Avatar Commission

After doing a series of lewd comics for the Portland Opera last year, resident opera historian Bob Kingston approached me with an intriguing avatar project. I’ve had a lot of fun incorporating all his hobbies and professional hats into this illustration over the past couple weeks. Can you guess what they all are?

BobColors_Tweaked

Also: since I keep promising (and failing) to do some kind of in-depth process post, I thought I’d compromise by stringing together the various stages of this project into a single image. You can see the alterations throughout the design process below, from thumbnails to inks to washes to color! We toyed with the idea of including text, but eventually decided that the image worked better on its own.

Bob-Process

Sea Creature Commissions

Wrapped up this little triptych of sea creatures last week for a client in Seattle. They were so much fun to paint! I really enjoy working with vibrant watercolors. He asked for a layout where they could hang staggered on a vertical plane, so I overlapped the elements from each one to give them a little continuity. I couldn’t really get them to match up perfectly in the WordPress interface, but this is close.

If you’re interested in a small watercolor commission of your own, I currently have some slots available. Get in touch at lucypcbellwood[at]gmail[dot]com for more info!

JellyWebFishWeb

OctopusWeb

Periscope Portrait

I’m sad to report that my internship at Periscope Studio officially came to a close on February 27th. It was an amazing four and a half months, but I’m not going to write too much about what being there meant to me. Not only because I’ll get all mushy and start crying on you guys, but also because…

I’M NOT GOING ANYWHERE! That’s right. I know. I don’t believe it myself, but it’s true. I get to stay. At Periscope. For the foreseeable future. (I’m trying to use real words to talk about this rather than just replacing every letter in this sentence with an exclamation point, can you tell?)

Now, I’m only a lowly Studio Assistant, but it means I’ll continue to work alongside an incredible group of dedicated, powerhouse artists who inspire me to improve every day. If I have to run blogs and scan pages and help with shipping to make that happen, I’m more than happy to do so.

ANYWAY. That’s some of the big news I’ve been sitting on for a while. And boy howdy am I excited about it.

To thank everyone at the Studio for being so welcoming and helpful, I spent part of last week drawing up this group portrait of all the members. Ain’t they a studly bunch?

periscope

I’ll be away in California for the next three weeks helping out with a family medical situation, but I hope to keep you all abreast of what’s on the drawing table during that time. (And I should note that any orders you place in the store while I’m gone won’t ship until I return on April 3rd! Thanks for being patient.)

So long for now!

Vancouver Maritime Museum Installation

Some of you may recall I was doing some illustration work for the Vancouver Maritime Museum last month. Their Art of the Sailor exhibit opened this week, and Alina Anghel (of the Vancouver Trolley Company Blog) was kind enough to snap a photo of my giant poster on the wall!

sailor ink FINAL

 The exhibit runs through October, so I’m really excited to see it in person when I visit for VanCAF in May. In the meantime, if you’re in the Vancouver area, be sure to stop in and check it out! There are a ton of educational and entertaining elements involved — including beautiful pieces of scrimshaw and many photographs of actual sailors showing off their ink. To learn more, check out this in-depth article on The Tyee blog.

I’m also excited to announce that the Museum will be stocking all three issues of Baggywrinkles in their store. There have been some delays, so they might not arrive for a week or two, but hopefully Vancouverites can pick up copies on site before too long.

More art to come soon!

Assorted Doings

Hello everyone!

Still recovering from Emerald City over here, but I’m excited to say that I’m well into inking my story for Symbolia Magazine, which will basically be my full-time job for the next few weeks. Things will be quiet while I’m working on that, but afterwards it’ll be on to Baggywrinkles #4 and beyond! I’ll post previews as I can.

In other news, blogger Greg Burgas picked up a copy of True Believer at the convention, and was kind enough to give it a very thorough review on Comic Book Resources this week. Here’s a teaser:

“[Death can] become hackneyed, the way a writer approaches it, but Bellwood manages to let the emotions come out without going too far and getting into mawkishness […] As we move through the book, it becomes more intense and more personal, in a way that grabs the reader and doesn’t let go […] ‘True Believer’ is an intense work that has a lot going on in it, and Bellwood transitions easily between many different moods.”

What a guy! You can read the whole thing here.

For those of you who stopped by, thanks for saying hello! To those who couldn’t make it, never fear. I’ll be at tabling at the Stumptown Comics Fest next month with all these goodies and more.

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When we met, Greg was also quite taken with the table’s  squeaky walrus, so here’s the ridiculous photo he took of my cheesiest convention face.

Aaaaand finally, Grace Allison did a wonderful marker coloring demo at Periscope yesterday, so here’s the portrait I whipped up to practice on (we only had super skinny scraps of Bristol. Can you tell?).

Skinny

Until next time, friends!