Contemporary Authors

• 100 Demon Dialogues - 2018 Toonhound Studios LLC, Bothell, WA
• Baggywrinkles: A Lubber's Guide to Life at Sea - 2016 Toonhound Studios LLC, Bothell, WA

• Lucy Bellwood Home Page - https://lucybellwood.com/

  Ahoy
  I’m Lucy Bellwood, a professional Adventure Cartoonist based in Portland, Oregon. I’m happiest when I’m translating the world into infectiously enthusiastic, vulnerable, educational stories for my readers to enjoy.

  My latest book, 100 Demon Dialogues, is all about cohabiting with a petulant (if oddly lovable) Inner Critic. If you’ve ever felt like a fake or a failure, it will absolutely make you feel less alone. Want to come hear me talk about the book? I’ve got a huge summer book tour planned for 2018.

  I’m a big fan of telling the truth—especially about the stuff we’re scared to discuss. I’ve explained what it feels like to be on food stamps while “making it” as an author. I’ve shared exactly how much money I made from going viral, along with annual reports about my income and expenses as an independent creator. I’m also a three-time successful Kickstarter creator, and I want to make sure people can find out exactly how I did it.

  The only way we get through this is together.

  I’m also a tall ship sailor, an anachronistic profession that led to my first book, Baggywrinkles: a Lubber’s Guide to Life at Sea. Baggywrinkles is an entertaining, educational series of comics about living and working on an 18th-century replica sailing vessel. (It’s about time someone made that book, right?)

  I’ve drawn comics about rafting through the Grand Canyon (twice!), learning to feel strong, crossing the Pacific on an oceanographic research voyage, exploring the feminist undertones of social dance and the dregs of breakup baggage, sailing aboard the last wooden whaling ship in the world, never wanting to make it big in Hollywood, and trying out a sensory deprivation tank for the first time—among many other things. You can browse everything I’ve ever published with ease on the Comics page.

  Thanks for stopping by. If you dig my work, consider supporting me on Patreon, subscribing to my monthly newsletter, or coming to say hello at one of the events listed to the right of this page.

• Creative Independent - https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/lucy-bellwood-on-the-pros-and-cons-of-being-an-independent-creator/

  Lucy Bellwood is a freelance illustrator and self-professed Adventure Cartoonist, who was born 1989 in Ojai, California. Since 2007 she's been an avid lover of sailing and tall ships, working as a deckhand on the Lady Washington and many other historical vessels. She launched into a full-time freelance career in 2012 with the help of a Kickstarter campaign for True Believer, a 36-page comic about having the guts to do what you love. In 2015 she completed a second Kickstarter to print Baggywrinkles: a Lubber’s Guide to Life at Sea. She has since produced comics about whitewater rafting, oceanography, social dance, pop culture history, and many other subjects via nonfiction comics hub The Nib and her own online outlets. Her work has appeared in a numerous print anthologies and magazines, as well as on websites like BuzzFeed, Macworld, The Stranger, and Medium. She currently resides in Portland, Oregon.
  Conversation
  Lucy Bellwood on the pros and cons of being an independent creator

  Art, Writing, Inspiration, Anxiety, Independence, Success, Process
  Focus:
  Dealing with creative anxiety
  From a conversation with Brandon Stosuy
  August 1, 2017
  Highlights on
  Download as a PDF

  What does it mean to you to be successful as an artist?
  My definition is changing over time. This year, especially, I’ve been thinking about how my focus has shifted over the last seven years I’ve been making comics, and how what seemed insurmountably successful at the start has come to pass. I’ve been thinking about how when I’ve achieved a marker of success I’ve thought, “Ooh, when this happens, I will really be successful,” and how it’s interesting to see what sticks, and what doesn’t.
  Some people might be like, “Yeah, I really made it if somebody knows who I am in a faraway place.” That’s a heady, weird experience to have, but it can also fade pretty quickly, or it stands out as like, “Well, this is a fluke. This is odd.” There are different markers of success that actually get under your skin, and alter the way that you feel about making work in the world. I feel like all of those have come from interpersonal connections, for me. Hearing from people who made changes in their lives because of my work.
  It’s often happened when I talk to people who took up tall ship sailing, because they read a graphic novel that I did that was about my experiences doing that. I got an email from a guy that has stuck with me forever. He was writing it from a plane, having packed up and sold all of his belongings, and was running away to sea to go work on the ships that I worked on—which was like, “God, no pressure. I really hope that works out for you.” Then, a year later, he came to my table at a convention in Vancouver, and it had worked out for him. He was about to take a job on a ship in Toronto. That kind of thing is really hard to escape.
  BostonPreviewlucy1.jpg
  Boston Bound!

