teaching – Lucy Bellwood

Context Creation

Caught up with Brendan and Celine from Hyperlink Academy yesterday. Brendan said something about how certain creators or teachers or people are drawn to context creation and man I can’t stop thinking about that phrase. CONTEXT CREATION! Maybe context creation in opposition to (or in conversation with) content creation? Dunno.

What I do know is that these days I’m far less interested in pedagogic mastery or academic power structures and far more interested in people who can cultivate an environment (physical, mental, emotional) that allows everyone around them to explore and get curious. Reminders and permission! Reminders and permission. Have I even blogged about how obsessed I’ve been with those two words over the last year? Dunno. But it’s coming up a lot.

News

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

Cohabiting with Your Inner Critic: a 100 Demon Dialogues Workshop

Heads up, San Diego! I’ve got an extra-special workshop planned for my stop on your sunny shores next month, and I wanted to make sure you all had dibs on tickets. I’ll be teaming up with San Diego Writers, Ink, a local literary organization, to teach a class on August 17th. Here’s a little more info about the class:

Join cartoonist and educator Lucy Bellwood for a two-hour workshop about learning to live with our Inner Critics, hosted by San Diego Writers, Ink. Participants will use a mix of generative exercises and group discussion to get to grips with their anxieties and hangups about the creative process—no drawing ability required! Excellent for those battling Writer’s Block, Imposter Syndrome, or a general, nagging sense of unease in their work.

Bellwood’s classes have been described as “high-level professional group therapy for artists,” and her candid talks about redefining success in creative fields have garnered thousands of views online. 100 Demon Dialogues, her latest book, is a collection of comics for anyone who’s ever wanted to talk back to the little voice in their head that says “You’re no good.”

The workshop is $30 for SDWI members and $36 for non-members, and admission at either level includes a signed copy of 100 Demon Dialogues. You can register online via SDWI’s website right here!

Can’t make the class? Short on cash? I’ll be doing a regular tour stop at a TBA venue on Thursday, August 16th as well. More info as soon as I get it confirmed!

Education

How to Kick Ass at Kickstarter (Video)

Last month I had the good fortune to return to The Animation Workshop in Denmark to teach a week-long course in their Graphic Storytelling department. You might remember the talk I gave two years ago, The View from Aloft, where I distilled my foundational philosophy about social media, online communities, and gratitude economies. This presentation follows up on that framework by talking specifically about crowdfunding and Kickstarter. Thanks to the school’s exceptional video rental equipment there’s now a very nice recording up on YouTube:

I get a lot of questions from folks looking to learn more about this weird practice. It can be the most soul-crushing, time-consuming, heart-tormenting process, but also an incredible jolt of energy, affirmation, and community involvement. Between the generous souls who support me monthly on Patreon and the people who launch individual projects of mine via Kickstarter there’s no doubt that my career would look very different without crowdfunding.

Everything that’s made my campaigns work feels like it’s come from watching my friends get smarter and better every time they launch a project, so it’s great to have this recording to pay it forward to more people. I hope some of you find it useful if you ever launch your own projects (and I hope you do).

Good luck out there!

News

New Talk: The View from Aloft

I have new video up from my time at The Animation Workshop in Denmark, where I was teaching a class on webcomics and social media earlier this month. (This is the first time I’ve had video footage of my public speaking—thanks, Sam!—which is really exciting.) If you’re a person who makes things on the Internet, or a person who wants to make things on the Internet, or a cartoonist, or a budding creator—this probably has some utility for you.

Things I cover:

How I ended up doing what I’m doing now (full-time adventure-cartoonist-ing, most days)
How social media has enabled me to succeed in crowdfunding, freelancing, and basically everything else
What sailing has in common with being an artist (it’s more than you think)
Communities and gratitude economies and how they shape our work
My unified very vague theory of How the Internet Makes Us Better People
What you can gain by giving your work away for free

I had so much fun teaching at TAW, and I hope this talk distills some of the stuff we were exploring and discussing over the course of my two weeks there. If you enjoyed it and want to see/enable more, feel free to check out my Patreon page! I post a ton of behind-the-scenes, nitty gritty, creative-in-the-trenches stuff there every single week, and I’d love to have you on board.

News

Teaching in Denmark

Some big, big, BIG news for you this week, friends:

The Animation Workshop in Viborg, Denmark has invited me to come teach a two-week class on webcomics, the Internet, and modern career options for independent cartoonists. I am beside myself with excitement. I fly in just ten days and there’s a lot to get done before I go, but I just can’t wait to meet this batch of dedicated students. I mean, seriously, go look at the work they’ve been doing here (comics-specific work can be found on this Tumblr). SO COOL.

I’ve also never been to Scandinavia before, so I’m extra thrilled to be exploring a new part of Europe. Apparently there’s nifty cathedral in Viborg, but you all know what I’m really holding out for.

Perhaps. We shall see.

I’m looking into options for capturing and broadcasting bits of the class while I’m there, so if this is a subject that interests you be sure to follow along on Twitter—I’ll do my best to share work in progress and notes from the trip on there!

That’s all for now.

Art, News

“Setting Realistic Goals” Talk @ Making Comics MOOC

So this is something of a new game for me: in a few weeks I’ll be speaking on a panel of creators as part of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) run by MakingComics.com. The CEO, Patrick Yurick, was actually at CCS the same summer I went through my Comics Conversion and started doing this stuff for living, so it’s pretty neat to see where the two of us have ended up after four years.

The course is free and open to the public, with a pretty minimal time commitment and a rockstar line-up of creators ready to talk about four key topics as each week of the course goes by. It’s like a panel discussion where you can log in and ask questions in real time. The course is perfect for those of you looking to launch a comic or learn more about the process of going from idea to finished product.

Here’s the flier for the week I’ll be participating:

Look at all those cool dudes! We’re gonna get technical up in this business — motivational techniques, time management, maintaining momentum oooooh yeahhhhh. However! To attend the talk you’ll need to register for the course (again: FREE) before this Saturday. If you’d like to learn more before you register, or take a gander at the other weeks’ guests, click here — there’s a great FAQ about how the MOOC is structured and run.

Hope to see you online April 9th! And be sure to register this weekend to participate.