Live Wire! Radio & Other Escapades

Busy times, everyone! I’ve got a recap of the last couple weeks (including the awesomeness that was VanCAF) up over on the Kickstarter blog, and since I’ll be bum deep in fulfilling rewards for the next lifetime I’m going to let that speak for itself for now.

In the meantime I’ve been buzzing around Portland getting my draw on — most recently with the excellent folks at Live Wire! Radio, who were kind enough to invite me over to live sketch one of their shows. For those of you unfamiliar with Live Wire!, they make audio-based delights to enrich the mind and tickle the fancy of any discerning radio listener. I strongly suggest you check them out. This particular taping featured rock star guests like Lizz Winstead, Ted Rall, Daniel H. Wilson, Mike Russell, Star Anna, and Kasey Anderson, as well as Faces For Radio Theater, the house team of actors and entertainers responsible for keeping things real on stage. And here, in all their messy glory from my much-the-worse-for-wear sketchbook, they are!

Sadly, this was the last show of the season, but I’m looking forward to more of these in September. Keep an eye out!

I’ll leave you all with a couple Vancouver-themed pages from my sketchbook…

Until next time!

Owl Dollars

More arts! A while back I did an illustration for folks over at the Reed College Annual Fund. They’ve just launched a fundraising campaign to get recently-graduated alumni to donate to the college. This is what I came up with for their branding:

If you look closely in there you can spot a number of Reed-related gags (I think 6 in total). See if you can find them all!

Has this image compelled you to fling money at my alma mater? Great! You can check out the campaign here.

Stay tuned for some preview art from True Believer later this week as I wrestle with the second half of the inking process!

 

Dance and Destroy!

More poster designs for Barefoot Blues! I don’t think I’ve ever drawn an honest-to-goodness dinosaur before this project. This is, I have realized, inexcusable. Expect more dinosaurs effective immediately. Also: inked this guy with a real brush! I normally use a Pentel Pocket Brush for inking my comics, but I finally screwed up my courage and made the leap to real bristles.

It is, of course, way way way way better. I’ll be grabbing a Series 7 for my next inking binge — which should start sometime next week and last well into April. Phew.

My Grandmother’s Beast (Part 1)

First off, happy festive season to all you blog-following types. It’s been a sunny one down here in California, but soon enough I’ll be back in the Pacific Northwest slogging away at the drawing board.

In the meantime, I’ve been remiss about getting these files optimized for the web, but here, at last, is my most recent project! This was a challenging story to tackle, since it deals with my grandmother’s battle with Alzheimer’s. I wanted to attempt a full-color rendering technique and practice my watercolor skills (still woefully lacking) while sticking to a relatively simple page layout. I believe the result is more illustrated story than comic, but it was a learning experience nonetheless. I’ll post the story in four updates of a few pages each, since they’re so minimal. Here’s the first!

Annual Badgers

Hello all! I return from California (not particularly) bronzed and (moderately) well-rested. As I scan a few things and prepare to reprint the Baggies, I thought I’d post a few badgers to be going on with. For the past 3 or 4 years I’ve drawn my father a badger every year for most major holidays. It’s about as close a thing to a spirit animal as I think he’ll ever have, and it’s been his nickname forever and ever. Fitting. Anyway, some of these rely on strange Bellwood family in-jokes (or, in the case of the most recent, a familiarity with Eddie Izzard), but I thought they might be amusing for the general public as well. Here are three of the most recent to keep you occupied.

(Art-Stix is an artistic endeavor launched by my father last year. He designs awesome artistic bookmarks.)

Enough badgers for now.