  I’ve been doing a lot of work with Inner Critic stuff recently, and the inner critic tends to say “That’s a fluke. It doesn’t matter. It was just one person, blah, blah, blah.” But that’s inescapably moving to me. To think somebody’s life changed in a significant way.
  So, there’s that kind of spiritual success, and then material success, and perhaps the challenge is that people often want the material success before the interpersonal success or the spiritual success, and so the questions tend to skew towards, “How do I get more eyeballs on my projects? How do I get more followers?”
  In my experience—and I’ve been talking to a lot of other creative folks who sing from the same hymnal—the relationships are the thing that drives that connection. I feel like we have to ask ourselves, “How are we going to be better community members?” “How are we going to be better people to one another?” “How are we going to provide solace, or enthusiasm, an injection of something new, or something nourishing to the communities that we’re a part of, and focusing attention on one person, or one community, or one location?” Picking something and devoting your practice to nourishing that space. It’s likely going to pay greater dividends than putting the cart before the horse and saying, “Well, I want the success in the traditional sense of the word.”
  It’s hard. We don’t see that labor a lot of the time. It’s invisible, or it’s nebulous. I don’t see a great deal of the stuff that happens, because of my work, because people don’t tell me. That’s not a criticism. It’s just I think about this in my life, too: there are authors, countless authors, whose books I’ve read that have really changed my life, and had an impact on me. Have I ever bothered to tell them? No. There’s this assumption of like, “Oh, that person’s too famous.” Or, they’re like, “Well, their book was published so obviously they know they’re great.” The older I get, the more I’m like, “Christ, write to everybody you admire. Write to everyone who ever meant anything to you, because chances are good that even if they do get a ton of fan mail, it’s still one more little pebble in the jar of “Hey, you’re doing something worthwhile with your life. Hey, you’re making a difference.”
  If you get too hung up on one success, that can be a pitfall, too. It can definitely stall you from creating more work.
  Definitely, and being stuck in one mode is also challenging. I’m a voracious learner. I like getting better at things. I don’t like being not good at things. Being a small business owner is a real trip, because it means being bad at a lot of things, and trying to get good at them very quickly because you’re wearing 15 hats at once, and it’s a challenge.
  How do you find that balance between not burning out, but also staying active enough that you don’t fall into creative lulls or blocks?
  The thing that really helps me is developing an ongoing, creative practice. I’m a big fan of drawing challenges of any stripe. Like a “draw a thing a day” challenge, or draw 100 hands, which is an exercise that an art teacher gave to me when I was fairly young, and which I hated at the time, because I hate drawing hands. But now I make a point of doing it myself once a year, just because I think it’s a really nice thing to do. Having fun, community-centric drawing challenges are helpful for getting me out of my head and worrying, “Well, does this project have to be this or that? What’s it doing? What’s its purpose?” Its purpose is to fulfill this drawing challenge, and beyond that, whatever.
  The burnout thing is real. I went hard for the last year and a half. I ran a great Kickstarter, and had my first proper book come out, and then took it on a book tour, and traveled all over the place, and was gone, constantly. I feel like I spent maybe five days, every month, in my own home in Portland, and every other time I was traveling for a convention, or an event, or going to a tall ship to go sailing somewhere.
  It was lots of adventure, but also lots of hectic stuff, and that definitely took a toll. I psychologically told myself that 2017 was when I would stop, and somehow, it took me all the way until June, pumping the brakes, to actually feel like I was slowing down. I think as a freelancer, you fall into the trap of thinking that your time and your schedule is very flexible, and I’ve started to come to grips with the fact that it’s not. I have to set time aside a year in advance, and hold it sacred. That’s advice that people give a lot of folks when they’re saying, “Oh, how do you make time for a creative process when you’ve got kids, or a day job or a million, laundry, a raccoon infestation in your basement?” Whatever it is, you need to carve out time, and descend it. That’s the whole purpose of that book, The War of Art.
  The world is trying to take your creative practice away from you, and you need to defend it. You have to fight back against the voice that says, “This is selfish. This is useless. Why are you spending time on this time? You should be doing dishes. You should be doing whatever.” I think the same holds true for bigger picture seasons, the creative seasons in your life. That it’s just as important to, perhaps even more important than if you have a day job, to schedule that restorative time off, and to schedule creative work time, and that’s something I’m still working on, but I’m starting to think about it, not just on the day-to-day scale but also in the bigger picture. I think it helps to really zoom out, and think, “What am I doing with each year?”—focusing on the minutia and then also taking a longer view of what you’re doing.
  100Demons041lucy4.jpg
  100 Demons #41

  Would you find it difficult to do what you do in a vacuum? Some people who create say, “I’m going to separate myself from the world.” But for you, is it important to have this give and take from a community, and to bounce ideas off of, and also to interact with the community… like a “we’re all in this together” sort of situation?
  This is a question that definitely keeps me up at night, because over the next five to 10 years I’ll be working on longer projects, possibly with publishers, possibly that I will not just have my own discretionary ability to share at will on the internet. I’ve absolutely been clicker trained by the internet into feeling like support for my work is dependent on feeding the online universe.
  My big shtick is that people can’t give you money if they don’t know who you are. You really have to make an effort to put yourself out there. That being said, there’s this creative cycle, where like toads, artists go underground and hibernate for months and make work, and then emerge, and make a ton of noise like “Raaaa, I made a thing!” And then they all go back in the mud again, and fall asleep for another year.
  That doesn’t necessarily have to be in total isolation, but I do fantasize about it. One of the things that I find difficult about Portland sometimes is that I am a super big extrovert. I am very enthusiastic, talkative, and outgoing in social situations, or at conventions, or doing events and stuff. I love it, but it takes so much from me, and the idea of living somewhere where nobody is ever inviting you to their gallery opening… There’s never an interesting band playing in town. There’s never a conference happening that you want to go to. There are no conventions. There are no airports. You’re just there, and there are three other hippies who live down the block, and you just get to live in the woods and make stuff.
  I fantasize about that all the time, and I worry that if I ever actually get it, I will go mad, but then again, I guess in that environment I would still have an internet connection. So, how much of that community is online? How much of it is in person? I do feel that it’s very important to me to have interpersonal time in the real world. I do think having continued access to conventions, or events, where I can go and meet people face to face, and have this recognition of, “Oh, you’re not a metric. You’re a person. You’re not a weird collection of bits liking my tweet. You are a human being with an entire, rich, internal life of your own who has decided to pay attention to the work that I do.” That’s pretty magical.
  100Demons064lucy3.jpg
  100 Demons #64

