Baggywrinkles – Lucy Bellwood

Tour Dates for LA and Beyond!

Hi friends!

Keeping you all updated with a few more confirmed tour stops on the great 100 Demon Dialogues Summer Experience.

Catch me this Sunday (August 12th) at 6pm at Other Books in Los Angeles for an intimate chat about the creation of 100 Demon Dialogues. Other Books is a wonderful shop in Boyle Heights that specializes in underrepresented voices and exploring notions of “the Other” in literature. They’ve got loads of zines, small press books, and rare finds. I think it’ll be a lovely night. RSVP here.

Looking ahead: I’m headed south to SAN DIEGO for not one, but TWO events later next week.

On Thursday, August 16th, I’m fulfilling a long-time dream of appearing at the Maritime Museum of San Diego for a free signing in the gift shop at 6pm, followed by a lecture inside the museum ON A REAL BOAT! Admission is $18 for adults (various discounts available) and gives you free reign of the many amazing vessels and exhibits until 9pm. Well worth the price of admission, I promise.

This tour stop will be more nautically-themed, since I haven’t been down to San Diego since Baggywrinkles came out. Expect discussion of scurvy, maritime history, and what I got up to when I crossed the Pacific Ocean on R/V Falkor. It’s gonna be GREAT.

Then on Friday, August 17th, I’ll be at San Diego Writers, Ink with my “Cohabiting with your Inner Critic” workshop. Learn more about that in this blog post or just snag tickets here.

Looking ahead, we’ve got stops in Austin, Boulder, England, and Cambridge (MA):

BookPeople – August 20th, 7pm, Austin, TX
Trident Booksellers & Cafe – August 22nd, 7pm, Boulder, CO
Thought Bubble Festival – September 22nd & 23rd, Leeds, England
MICE – October 20th & 21st, Cambridge, MA

It’s ALL HAPPENING! Hope to see you on the road.

News

Free Comic Book Day in the Bay Area

Hi friends!

Just a quick note to say that I’ll be stopping off in Berkeley, California this weekend for a Free Comic Book Day celebration on Saturday, May 6th at Tr!ckster, an amazing independent comic shop and art gallery. Here’s the details:

For the Free portion of Free Comic Book Day, I’ll be giving away BRAND NEW minicomic copies of Mappin’ the Floor, my oceanographic travelogue from a Pacific Ocean crossing with R/V Falkor and the Schmidt Ocean Institute! Supplies are limited, so these puppies will be first come, first serve.

I’ll also have copies of Baggywrinkles, A Life in Objects, and various adventurous travelogues for sale, plus my trusty squeaky shark for your squeaking pleasure. I hope to see you there! It should be a rollicking good time.

Conventions, News

Catch Me at MoCCA

Hi everyone!

Big news this week: I’m heading to New York for my first-ever appearance at the MoCCA Arts Festival this Saturday and Sunday.

You can find me in the Second Floor Lounge with the gang from Patreon, hawking copies of Baggywrinkles, gold-foil box sets from my 2016 100-Day Project, minicomic travelogues, and assorted treats. I’ll look something like this:

If you’re planning on stopping by, do come say hello. I’d love to see you.

Art, Illustration

Time-Lapse Boats

I had a ton of fun wrapping up these watercolor paintings for my top-tier backers on the Baggywrinkles Kickstarter last week. Here’s a look at the final lineup of paintings:

Clockwise from upper left, we’ve got El Galeon (hiding behind PDX YAR’s First Mate), L’Hermione, Brig Niagara, and Kalmar Nyckel (in disguise under a different paint job, for reasons outlined in this Tumblr post).

In the process of getting all of these done, I learned a bunch about making time-lapse videos, which you can check out below:

More fun with time-lapse video! Can anyone guess what ship this is? #tallship #illustration #inktober #timelapse #process #boatstuff

A post shared by Lucy Bellwood (@lubellwoo) on Oct 18, 2016 at 7:28pm PDT

Kalmar Nyckel in disguise! A full-rigged carrack of the 1600s for a Kickstarter backer. #watercolor #painting #tallship #artistsoninstagram #timelapse #speedpainting #pirates

A post shared by Lucy Bellwood (@lubellwoo) on Oct 19, 2016 at 12:41pm PDT

Tall ship too tall for time-lapse video format, news at eleven. #timelapse #illustration #watercolor #tallship #USSNiagara #artistsofinstagram

A post shared by Lucy Bellwood (@lubellwoo) on Oct 16, 2016 at 2:15pm PDT

And if you’re curious about the tools used for these projects, here’s a sneak peek at a post I put up for my supporters on Patreon all about my watercoloring setup:

I put up an informative essay each month about some aspect of my creative process, along with a load of other content for folks to read/watch/listen to/generally enjoy. I serious adore Patreon as a platform for making more of this work possible, so if you haven’t already checked it out, go take a peek! (There’s a lot of free stuff there, too, if you don’t want to commit to chucking some money my way each month.)

More news coming next week! Stay tuned.

