, a Mask Bear mask, Master Cyrus, Wick the Wind-up Man, Lila the Sprigster, a Tickle Crab, and Minnaig the Otter-girl, star of my most recent story for the series. They’re gonna be printed in little 5”x7” sheets and paired with a second batch of characters illustrated by my co-contributor Lupi McGinty.
I cannot wait to stick these all over everything I own.
Also: have a preview panel! This last weekend in Portland was all snow and chaos, so I took the opportunity to hunker down at home and churn out my story for Issue 4: The Rite Choice.
Where’s Minnaig going? Who knows.