  You’re a positive person and have a good sense of what your process is, and what you’re making. Do you ever allow yourself to say, “This project is not working,” and just abandon something, or do you usually try to find a way to make it work?
  It’s only very recently that I had started to tackle things that I would consider capital “P” projects. My first book was a collection of mini comics, but when I was starting out, I did not intend to make a book. I was just making comics, because they were interesting to me. I’m maybe a little creatively ADHD. I skip around from thing to thing pretty constantly, and I think it’s because I like to keep stuff from feeling old, or I’m tied to it. I’m a commitment-phobe about creative projects.
  So, generally I think I avoid that by saying “Well, I’m not tied to this.” It’s like I don’t have to decide if it’s failing or not. I just wanted to do this one comic, and then I did it, and now it’s done. There’s not a lot of self-reflection there, and that is perhaps something that makes me nervous: I’ve been moving so quickly that I don’t really have to stop and assess whether or not something is good, and then most of the time, miraculously, it turns out to have some appeal, and then other people buy it, and then I have enough money to keep doing whatever I’m doing after that.
  There’s this sense that I’ve been moving so quickly so that nobody will pay too close attention to what it is I’m doing, because if they were to look closely, they would decide that it’s actually not very good, and that’s why working with a publisher is terrifying for me, because I think, “Oh god, a legitimate creative person is going to look at my stuff, and say this is garbage, you have to change all of this.”
  That’s the luxury and the curse of being an independent person: you don’t have to work with an editor if you don’t want to. I do think I should. I think it’s good for you to have someone else giving you creative feedback, even if you’re not working with a big editor, get a friend to read your stuff, or get somebody else to take a look at what you’re doing.
  I have this big collection of messy post-it notes on my wall that are all ideas and things that I’d like to explore at some point down the line… Most of the stuff I’ve done has either had an external impetus, like it’s a freelance gig, but it’s also a comic that I’m interested in doing, or it’s a personal project that I then extrapolate into something larger, like a book, but so far, my stubbornness has carried me through the things that I have committed to do as projects, and that has been helpful, in certainly the 100 day project. I just finished my second year of it, and I am a huge fan of that, because a 100 days is long enough that you have to let go of the idea that everything you make in that series is going to be perfect.
  It gives you permission to make lackluster entries, and I think that is what the creative process is about. It’s reminding yourself that you are allowed to screw it up every so often, and that screwing it up doesn’t mean you have to throw the brakes on, grind everything to a halt, cancel the project, and walk away. It means that you have successfully found something that didn’t work. The idea is that the good stuff is sitting underneath an enormous pile of crap inside you, and the faster you can get that out onto the page, the faster you can get to the good space.
  100Demons082lucy2.jpg
  100 Demons #82

