The online home of Adventure Cartoonist Lucy Bellwood
(Haven’t shared a lot of Actual Comics in this new blogging life I’m living. Does this work? Is it better than reading something on Instagram? Who can say. I’m going to pick this train of thought up on Patreon next week, though, so it’s a good time to join.)
Look, I’m not going to beat around the bush:
This is a fountain pen shaped like a shark. It costs less than four dollars. I have one and it is delightful. It writes far better than a pen that costs less than four collars has any right to write. I use it about as much (or more) than my fancy-pants Sailor 1911, which is really saying something.
Also: some of the colors are currently on sale for one dollar and ninety-seven cents.
ONE DOLLAR AND NINETY-SEVEN CENTS.
It should be illegal to sell something so functional and charming for so little money, but I’m glad it’s not.
As you may’ve noticed, I’ve spent the last three(ish) months working on The 100 Day Project, a creative game of sorts where participants try to create something every day for 100 days. I chose to illustrate meaningful objects from my life with little vignettes of text.
The final collection, A Life in Objects, is now up for sale! I’m printing a facsimile edition in three, 40-page pocket notebooks—the same size as the originals (3.5×5″)—with a fancy belly band.
The books will be printed locally in Portland at Eberhardt Press, and I’m hoping to debut them at SPX in September.
If you absolutely can’t wait to read the whole thing, why not buy the PDF edition on Gumroad? I promise it’s got all the same treats inside.
I’m incredibly proud of how this collection came out. More news to come once the printed books are on their way!
Those of you following me on social media may’ve noticed a new series of drawings going up over the last couple weeks! I’m participating in The 100 Day Project, which comes to us via Elle Luna and The Great Discontent. The premise of this project is simple: make something every day for 100 days. That’s all. Could be anything; a written word, a cake, a joke, a drawing, a button. I’ve actually been pitching it as a do anything for 100 days project—so one could even eat an apple a day or something similarly arbitrary. I think it’s the regularity of the ritual that’s important. There’s also value in creating something small every day and using the exercise to break down our inhibitions around perfection, but regularity breeds ritual, and ritual can take many forms.
Anyway, I’ve opted to use up the many, many Scout Books and Field Notes sketchbooks I’ve been accumulating from various events by chronicling 100 objects in my possession with words and pictures.
The format involves a drawing, however crude, and as much context about the item as I can cram on the page. It started here:
And has continued apace for the last couple weeks.
I love projects like this that require relatively little commitment on the day-to-day, but add up to something vast over time. I’m really excited to see where this goes. If you’d like to follow along, take a peek at my Instagram page or follow along on Twitter.
Those of you following me elsewhere on the Internet have probably already seen this year’s 31 Days, 31 Outfits challenge, but I finally got ’em all scanned and uploaded into a tiny army, so I figured it was time for an official post. If you’d like to compare notes with 2014’s 31 Outfits, you can take a peek at those right here.
(The Goblin Interlude was brought to you by Evan Dahm and Goblin Week.)
I hadn’t intended to make this an annual thing, but it’s been really fun both times and I dig getting to see my progress year-to-year, so I guess I’ll be seeing you with another batch of these in 2016!
Happy New Year, readers! I’m looking forward to sharing a whole bunch of art stuff with you in the next couple weeks. Let’s begin here:
In the interests of getting myself sketching more often, I resolved to draw whatever I was wearing over breakfast every morning this month instead of, say, checking Twitter on my phone. As someone whose primary wardrobe options mostly come from the very exclusive Soggy Cardboard Box on a Streetcorner boutique, this has been a really fun exercise so far. Not only does it give me a little practice every morning, it also makes me think about new ways to combine the clothes I own and gives me a visual record of outfits I liked to fall back on when I’m staring at the heap of clothing on my floor with zero motivation to get dressed.
Of course some days…
…are better than others:
Since these are coming out every day I’ll probably just do round-up posts every once in a while, but if you’d like to follow along in real time be sure to find me on Twitter or Tumblr!
Hey Gang! Sorry things have been a bit quiet over here. I’m currently deep in a Three-Project Wormhole thanks to some foolish treble-booking on my part, but NEVER FEAR. I am kicking ass and taking names in my usual style.
The good news is this means lots of new stuff for you to look at in the coming weeks. Read on for the whole rundown.
First up, I’ll have another story done for Cartozia by the end of the month. Tom Motley designed the awesome promo postcard pictured above, and you can even read a couple stories from the first issue of the series on the Cartozia site! The more I work on this project the more excited I become. It’s wonderful to be collaborating with so many enthusiastic creators. I also get to incorporate some super cool characters and environments into this next tale. Should be a grand old time.
Second, I’ve been collaborating once more with the great Shannon Campbell (the writer behind Navy Ink) on a submission for Rock Ink Roll — a totally rad music/comics anthology involving some of my favorite people: fellow boat-lover Kevin Cannon, fellow Lady Cartoonist Brittney Sabo, and fellow Cartozian Lupi McGinty. Shannon busted out a story in no time flat, with a pitch so delightful I couldn’t wait to get started. I think this one’s going to be a lot of fun.
Finally, I’m illustrating a secret project that I can’t say much about. It should be finished by September, at which point I’ll be able to share more information, but in the meantime this elusive coon in the only hint I can give.
That’s all from me for now! Back to the drawing board.
I think I’ll have to take a hiatus from these in the coming weeks (too much work!), but here’s the most recent Artistic Veggies challenge: 25 Drapery Studies!
Lots of new art and news coming in the next week or so. Stay tuned!
More weekly challenge stuff. Focused on high-contrast faces this week to get more decisive about laying down blacks:
And thanks again to everyone who came out to the workshops this week! It was great to see so many of you there.
I’ve posted my lecture notes from the Freelance Badassery talk on Tumblr if you wanna go get a creative kick in the pants. I’ll hopefully be putting them up directly on this blog sometime in the near future. For now: work beckons!
A couple challenges from the last few weeks. Remember you can always join in on these suckers by heading over to the Artistic Veggies tumblr! A new challenge goes live every Monday.
I’ve also been blasting through the last of my Kickstarter custom comics! Thank goodness for that. The most recent strip was a requested Firefly / Doctor Who mash-up for Jason. I never really find the inspiration to draw fan art unless someone specifically requests it, so this was a fun one.
Okay, back to work!