You know the feeling. The fear that a triggering situation will arise in your future and incapacitate you the same way it’s done so many times before. And then, it happens. And you don’t care in the slightest. And it’s magical.
(Due to popular demand it looks like I’ll be making postcards of this image in the near future. Stay tuned!)
I’m sad to report that my internship at Periscope Studio officially came to a close on February 27th. It was an amazing four and a half months, but I’m not going to write too much about what being there meant to me. Not only because I’ll get all mushy and start crying on you guys, but also because…
I’M NOT GOING ANYWHERE! That’s right. I know. I don’t believe it myself, but it’s true. I get to stay. At Periscope. For the foreseeable future. (I’m trying to use real words to talk about this rather than just replacing every letter in this sentence with an exclamation point, can you tell?)
Now, I’m only a lowly Studio Assistant, but it means I’ll continue to work alongside an incredible group of dedicated, powerhouse artists who inspire me to improve every day. If I have to run blogs and scan pages and help with shipping to make that happen, I’m more than happy to do so.
ANYWAY. That’s some of the big news I’ve been sitting on for a while. And boy howdy am I excited about it.
To thank everyone at the Studio for being so welcoming and helpful, I spent part of last week drawing up this group portrait of all the members. Ain’t they a studly bunch?
I’ll be away in California for the next three weeks helping out with a family medical situation, but I hope to keep you all abreast of what’s on the drawing table during that time. (And I should note that any orders you place in the store while I’m gone won’t ship until I return on April 3rd! Thanks for being patient.)
So long for now!
Some of you may recall I was doing some illustration work for the Vancouver Maritime Museum last month. Their Art of the Sailor exhibit opened this week, and Alina Anghel (of the Vancouver Trolley Company Blog) was kind enough to snap a photo of my giant poster on the wall!
The exhibit runs through October, so I’m really excited to see it in person when I visit for VanCAF in May. In the meantime, if you’re in the Vancouver area, be sure to stop in and check it out! There are a ton of educational and entertaining elements involved — including beautiful pieces of scrimshaw and many photographs of actual sailors showing off their ink. To learn more, check out this in-depth article on The Tyee blog.
I’m also excited to announce that the Museum will be stocking all three issues of Baggywrinkles in their store. There have been some delays, so they might not arrive for a week or two, but hopefully Vancouverites can pick up copies on site before too long.
More art to come soon!
Forgot to post this a while ago, but here’s an anniversary commission I did back in December! Probably would’ve been fitting to post on Valentine’s Day, but ohhhh wellllll.
I don’t often use this blog for soapboxing about artistic issues, but this comic deserves a bit of an introduction. It’s part of a short conversation I had with my mother (a freelance writer and former cartoonist) a few months ago while working on an illustration job. I’m proud of how far I’ve come in the past year in terms of understanding my financial worth and being unafraid to charge money for what I do, but moments like this still leave me a trembling, anxious wreck. Money and creativity have a fraught relationship at the best of times, and somehow financial matters always manage to cut to the heart of many people’s insecurities. We often believe we’re worthless. That we’re frauds. That someone will come forward one of these days and expose us. It’s only a matter of time. Taking risks and charging a fair price for the services we offer opens us up for the ultimate confirmation of these fears. If someone refuses our price, we are indeed worthless.
Of course, this is a load of bullshit.
Charging people money for something you love doing shouldn’t be difficult, yet somehow it’s one of the greatest challenges facing new artists in the field. We’re steeped in mixed messages telling us that creativity is simultaneously priceless and worthless. “How hard can it be?” people ask, turning around in the same breath to babble about “talent” and “genius”. The attitude I encounter most often involves folks looking wistfully over my shoulder and saying “Oh, I could never do that” — as if drawing is some God-given jar of pixie dust rather than a craft honed over hundreds and thousands of hours. Conversely, onlookers or employers can be astounded at the amount of time and effort that goes into a job — “Surely it doesn’t take that long!” “But that’s so much work!”
How can we create a system where artists don’t have to overcome so many conflicting viewpoints simply in order to get paid for their work? Of course, a great deal rests on having the confidence to realize that self-worth and artistic worth are separate entities. Often it just takes guts to be calm and up-front about asking for your price. By being professional about our financial requirements, we set a precedent for other artists in the field. But it can be hard to know where to start. It’s a lesson I learn and re-learn every time I take on a new job or decide to increase my fees in relation to the amount of experience I’ve gained since starting out as a freelancer.
This is an awful lot of gabble for such a quick comic, but it’s an issue that’s really important to me, so I thought I’d share some of my thoughts. If anyone wants to read more, I’ve included some helpful links to other essays on the subject at the bottom of this post.
Phew!
Comic time.
***
Useful Links:
Jessica Hische: The Dark Art of Pricing
Katie Lane: Why You Should Raise Your Rates
Happy Christmas, all you nice people. Please enjoy this badger. From me to you.
Love,
Lucy
Some sketches of Greek statues from a current exhibit at the Portland Art Museum.
Extreeeeeeemely delayed portraits for Kickstarter backers.
An anniversary commission.
Aaand some anteaters. Because AWWW.
Bad-ass Baggywrinkles reader Aaron Meyers recently asked me to do a commission of ROM the Spaceknight. Who was I to refuse? My apologies to Mr. Meyers, Mr. Gosling, and anyone whose childhood memories I have defaced by creating this thing.
In other news, the first print run of Baggywrinkles #3 is SOLD OUT! Gonna reprint that sucker ASAP, but expect a delay of a couple weeks as I sort out some print quality issues and juggle other comics work. Also: today was my first day hanging out at Periscope Studio, where I’ll be interning for the next three months alongside some of Portland’s finest comics folk. Words don’t really convey how excited I am to be in a place that looks like this:
Also: huge thanks to everyone who showed up at Comics Underground last night to hear Baggywrinkles #3 performed with a live cast and sound effects. It was such a treat to perform in front of all you nice people. Here’s a blurry picture of me being sassy about the Lady Washington (Thanks, Cory!):
That’s all for now! More art soon…
Oh blogitty blog how I’ve been neglecting you…
For those that aren’t aware, I’m in California for the next month churning out the latest issue of Baggywrinkles and working on some other secret comics projects. Comics vacation, if you will.
Freelance jobs have kept me pretty busy, so here’s a bundle of stuff from that plus some doodles to be going on with. I’ve got a Reed-related comic coming out for you later today or tomorrow, as well as an exciting conclusion to the Chacos saga, but those will have to wait until next week.
In the meantime, here’s some stuff!
Portraits for families and couples…
Logo designs for family…
Landscape sketching from a trip to Bellingham…
Reflections on leaving Portland…
And a mess of everyday stuff from being home, watching Game of Thrones for the first time, seeing ParaNorman in theaters (AWESOME, AMAZING, INCREDIBLE, GO RIGHT NOW), practicing tigers, getting stung by a yellowjacket, etc.
(My leg is STILL swollen three days later. Jerks.)
I think that’s it? Maybe? There’s a bunch of other stuff I don’t have permission to share yet, so this’ll have to do for now. Remember you can keep tabs on my less formal Internet movements on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr. In the meantime, have a lovely weekend!
I recently had the pleasure of doing some illustrations for my friend Justin Hocking, whose forthcoming memoir, The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld, will be released next September from Graywolf Press. Justin is the Executive Director of the Independent Publishing Resource Center, where I got my Certificate in Comics and Independent Publishing. If any of you Portland folk don’t already know about this fantastic resource, I highly encourage you to check it out. While the book goes through final revisions, Justin was kind enough to let me post these here on the blog for y’all to enjoy before they appear in print. So here’s some boaty goodness!