  You care a lot about printing—adding foil and nice bindings. But you also go out of your way to make your work affordable for the people who want it.
  The irony of artist books is that they are these beautiful, sculptural, interactive situation pieces that often retail for hundreds or thousands of dollars. There’s a run of 20 of them, and they get purchased, and they get put in collections, and they get kept under glass.
  I remember viewing something. My college had a really big collection of artists books, but they were all in this secret room at the top of the library that you couldn’t go to if you were just a casual reader. I remember my friend Gabe, the special collections librarian, showing me an artist book that was a collection of blocks of soap, and you had to use the soap to get to whatever textual object was inside them. It was such a cool idea, but then I was struck with this immense sadness, because nobody was ever going to use that soap. It was just going to sit there, moldering away in this room for all eternity.
  It’s a nice thought experiment, but when things are meant to be used, they’re meant to be interacted with. It felt a little contradictory to have this practice. It’s like, “Yes, it’s a egalitarian, and it’s about giving people things that they can do with their hands, but we’re not going to actually do that. We’re just going to put it under a case, and you can look at it, and think about how cool that is, but not actually do it.” That’s why I love publishing houses like McSweeney’s because their Quarterly Concern is a $25.00 artist book that people can actually afford to buy, but is also a wacko box in the shape of a man’s head, or a collection of some stranger’s mail that you can read through.
  I noticed recently that I’m getting itchy to do another project that plays with that kind of stuff. I love print design. I love getting to produce zany things, and just say “Why don’t we put a die cut here, and let’s make it gold foil, and let’s do this, and let’s do that.” Having that kind of freedom as a self-publisher is great. Finding a reasonable price point where you can make something like that, and compensate yourself fairly, and sell it to people for under $30.00 is more challenging, but it’s a challenge that I enjoy.
  Generally, my rule of thumb is that the cover price should be about three times the cost of production. The challenge, for me, is that I want to be producing work domestically, but for longer print runs of books, certainly, or the plush toys that I’m making right now, it’s just not possible. Individual books would end up costing $30.00 to produce in the US, and then I would have to retail them for $90.00. That’s not going to work. It’s challenging because the folks I know who are printing, even in Canada, or locally in the US, have investors behind them who are pushing a magazine, or they’ve done a lot of crowdfunding to finance it.
  Last year I did a project for the 100 day project, where I illustrated an object in my possession everyday for 100 days. For the resulting collection I really focused on “Okay, can I work with a local offset press to do the booklets, and can I get my friend who’s a letterpress printer to help me design these boxes?” Basically, assembling a heist team where you can deal with that kind of stuff.
  I like that a great deal. It’s the kind of challenge that keeps the gears whirring in my head, but as far as the pricing goes, it’s generally like I want to keep it under $30.00, or three times the cost of production, and I think for those books, they were about $7.00 bucks a piece, materials and printing. That doesn’t include the time that it took to hand fold and assemble all the boxes, but I threw a party, and invited people over, and we got through it pretty quickly.
  Making more small weird things is probably going to be the thing that keeps me sane moving forward, if I start transitioning to doing longer graphic novel projects—I just have to be making tangible objects, and the notion of working on a graphic novel that’s going to take two years to produce, and then another year in publishing purgatory before it actually comes out on shelves as a book… there’s such a disconnect there. I love the immediacy of self-publishing and being able to just tear into a project, finish it, take it to printer, have an object five days later, and be like, “Yes. This is the thing I made. I birthed this with my raw hands, and then let it out into the world,” and you can let it go and move on.

• Anxy - https://anxymag.com/blogs/home/lucy-bellwood-knows-your-demons

  QUOTED: "Way back in 2012, I drew my first comic about an obnoxious little character who’d been following me around telling me my work was no good. Several years later, for a challenge called Inktober, I began exploring the relationship with that demon through a series of dialogue comics."
  "Those pieces were really popular, like noticeably popular ... which probably isn’t too surprising considering universal self-doubt is a more relatable subject than maritime history, my usual track. So this year for the 100 Day Project, I thought I’d get to the bottom of it all and do 100 conversations in the course of 100 days."

  Lucy Bellwood Knows Your Demons Better Than You Do
  How one illustrator found success by turning her inner voice into something real.
  Interview with Lucy Bellwood by Yu Vongkiatkajorn

  If you were to see your own personal demons, what would they look like? That’s a process Lucy Bellwood knows better than most. An illustrator and cartoonist, Bellwood recently produced “100 Demon Dialogues,” a comic about her relationship with a little monster that can’t seem to get out of her head. The comics, though autobiographical, are intensely relatable: Bellwood’s demon is that self-critical voice we all have, the one that tells us we’re not good enough. But, as she demonstrates, sometimes that voice is just trying to protect us, and at times, has anxieties of its own.

  What was the inspiration behind 100 Demon Dialogues?

  Way back in 2012, I drew my first comic about an obnoxious little character who’d been following me around telling me my work was no good. Several years later, for a challenge called Inktober, I began exploring the relationship with that demon through a series of dialogue comics. Those pieces were really popular, like noticeably popular — people responded to them in a way they hadn’t when it came to my other comics…which probably isn’t too surprising considering universal self-doubt is a more relatable subject than maritime history, my usual track. So this year for the 100 Day Project, I thought I’d get to the bottom of it all and do 100 conversations in the course of 100 days.

  How did you think the demon evolved over time?

  The demon takes many forms, and over the course of the project he really became a dimensional character. It became more apparent that he was just trying to keep me safe, or felt needy, or scared — he was suffering from the exact same things that I was!

  Writers say that the longer you sit with a character, the more it begins speaking for itself. That always sounded a little abstract to me, but I totally got there in this project. With three months, you really do have to time to sit with somebody and just listen. And if there was a particular day I couldn’t think of something, that was okay. Having no ideas is a perfect example of self-doubt! Win-win. But then the goal shifted towards not falling back on the same fears, on digging deeper.

  But sometimes, that happens, right? I feel like that’s often the case when it comes to things like anxiety.

  Oh yeah! The same themes resurface. And not only did the demon evolve with each iteration of those themes, the little avatar that represented me alsobecame a character — one who was more compassionate, more understanding, and more Zen than I would say I actually am in real life.

  The most fascinating thing of all to me is that my actual internal mental landscape began to change as a result of the project. There was probably a tenth of the entries where I felt like the demon got the upper hand, and days where I just felt overwhelmed or small — it was particularly hard to draw those entries. But I also found myself being more compassionate, or I saw myself running into emotional traps and going, “oh, I recognize this now.” I can make a different choice here, and rather than moving down the path of anxiety, I can choose self-acceptance or kindness.

  I know there’s varying evidence, but some people say that it takes 3 months to start a new habit or routine, and I couldn’t help but think about how that applied in the course of the project. It really did feel like I had shifted something in my inner landscape in a permanent way.