News

Baggywrinkles Release Party in Portland This Week

Hold onto your halyards, Portland—we’re throwing a Baggywrinkles party this week! I’ve been counting down, and the day is growing closer…

Following last year’s fabulous Kickstarter campaign, Baggywrinkles: a Lubber’s Guide to Life at Sea is about to hit comic shops and bookstores around the world, so let’s celebrate the official release with a bit of rumbustification at Floating World Comics on September 1st from 6-10pm. Here are the details:

We will have: DRINKS (BOOZY AND NOT-SO-BOOZY)! SNACKS! SPARKLY NAUTICAL TEMPORARY TATTOOS! COPIES OF THE BOOK! PEOPLE IN COSTUME! ORIGINAL ART! ~~SCURVY~~!

Want to RSVP through Facebook? You can do that here!

If you got a copy of the book through Kickstarter and would like me to sign it, bring it along! I would love to give you a hug or a high five to say thanks for making this possible. If you can’t make the party, but would still like to get your hands on a copy of the book, you can order the softcover from me here.

Once again, the details:

WHO: Lucy Bellwood
WHAT: Baggywrinkles release party and art exhibit
WHEN: Thursday, September 1, 6-10pm
WHERE: Floating World Comics, 400 NW Couch St. Portland, Oregon

Hope to see you there, friends!

Comics, News

Baggywrinkles Available on ComiXology

If all this Baggywrinkles news has you itching to read the book before it officially hits shelves on September 9th, I have excellent news: the book is now available on ComiXology!

Big thanks to the team at ComiXology Submit for getting the book up and running on the site, and for giving it pride of place in the Indie New Releases section. We also got a lovely shout-out on Dave Carter’s Digital Comics Picks of the Week feature, alongside fabulous titles like Lumberjanes, Island, The Fix, and Howard the Duck! Thanks, Dave.

Buy the ebook edition here.

The Baggywrinkles East Coast Book Tour is still going strong, with three stops left on the docket. Here’s a reminder of those dates:

If you’re planning on heading to New York or D.C., be sure to RSVP and invite your friends on Facebook. Here’s the event page for Fantom Comics in D.C., and here’s the one for the South Street Seaport Museum in New York!

See you soon,

Lucy

News

East Coast Tour: June 4th-19th

What ho, friends! I come bearing exciting news today: the Baggywrinkles East Coast Tour Extravaganza is officially launching this week and I’ve got ALL THE TOUR DATES lined up and ready to share. Here’s the plan:

(Huge thanks to my pal Heather Cummings for helping with design and layout for all my tour graphics!)

As you can probably see above, I’ll be hitting tour stops in Portland, Mystic, Boston, DC, New York, and Ann Arbor over the next couple weeks. Some conventions, some book stores, some comic shops, and some MARITIME MUSEUMS (oh yes). It’s going to be a wild and crazy adventure and I really can’t wait to get out to see some maritime history and meet all you East Coast pals who I never get to hang out with!

Here are more details, listed by event:

Maine Comic Arts Festival (MeCAF) details. (I’ll also be appearing in the Iron Cartoonist event on Friday night!)
Bank Square Books event listing in Mystic, CT.
USS Constitution Museum in Boston, MA. I’ll be doing a reading in the Discovery Center at 1:30, then signing in the gift store from 2:30 till 4:30. More details here, Facebook event here.
Facebook event for signing at Fantom Comics in Washington, DC. (I hear rumors of a live shanty sing?! We’ll also have coloring sheets and temporary tattoos!)
South Street Seaport Museum in New York, Facebook event here.
Ann Arbor Comic Arts Festival (A2CAF, formerly Kids Read Comics!) details.

I’ll be bringing copies of Baggywrinkles: a Lubber’s Guide to Life at Sea to all these locations (not to mention postcards and other treats), and would love to sell you a copy/talk about boats/draw in whatever you have handy.

Not in the area? Still keen to pick up a copy of the book? Here’s a handy graphic you can convey to your local comic shop or book store to pre-order a copy.

I’ll be posting tour stop updates to Twitter all throughout the trip, so keep an eye out there if you’d like to help spread the word about upcoming events!

See you in Portland (the other one),

Lucy

Conventions, News

VanCAF this Weekend

Hey Vancouver, I’m heading your way this Saturday and Sunday for the loveliest comic arts festival on the West Coast: VanCAF!

You can find me at Table C11 with copies of my new book Baggywrinkles: a Lubber’s Guide to Life at Sea, along with maaaany other delightful goodies. Just look at these fresh, fresh books!

So delicious. You can also catch me on the following panels and live podcast recordings:

RE-WRITING HISTORY: RESEARCH & INVENTION IN HISTORICAL COMICS
Saturday May 21 4:00 PM – 4:45 PM
Hosted by Jonathon Dalton
Featuring Lucy Bellwood, Tony Cliff, Rachel Kahn, Steve LeCouilliard, Kris Sayer
From the stacks of the library (or the recesses of online journals) to the page, cartoonists plumb the depths of history for inspiration. In this panel, these cartoonists will discuss their methods – from research to brainstorming – for creating comics rich in, and inspired by, history.

