new comics – Page 2 – Lucy Bellwood

Boston Travelogue Now Available via Patreon

Greetings, friends! For those of you not currently involved in my Patreon page, I just wanted to put the official word out that I’m updating my Boston travelogue comic there with a new page every week for Patrons pledging $1 a month or more. There are several patronage levels that nab you a variety of perks, from PDFs of all my published work to a weekly behind-the-scenes post about what I’ve been working on, and enable me to focus more on telling these kinds of stories. Win-win!

The Boston travelogue comic serializes my recent trip aboard the Charles W. Morgan–an 1840s wooden whaling vessel–and blends the page-a-day travelogue style of Grand Adventure with the historical interests of Baggywrinkles. I’m really happy with how it’s been coming together, and I’d love to share it with you early via this new platform. (The finished comic will be full color watercolor, but these sneak peek pages on Patreon are digitally toned.)

I’ll also be having a solo show at Portland’s Sequential Art Gallery in September to display all the original art from the journey. The opening reception takes place Thursday, September 4th from 6pm-10pm and I’d love to see you there. The completed print edition of the comic will be making its debut in full color at SPX later that month, too. You can check out my list of upcoming appearances on the lefthand side of this page for all Fall show dates!

See you on Patreon,

Comics, News

GWS Guest Strips Up and Running

Big week, friends! While I’m still away doing Boat Stuff in Boston, my five-strip guest arc for Danielle Corsetto’s delightful series Girls with Slingshots begins running TODAY. Check back on the GWS site each day this week to follow Hazel and Jamie in their quest for reasonable underwear. I promise it will be a thrilling ride.

I’m also selling the original inked artwork from these five strips over in my store, so give ’em a look if you’ve been in the market for some Lucy Bellwood originals.

And if you want to come see myself, Danielle, and Erika Moen in the flesh, we’ll be doing an event at Bridge City Comics in Portland this Saturday from 6pm – 9pm. I’m honored to get to sign alongside these rockstar dames, and Bridge City is one of my favorite comic shops in town, so get’cherself over there and say hello! Here’s what we all look like in case you feel alarmed or confused.

Enjoy the guest arc and I hope to see some of you on Saturday when I’m back from the East Coast!

News

Patreon is Here!

So some of you may have heard of this fancy new service called…

In a nutshell, Patreon is a platform that allows fans to directly support creators they love on an ongoing basis. As a full-time freelancer, a ton of my time and energy goes into taking client work that will help me pay my bills and keep a roof over my head. Because of this, my passion projects often end up on the back burner — which bothers me because I’m sure those projects are exactly the kind of content that led you to me in the first place, and it’s the kind of content that I would really love to be pumping out for your enjoyment every month. Fortunately, Patreon has an answer to this conundrum. Here’s my project video to tell you a little about how it works:

If you aren’t able to watch the video right now, here’s the gist:

On my page you can pledge to send an amount of money my way every 30 days — it could be fifty cents, it could be forty bucks — and in exchange you get access to sweet behind-the-scenes action, special PDF downloads, or even a handwritten postcard from me every month. This ongoing support allows me to devote more time to creating the comics I want to share with you the most, and hopefully gives you a neat opportunity to see what my process is like from the back end.

Sound interesting? Then…

I am super excited about the possibilities of this platform, and I’m really eager to start sharing parts of my process that I generally don’t talk about online through the Patrons-Only Process Blog. If you enjoy my work and would like to see more of it in the future, check out the page! I would love to hear what you think of it.

Thank you so much, everyone!

News

Summer Travels: The 38th Voyage

Big news, friends! I’ve been selected to participate in a fellowship program through the Mystic Seaport Maritime Museum this summer, sailing aboard the last wooden whaling ship in the world — the Charles W. Morgan. This is a huge thrill, and promises to be the catalyst for a new installment of adventurous nautical comics. Just look at this beauty:

Originally launched in the 1840s, the Morgan has been fully restored and will be sailing around the Eastern Seaboard for three months this summer, taking on 80 fellowship participants who will each capture an aspect of the voyage according to their own disciplines. Needless to say I’ll be drawing some comics and sharing them all with you when I return! Here’s the itinerary:

While the stint aboard is brief (a mere 24 hours), I hope to use my time in the area to visit a few other vessels as well as Mystic Seaport itself to gather more info for the comic. I’ll very likely be based in Boston during the trip, and am looking into the possibility of doing a reading while I’m there, so stay tuned for more details as July draws near!

You can learn more about the various voyagers and their many specialties here. I’ll be sailing on the second day sail from Provincetown on or around July 10th. For more information about the voyage, the ship’s restoration, and local events you can attend, visit Mystic Seaport’s homepage for the 38th Voyage.

Do you live in Boston and have a recommendation for a good reading venue? Let me know! Otherwise keep your eyes peeled for reading details, further updates and sketches from the road once I set out.

Comics

New Comic: The Medal

At last! I’m so happy to finally share this story I drew for Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover last month (was it only last month?) for their all-ages, Eisner Award-winning series Bandette. The main issues of the comic have been interspersed with these short stories showcasing various supporting characters from the universe. I picked Commander Pippins — how could I not? — because his sideburns are fabulous and his mustache is vast and I have a soft spot for characters with silly names. Paul wrote this lovely script and I had a ton of fun bringing it to life.

Be sure to check out Bandette on Monkeybrain Comics, and read the rest of the Urchin Stories, drawn by various artists, right here.

Art, Comics

Cartozia Sticker Sheets & Issue 4 Preview

I was beyond stoked when I found out that our “fun bonus” feature for Cartozia Tales Issue 4 was going to be STICKER SHEETS. I go nuts for stickers — who doesn’t? So I spent all day Tuesday drawing this sheet of some of my favorite characters: a Philosopher Bird, a Mask Bear mask, Master Cyrus, Wick the Wind-up Man, Lila the Sprigster, a Tickle Crab, and Minnaig the Otter-girl, star of my most recent story for the series. They’re gonna be printed in little 5”x7” sheets and paired with a second batch of characters illustrated by my co-contributor Lupi McGinty.

I cannot wait to stick these all over everything I own.

Also: have a preview panel! This last weekend in Portland was all snow and chaos, so I took the opportunity to hunker down at home and churn out my story for Issue 4: The Rite Choice.

Where’s Minnaig going? Who knows.

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.

Conventions, News

Wizard World Portland This Weekend

Stumptown Comics Festival 2013 — Photo by Kai Hayashi

It’s that time of year again, friends: Con Season is upon us! So come say hello at my first convention appearance of 2014, Wizard World Portland. I’ll be in Artists’ Alley at Table C57 slinging comics, watercolor birds, buttons, shirts, and other goodies. In addition to Baggywrinkles, Cartozia Tales, Waterlogged, and Grand Adventure, I’ll also have limited copies of Rock Ink Roll, the anthology containing Mr. Tambourine Man!

The show runs 3pm-8pm Friday, 10am-7pm Saturday, and 10am-5pm Sunday at the Oregon Convention Center. Tickets are ten bucks cheaper on the Wizard World website, so be sure to check out their ticket portal before you go.

See you there!

Comics

Party on Paper: Origin Stories

I finally rustled up another contribution to Party on Paper this week! P.O.P. is a collaborative comics project run by me, Bridget Underwood, and Carolyn Nowak where we draw conversational comics about, well, comics mostly. This round we wanted to answer some of the questions in our Inbox, so here’s my take on an origin story.

Stay tuned for Carolyn’s story by following Party on Paper on Tumblr.

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!