autobio comics – Lucy Bellwood

Hourly Comic Day 2022

Hourly Comic Day is an annual tradition in the comics community where folks set out to draw a panel (or two, or three) for every hour they’re awake on February 1st.

It took me a couple weeks to get through finishing my pages from this year because it was a) hard to fit in inking and watercoloring and posting around caregiving, but also b) just exhausting to deal with emotionally. Still: I’m so glad I did it. In 2021 I was right on the cusp of uprooting my life in Portland to move down to Ojai and look after my dad. Now I get to have a record of what the rhythm of these days has been like, and I’m sure I’m going to appreciate it more and more as time goes on.

There’s more to say but I’ve been formatting and posting these pages in various ways all day as I spread them across my internet haunts and I am wiped, so I’ll just get on with sharing them. If you’re finding this through an RSS reader, be warned that the gallery won’t work! Ya gotta click through to read it easily. (Also! An accessible edition with panel by panel alt text is available here thanks to a collaboration with various folks from the Friends of the Space Gnome Discord server. Blessed be their name.)

You can read previous Hourly Comic Day installments at the following links: 2021, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011.

News

100 Demon Dialogues Tour: Leg 2

Hi everyone!

I’m back from a frankly ridiculous month of touring across the Midwest and down the East Coast, which means it’s time to announce the dates for Leg 2 of the 100 Demon Dialogues Tour. But first, some stats about Leg 1:

PRETTY HECKIN’ COOL, RIGHT? I feel very accomplished. Also very tired. Turns out moving house every 1.8 days will do that to you. Check out these lovely smiling faces from the many bookstores, comic shops, and venues I visited in June:

I was especially grateful to how many people participated in my experimental Guest Book idea, where folks filled out name tags about what their demons said to them. Here’s a selection:

Even though the resultant volume is pretty heavy reading, my hope is that people found it helpful to see visual proof that they weren’t alone in their fears. We can get through this together.

If you’re on the West Coast or hanging around the Southwest, I’ve got a slew of stops for the next few months right here (also a bonus visit to the UK and back to the East Coast for a couple comics festivals):

Here are those stops with RSVP links, in case you’d like to invite any local friends to tag along:

826 Valencia‘s Pirate Supply Store (with special guests Rose Eveleth, Molly McLeod, and Anxy Magazine) – 6:30-9pm, July 25th, San Francisco, CA
Local Color – 6:30pm, July 28th, San Jose, CA (followed by Mighty Mike McGee’s Spelling Bee/r!)
Bart’s Books (Hometown Shindig, come meet my adorable parents) – 7-9:30pm, August 3rd, Ojai, CA
Other Books – 6-8:30pm, August 12th, Los Angeles, CA
[Venue Forthcoming] – August 16th, San Diego, CA
San Diego Writers, Ink: Generative Demon Workshop – [Event Page Up Soon], August 17th, San Diego, CA
BookPeople – August 20th, 7pm, Austin, TX
[Colorado: TBA for Boulder/Denver]
Thought Bubble Festival – September 22nd & 23rd, Leeds, England
MICE – October 20th & 21st, Cambridge, MA

Thanks for keeping up with this wild and crazy endeavor! I’m looking forward to visiting some new places and returning to old haunts over the next few months.

A note on actually PURCHASING copies of 100 Demon Dialogues:

Due to Some Nonsense, the official in-store release date for 100 Demon Dialogues got pushed out to July 19th (although I heard some comic shops got their copies this week). If you’d like to encourage friends and family to buy a copy in the meantime, you can get both soft and hardcover editions (and Demon Plushies, stickers, postcards, and prints) from my own online shop. This is actually the best place to send folks, because more of the profit goes back into supporting my work, but I also want everyone to be able to get the book from their local shops if they so choose. Keep your eyes out next week for wider availability in stores!

Hope to see you on the road,

Comics

Hourly Comic Day 2017

Hey friends! I’ve got a new comic for you today:

This is my seventh year doing Hourly Comic Day, and it’s really such a delightful thing. For those that aren’t familiar: it’s a global art project where folks draw a panel for every hour they’re awake on February 1st. It’s a wonderful way to discover new artists, take a look at what everyone’s up to, and chronicle a day out of each year. This year I just happened to be wrapping up a couple weeks in Hawai’i, so there’s a bunch of tropical escapades in here.

You can read the whole comic over here on Medium. I love having these annual visual check-ins that remind me of where I’ve been every February since I was a junior in college—especially if this tropical trend continues. Wonder where I’ll be in 2018…

Did any of you participate? I try not to read people’s till I’ve posted my own, since it wigs me out and I get self-conscious, but now I am FREEEEEE. Link me to your entries in the comments or on Twitter.

You can also read all my previous years’ entries here: 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, and 2011!

News

T-1 Week to the Baggywrinkles Kickstarter!