And also:

SNEAKY DRAGON’S VERY TALL PODCAST
Saturday May 21 5:00 PM – 5:45 PM
Hosted by Ian Boothby & David Dedrick
Featuring Lucy Bellwood, James Lloyd
Join the Sneaky Dragon podcast’s David Dedrick (Totally Tintin) and Ian Boothby (The Simpsons comics and CBC’s The Irrelevant Show) as they welcome cartoonists Lucy Bellwood (Baggywrinkles) and James Lloyd (Futurama comics), discussing everything from tall tales and tall ships to the work habits of fairly tall cartoonists.

It’s gonna be a hoot! I can’t wait to see you all there. If you’d like a cheat sheet, just refer to this handy-dandy guide:

Conventions, News

TCAF this Weekend: Panels, Placement, Debut News & More

There is a fabled holiday in the East, my friends. A weekend celebration of comics and friendship SO GREAT, SO VAST it has been known to BLOT OUT THE SUN. Under a single roof one may find the grandest collection of independent comics practitioners in the Western Hemisphere. There is where friendships are forged in the fires of community bonding, where children frolic in the aisles and parents stagger forth laden with armfuls of glorious sequential material.

Yes, that’s right: it’s TCAF TIME!

It’s no secret that TCAF is pretty much my favorite show ever. The audience, the venue, the exhibitors, the panels—everything there is just the greatest, and I’m so proud to announce that Baggywrinkles: a Lubber’s Guide to Life at Sea will be making its debut at this year’s festival!

Can you tell I'm excited? — Can you tell I’m excited?

Here’s a sneak peek at the lovely advance run of books that we had printed just in time:

A real book! With a spine and everything! Ahh!

AND JUST LOOK AT THESE COLORED PAGES:

Swoon.

Okay so here’s the deal: you want to say hello? I’ll be on the SECOND FLOOR of the Toronto Public Library this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, from 9-5 and 10-5, respectively. Admission is FREE! My table number is 279, and here’s a handy map of where to find me (along with fellow rockstar neighbors Katie and Shaggy Shanahan, Tony Cliff, Kean Soo, Tory Woollcott, Meredith Gran, and Mike Holmes—dang, y’all):

It’s gonna be a party.

In addition to tabling at Table 279, you can also find me at the following events (during which time I will, obviously, not be at my table—plan accordingly!):

Saturday, 1:30 – 2:30 — Comics 101: How to Start Publishing Your Comics
(Marriott: Summerhill Room)

Reading comics is not enough and your passion for the medium has manifested into the next form — making them! Self-publishing your own comics will be a snap with the helpful expert advice of indie comics pubs and creators Raighne Hogan (2dcloud), Hazel Newlevant (Chainmail Bikini), Lucy Bellwood (Baggywrinkles), Kevin Czap (Czap Books). Moderated by Rachel Kahn.

Saturday, 2:45 – 3:45 — Niche Comics (The Pilot, 22 Cumberland)

Sure we all love comics, but what’s the other thing that makes you light up like an incandescent bulb? Specialization isn’t just key to evolution—it can help bring new focus to your work and encourage readers to learn from (and share!) your enthusiasm. Join Kate Beaton (history), Erika Moen (sex and sexuality), Lisa Hanawalt (horses), and Lucy Bellwood (boats) for a discussion of how niche interests can lead to diverse, vibrant careers.

Sunday, 11-11:30 — Draw-Along Kids Room (Toronto Reference Library Appel Salon)

Bring out the inner artistry of your little ones at the Draw-Along Kids Room! All day, we are cycling in the best of childrens’ comics artists to draw alongside our youngest attendees. Come by and let your imaginations run wild with real, live cartoonists!

SEE YOU THERE, YOU FABULOUS BEASTS.

News

Baggywrinkles Ebooks are Live!

Dearest Bags and Wrinkles: I am so, so, SO excited to announce that the ebook edition of Baggywrinkles: a Lubber’s Guide to Life at Sea is now available for purchase!

If you supported the Kickstarter campaign, you can find a download code to get the files for free in this update, otherwise it’s $7 for a bundle of two versions—high-res and slightly-less-high-res—so you can read the book from any of your devices with comfort and ease.

Thanks to your sterling funding efforts, and the hard work of colorists Joey Weiser and Michele Chidester, the book is coming to you in full color for the first time ever! You’ll also be enjoying the publication design efforts of Allyson Haller, who did a fantastic job of wrapping the whole book in the loveliest branding a girl could ask for. This ebook also includes the complete guest art gallery with work from a stalwart crew of amazing artists. Here’s a brief selection:

Ready to hop aboard? You can buoy (GEDDIT?) a copy for yourself right here:

Thank you all so much for your patience, enthusiasm, and support during the production process. Next step: printing the physical book! Stay tuned on the Kickstarter page for more news about that as the year rolls on.

Love and boats and comics,

Lucy