  What do you think that shift was?

  I think it was a shift towards being kinder and more aware of the anxiety traps I would fall into. There is power in being able to name things, and art has that capacity to capture something on the page and neutralize it. By turning your anxiety into a character, you create something that is external to you.

  That was a big shift mentally. When I’d fall into anxiety spirals, or experience self-doubt, I could say: “this is not me, my anxiety is a part of me, but it’s not the whole me.” It’s now possible to recognize that this is me, the whole complete, confident, loving person, and next to me is this little asshole who seems intent on ruining everything. But it’s not malicious — that’s something I realized. The demon in his fully-formed, characterized state is not an evil being. He’s a sympathetic character. That’s why the culmination of the series is a scene where he throws a tantrum, like a toddler, because he feels like he’s not being listened to, and he’s lonely and feels neglected.

  Yeah, it seems like the demon has his own anxieties as well.

  Absolutely. I initially toyed with an ending where I came home to find the demon battling his own army of tiny jerks, but by the end I knew the project was bigger than that. It’s about all of us, and that meant getting him to look outside his own ego and recognize the community around him.

  What’s next?

  It's time to take this show on the road! I Kickstarted a print collection and a demon plush toy at the end of the project in 2017, so my efforts since then have largely been about getting the book into schools, libraries, bookstores, and counselors' offices around the world. 2018 is a year for touring and hearing stories from folks who followed the project—and for wrestling with the hydra of commercial distribution.

  I've already visited eleven cities across the US to talk about the book and gather stories from others. Readers have been extraordinarily brave and open in sharing their own struggles with Imposter Syndrome, and I'm using their stories to inform a future workbook based on the project.

  You can purchase Lucy's book, 100 Demon Dialogues, here. ∆

  Jul 20, 2018
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• Broken Frontier - http://www.brokenfrontier.com/small-press-spotlight-lucy-bellwood-baggywrinkles/

  QUOTED: "A baggywrinkle is furry, cylindrical bundle of old rope used for preventing chafing between a ship’s sails and the lines that surround them. It’s one of the most distinctive features of a ship’s rigging, made all the more ludicrous by the fact that you spend a LOT of time explaining what it is to visitors—a hard sell when it’s got such a weird name."

  Small Press Spotlight on… Lucy Bellwood and ‘Baggywrinkles’
  by Andy Oliver July 23, 2015
  62
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  BellwoodAuthor1small_0715Lucy Bellwood‘s delightful run of nautically themed minicomics, Baggywrinkles, combine her own autobiographical experiences sailing on tall ships along with maritime-based educational strips. I reviewed the first five issues here at Broken Frontier earlier this year and had this to say of the book at the time: “We all know that comics as a medium have a unique facility for sharing and communicating personal experience with their readership, but you’ll find few series that do it with such a sheer and unremitting sense of joy than Lucy Bellwood’s Baggywrinkles.”

  This week Bellwood (pictured above, photo by Jeremy Francis) launched a Kickstarter campaign to publish a collected edition of her acclaimed comics; one that proved so popular that it had powered past its target by just its second day! Today, in my ongoing series of ‘Small Press Spotlight on…‘ interviews in this column, Lucy chats with me about how she discovered the world of tallships, crowdfunding the Baggywrinkles compilation, the nature of autobio work, and the myth of “walking the plank”…

  Baggywrinklescoversmall_0715ANDY OLIVER: As someone who has actually detailed her journey into comics in your autobiographical offering True Believer can you give us some background on how your love of the medium pulled you in to pursuing the form as a career in the first place?

  LUCY BELLWOOD: I feel like True Believer is actually kind of late in the game as far as my interest in comics goes—though it chronicles the more important moment when I decided to really go for it full-time. I grew up in a house with a lot of Calvin and Hobbes, plus some classic books by George Booth, Quentin Blake, Ronald Searle, and others. My mother was a cartoonist running her own business before I was born, and though the business went into hibernation once I hit the scene, her love of classic British cartooning stayed strong. I was surrounded by the stuff as a child. As far as comic books go, though, I had next to nothing.

  My real introduction to the medium came through webcomics when I was still in middle school. Reading autobio stories like Erika Moen’s DAR or slice-of-life serials like Danielle Corsetto’s Girls With Slingshots and Scott Kurtz’s PvP had a huge impact on me. Webcomics offered a portal with very few gatekeepers (there’s terrible early work of mine still on DeviantArt to prove it), and I started to nurse dreams of becoming an animator or a cartoonist early in high school.

  I detoured pretty hard into theater after that, and went to a small liberal arts school telling myself that if I was really interested I could always get an art degree later, but by the end of undergrad I knew that I had to go back to comics. Moving to Portland and attending the Stumptown Comics Fest as my first convention made it clear to me that I was hooked. After that I signed up for a Summer Session workshop at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont and I was done for.

  Baggywrinkleshistorical_0715You’re part of the Portland-based Periscope Studio. How did you become involved with that comics collective?