Ahoy, friends! I am so, so excited to announce that Baggywrinkles: A Lubber’s Guide to Life at Sea will be hitting Kickstarter July 20th.

What is Baggywrinkles, you ask? Why, it’s my educational, autobiographical comic series about living aboard an 18th century tall ship! You can read the first five issues online for free, and check out new content from the series every week on Patreon. I’ve been working on these short stories intermittently since 2010, and I’m finally ready to bring the whole bundle together under one cover.

So next Monday (July 20th) I’m launching a campaign to fund the printing of a 100-page, 6×9″ softcover collection featuring Issues 1-5, the never-before-seen-in-print Issue 6 (all about the history of scurvy), and a host of other exclusive goodies. Take a look at the finished cover design!

I’ve been hard at work with a team of stellar professionals to make this collection something you’ll all be proud to own—we’re talking French Flaps, patterned endpapers, high-quality matte paper stock, and deliciously thick covers.

Tiling-Background — So pattern. Very endpaper. Such nautical.

I’ve also got some really neat extra rewards. Like remember this giant guide to sailors’ tattoos I drew for the Vancouver Maritime Museum?

Well, I’m gonna turn it into a super fancy two-color, limited edition letterpress print in collaboration with the fine folks at Twin Ravens Press in Eugene, OR! And there’s more extra rewards to come.

This post is your official warning to watch this space (or follow me on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and Instagram) for the campaign launch next week, and to keep your eyes peeled because I’ve got a very special stretch goal that I’ll be announcing once the book goes live.

I can’t wait to share more with you—stay tuned!

Comics

New Comic: Salt Soap

This is a short piece that I’ve been meaning to draw for a few years now—glad to finally have it finished. You can find it in print in Irene #6 later this year. Enjoy!

If you enjoyed the comic and want to see more, why not chip in a couple bucks a month on Patreon? Your support keeps me drawing—thanks!

Comics

Hourly Comic Day 2015

It’s that time of year again, folks. 2015 Hourly Comics are here! Be warned there are mild boobs and sorta-I-guess spoilers if you’re committed to never knowing how Moby Dick ends? That’s all the warning you’re getting though.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the premise of this exercise, on February 1st cartoonists around the world attempt to draw a panel (or series of panels) for every hour they’re awake. The result is a tiny snapshot of everyone’s lives, which is generally a ton of fun. Google around and you should be able to find comics from many great creators. I’d recommend Eleanor Davis and Boum to start.

If you’d like to see previous HCD efforts, here’s 2014, 2013, 2012, and (gulp) 2011. It’s amazing to see how much my art’s changed year to year. My skills are improving but I’m also getting…tighter? More static somehow? Next year I’d like to draw straight to ink and loosen up a little—maybe work in something larger than my sketchbook to keep things flowing. Also it’s physically painful to me that these are uncolored pages. Nrgh, perfectionist tendencies.

ANYWAY. Comics. Have at ’em!

Comics

New Comic: Flip the Switch

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.

Comics

Hourly Comic Day 2014

Another year, another edition of Hourly Comic Day! For those of you who aren’t familiar, cartoonists all over the world draw a panel or short comic for every hour they’re awake on February 1st. It’s a fun way to see how folks spend their time (spoilers: mostly drawing comics) and churn out a finished thing in a relatively short period.

These are a couple days late, ’cause I didn’t have access to a scanner over the weekend, but I did manage to finish all the drawing on Feb. 1st. Wish I’d had time to color ’em too, but that’s the nature of the game. Also: it has been traditional (see HCD 2013 and 2012) for me to eat salami on February 1st — I have no idea why — but by the time I realized this year it was too late. Shame.

News

Grand Adventure: Print Edition Pre-Orders

GrandPress — Stats: 28 pages, full color, 5.5″ x 7″, $10.

The wait is over! I stopped by ColorHaus this morning to check out the proofs for Grand Adventure, and I can safely say these comics are going to rock your socks off. The printers have done a fantastic job replicating the watercolor and picking out papers that really make the art shine. Couldn’t be happier.

If you haven’t heard, Grand Adventure is my daily diary comic from a three-week rafting trip through the entirety of the Grand Canyon. I recounted the day’s activities each night we were on the river, generally painting the pages before breakfast the following morning. It was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of trip, and I’m really happy I decided to document it like this.

I’ll begin shipping copies of the comic November 7th, but you can pre-order one today to beat the rush. Have at ’em!

Main

Grand Adventure — Part 3

Here it is, friends: the final installment of Canyon Comics! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading along and experiencing the adventure secondhand — it’s been great to share it all with you. You can now find the whole thing in sequence on the Other Comics page for easy access.

I’ll be rescanning all these pages on the fancy new watercolor scanner at Periscope in the next few weeks so the print edition will really shine. I’m looking forward to making some quality full-color minis for you all.