  Again, I have blame Erika for this one. While she was still writing and drawing DAR, she got laid off from her day job and began working out of Periscope part-time because she had friends there. Through her autobio comics I had this vision of a place full of skillful, friendly pros all working side by side and helping each other grow. The idea of it was intoxicating. I’d been seeking comics community wherever I went after the workshop at CCS, which was the first time I’d ever really been in a group of dedicated comics folks, rather than just being “the artist in the class”. I had a great year at the Independent Publishing Resource Center’s Comics & Independent Publishing Certificate Program, but I wanted something more established and more focused on draftsmanship and commercial application. Periscope was that beacon for me all through college.

  BellwoodIllustratedsmall_0715As a stopgap I started an open-door cartoonist meetup that gathered every Thursday in my house for two and a half years. That group grew from a few dedicated IPRC students to a gaggle of established and up-and-coming creators to a landing pad for new comics folk looking for camaraderie and critique. I invited strangers from conventions and roped in comics pals I wanted to get to know better—it was a great thing for me (and, I hope, for a lot of other people).

  At that time the Studio was still running its Mentorship Program, so after graduating and funding True Believer through Kickstarter I threw my hat in the ring to go work there for three months. I couldn’t believe it when they accepted me—I still felt like such a fraud. But Periscope turned out to be everything I’d dreamed of. After learning so much from everyone in the time I was there, they invited me to stay on trading social media wrangling and blog-writing for desk space. It was a pretty perfect fit. In January of 2014 I finally became a full-time member, and it remains one of the most important events in my entire career. Periscope has taught me so much and opened so many doors. I can’t imagine where I’d be without it.

  I first discovered your work when I reviewed Baggywrinkles for Broken Frontier earlier this year. Before we talk further about the comic here’s the obvious question: what’s the meaning of its rather distinctive title?

  A baggywrinkle is furry, cylindrical bundle of old rope used for preventing chafing between a ship’s sails and the lines that surround them. It’s one of the most distinctive features of a ship’s rigging, made all the more ludicrous by the fact that you spend a LOT of time explaining what it is to visitors—a hard sell when it’s got such a weird name. I mean, look at this thing:

  Baggywrinkles1small_0715

  You bring a lost age of sailing to life with such infectious enthusiasm in Baggywrinkles. How did you first discover the world of tall ships?

  Purely by accident! I mentioned I was a theater kid in high school, which got me into my hometown’s summer Shakespeare Festival (“Alas, poor Yorick”), which got me going to Renaissance Faires (fun corsets, but not much to do as a spectator), which got me into pirates (Inaccurate History! Romance! Adventure!), which got me subscribed to No Quarter Given (a quarterly piratical magazine because…of course), which got me Googling around for replica vessels still sailing today.

  BellwoodAloftsmall_0715The list I stumbled upon displayed the Alvei as its first entry, and clicking through to the ship’s website I saw a banner that proclaimed: “Live the life of an 18th-Century Tall Ship Sailor! Crew with us in the South Pacific!” It blew my mind. Not only were there ACTUAL TALL SHIPS still sailing the world, but I could go CREW ON THEM? With ZERO SAILING EXPERIENCE? Needless to say the South Pacific was a little far for a junior in high school with college applications to complete, so I set my sights closer to home and found the Lady Washington.

  The Lady runs up and down the West Coast of the US year-round doing education and outreach with school groups and the public. She and her sister ship, the Hawaiian Chieftain, reenact naval battles, appear at festivals, and generally serve as floating ambassadors of maritime history. They also offer a volunteer program called Two Weeks Before the Mast where the uninitiated can join up and learn to sail. After sampling one of their Battle Sails in January (the ships pass within 20 miles of my hometown every winter), I flung myself into the program during Spring Break of my senior year and didn’t look back.

  (Above right image – Bellwood aloft!)

  For those among the BF readership discovering Baggywrinkles through this interview can you give us a rundown of its mix of autobiography, maritime minutiae and nautical history to date?

  Baggywrinkles offers me the perfect chance to tell some exciting tales of real adventure on the high seas while passing on some of the weird and fascinating knowledge one accrues while working on a tall ship in the 21st century. Fact-checking can be tricky, since so much of the lore is oral tradition and hearsay, but my hope is that readers can a) discover that tall ship sailing is alive and well in the modern age, b) learn something new about the Golden Age of Sail, and c) realize that there are better ways to kill someone than making them walk the plank. Also: every time I hear that a reader has signed up to volunteer on the Lady or another tall ship as a result of reading my work, my heart glows.

  Baggywrinklesplank_0715

  You’ve launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a collected edition of Baggywrinkles (see the Kickstarter video below). What extras can fans of the series expect? Can you elaborate on that unprinted sixth issue that will be included in the compilation?

  In terms of special rewards, my biggest focus (after the book itself) is on a limited edition run of two-color letterpress prints with Twin Ravens Press. We’ve been talking about collaborating for a long time and this campaign seemed like the perfect opportunity. The image we’ve chosen is a guide to sailors’ tattoos poster I helped design for the Vancouver Maritime Museum a few years ago for their “Tattoos & Scrimshaw: The Arts of the Sailor” exhibit, which has since toured to several maritime museums along the West Coast! I just got the pack of paper samples from the printer today and I can safely say this thing is going to be really pretty.

  Scurvy Dogs, the final chapter in the book, is the latest installment in the Baggywrinkles series. It covers a historical survey of scurvy, including some of the wacky theories about causes and cures through the ages. I learned SO MUCH working on this comic with my co-writer Eriq Nelson, and I think it really showcases the best of what Baggywrinkles can be—educational, playful, and more than a little gross.

  You also have a rather special stretch goal reward in mind as well. What can you reveal about that?

  As of writing this interview, the campaign has exceeded its base funding goal(!!!!!!), so I’ll focus on what’s coming next: my goal, as a print-obsessed traditionalist, is to make as fancy a book as I can get away with. The stretch goals currently on the campaign docket include nautical endpapers (16k—funded!), spot gloss on the covers (18k), sticker sheets (19k), and (the extra special goal you allude to) a fully-colored version of the book with colorists Joey Weiser and Michele Chidester (20k)!

  The sample pages I’ve received from Joey and Michele look incredible—I’ve shared a couple on the campaign page already. Plus they’ve just come from coloring the re-release of Chris Schweizer’s nautical “Crogan Adventures” installment Catfoot’s Vengeance, so I know they’re going to knock this out of the park.

  If we blow through all that then I’m going to start running the logistics on including a hardcover version of the book, since several folks have expressed an interest in having one. That opens up possibilities for ribbon bookmarks, dust jackets, embossing, and more. WHO KNOWS. Currently my biggest dream is for color.

  Baggywrinklescoloursmall_0715

  When I reviewed those first five issues of Baggywrinkles I talked about how you shared such an unrelenting sense of passion for your subject matter. What is it about comics as a form that makes it such an effective medium for communicating personal experience do you think?

  Comics allow for so much variety in the depiction of experience—you can play with people’s expectations, segue between infographics and straight-up narrative depictions of real events, and open a door that makes the fantastical possible. If I’d known tall ship sailing was an option at 8 or even 12, my life might’ve been very different. A comic can take you many places, but an autobio comic holds the key to a story that actually happened. It makes the universal personal and the personal universal.

  BWcostume_0715I pitch Baggywrinkles to many people at conventions, and there’s always this moment when I point to this little postcard photo of the real Lady Washington and explain that I worked and lived on her and people’s eyes go wide with surprise and excitement. The comic draws you in, but the personal experience makes it real.

  Comics are also pretty unthreatening—at least I want that to be the case for the ones I make. Readers should get an accessible window into another person’s individual experience—one that hopefully resonates on a more basic human level. Even if you’re at the top of the main mast furling a t’gallant, you’re still a person. You’re still you. It humanizes the protagonist of the story and, by extension, encourages us as readers to think about all the people we encounter first and foremost as other humans.

  Some of your other autobiographical comics material is more revealing on a personal level. I’ve interviewed a number of autobio creators this year and one recurring point of discussion has been the sense of vulnerability that comes with the revelatory details of slice-of-life work. How much is that a consideration when working in that field?

  SaltSoap_4smallI believe very strongly in telling stories that are meaningful to me. If I’m not kept awake at night by the content, who’s to say anyone else will find it the least bit interesting? That being said I’ve done some stuff in the last year that’s definitely entered more raw territory than I usually explore with my rabid enthusiasm about ships and the sea. I try not to censor myself when making comics about, say, a difficult breakup, but it’s also hard to make work that takes other people into consideration.

  Salt Soap (right), the story I’m referring to, had a bit of an advantage because I wrote it a couple years ago—many of the wounds documented therein have faded. I even had the ex in question read it before it went live—and that was nerve-wracking because of course you can’t distill every complex element of a broken relationship into seven pages of pictures and words! How could you? But he’s a storyteller in his own right and was incredibly gracious about letting it go out into the world.

  Something else I think about a great deal is how dramatic the response to those types of comics is. People love boats, sure, but they also really love stories of heartbreak or sexual self-discovery. Those pieces generate a lot of traffic, even though they don’t revolve around an easy, central theme like Baggywrinkles. I often look to Lucy Knisley as an example of harnessing this sort of thing, since she ran a really lovely collection of her assorted autobio work under the banner Stop Paying Attention, which stood apart from her contained (also autobio) book projects. It’s something I think a lot about pursuing.

  I’m certainly more drawn to making my personal experiences available as lenses through which other people can share their stories, rather than drumming up an entire fantasy world from scratch. It’s always come more easily to me, even with the peculiar challenges of finding out how much inner landscape is just enough to share.

  BWsample0_0715 BWsample1_0715 BWsample2_0715

  Sample pages from the first three issues of Baggywrinkles

  The versatility of your art is showcased to great effect in Baggywrinkles – from busy, comedic, near-slapstick cartooning in places to a more realistic style in the fifth issue’s historical account of the Lady Washington. How do you feel your approach to the page has evolved over the course of the years you’ve been creating the comic?

  One of the hardest things about putting together this book was acknowledging that I was going to publish a really handsome, well-designed volume that would feature the very first comic I ever drew front and center. I know everyone’s first book is kind of like this—a historical tour through your development as an artist—but I really do feel like I’ve come a long way since I started Baggywrinkles in 2010. It’s also only been one of many projects on my plate, so I feel like each issue represents a different leap in my career.

  Bringing myself to look at the first couple issues again, I realize that some stuff I really enjoyed about that early work was my willingness to play with different page layouts. There was a lot of unbridled visual enthusiasm in those comics, and I think that as my drawing skills became tighter I lost a little bit of that playfulness. Fortunately (as I think I said earlier) Scurvy Dogs gets back to that tradition with a lot of detail and a load of silly slapstick comedy. Man, I love drawing slapstick. Love it.

  Bellwoodscurvysmall_0715In practical terms I now rough in most of my comics pretty exclusively with a Cintiq 12WX in Manga Studio 5EX. I love the versatility of penciling digitally—I can move type and figures around, resize layouts to better accommodate edits, and drop reference images straight onto the page. But when it comes time to ink I’m still just more comfortable working in the real world. So these days I’ll print out my roughs onto great big Bristol pages and ink with Kuretake felt tip brushes and fixed-width PITT pens.

  My favorite aspect of making comics is the formulaic way a story goes from a nebulous idea to tangible, physical object you can hold in your hand. Every stage of the process—from thumbnails to pencils to inks to color—feels more and more exciting because it brings you a completely different product from the one before. So even though I don’t use an Ames guide or ink with brush anymore, I still like to cling to those elements of the process that put me in touch with the real object in my hands.

  You have a large body of work outside of your sailing strips of course. Could you give us a rundown of some of your other comics in the realms of autobio, fantasy and graphic journalism?

  GA4Bellwoodsmall_0715It feels like a blessing and a curse that I’ve been so all over the map in these first three years working freelance—it makes building a “single” brand difficult, but I’ve also enjoyed getting to dip my toe in a ton of fields.

  I’ve done comics journalism work about climate change and female Navy veterans at Guantanamo Bay for Symbolia Magazine, painfully honest autobio about social dance and sexuality for The Nib, adventurous travelogue comics about rafting through the Grand Canyon (Grand Adventure, left) and sailing aboard the last wooden whaling ship in the world, and straight-up playful fantasy world-building for Cartozia Tales. There’s also been several anthology contributions in there, plus some really meaningful guest comic runs for artists who inspired me to start in this field in the first place—Erika Moen, Danielle Corsetto, Paul Tobin & Colleen Coover, and Sam Logan spring to mind.

  I’ve loved every minute of it, but I’m looking forward to narrowing my focus to projects that I’m really concentrating my full energy on in the coming months. (This is part of the reason I started a Patreon page in 2014—less running around doing freelance, more straight-up comics work!)

  And finally what can we look forward to seeing from Lucy Bellwood in the future, post-Baggywrinkles Kickstarter?

  More regular content, that’s for damn sure! Patreon has been an incredible boon in my professional life, and I’m reaching the point where I can focus more and more of my attention on churning out the kinds of important-to-me comics I’ve been talking about here with more regularity. Expect more short sailing stories, more snippets of maritime history, more autobio (I’ve been dying to do a piece about growing up as a dual citizen for SO LONG NOW), and maybe even a pitch for a new graphic novel about an unlikely intergenerational friendship. Overall my plan is to stay independent and keep churning out great content online with an eye to publishing a second book within the next couple years. Bless the Internet, it makes all of this possible.

  You can back the Baggywrinkles Kickstarter campaign here.

  For more on the work of Lucy Bellwood visit her website here. You can also follow Lucy on Twitter here.

  For regular updates on all things small press follow Andy Oliver on Twitter here.

• Comics Allianc - http://comicsalliance.com/lucy-bellwood-baggywrinkles/

  Cartoonist Lucy Bellwood launched a Kickstarter on Monday, July 20, for a collection of her minicomics about tall ships titled Baggywrinkles: A Lubber's Guide to Life at Sea. Bellwood has sailed on these historical ships herself and channeled this fascination into a project that is partially auto-biographical, partially historical, and partially fun facts about sailing. The campaign has already gone well over its funding goal and hit some important stretch goals, including getting a full color treatment.

  ComicsAlliance sat down with Bellwood to talk about the project, her love of pirates, crowdfunding, and her secret plans for the Kickstarter booty.

  ComicsAlliance: So first, can you explain what exactly a tall ship is?

  Lucy Bellwood: Yes, of course. And I know it's monstrously confusing because people always say, "Oh yeah, weren't you working on that tall…boat? Long boat? U-Boat?” So a tall ship is generally what people see if they think of "a pirate ship.” A very loose definition is a ship with tall masts, which encompasses brigs, brigantines, topsail schooners etc.
  And they're generally "traditionally rigged" which often refers to being square-rigged — having yards (the spars the sails hang from) that sit perpendicular to the masts.

  (This is all kind of hard to explain without my usual hand-waving, so just imagine that I'm waving my hands around a lot while I describe this)

  (It's actually pretty safe to assume I'm waving my hands around a lot when I'm talking about anything)

  CA: And these were "modern" in what years?

  LB: Generally we use the term to refer to vessels from the Golden Age of Sail, which can be as broad a period as the 16th-19th century. I mean there was a looooong stretch of time where sail power was the method of transportation around the globe. Trade, warfare, and exploration depended upon it.

  CA: Right --- although structurally there were likely differences, it's one big category from a modern perspective?

  LB: I would say so.
  There are even alternative shipping companies trying to push for a return to sail power in the modern age, as climate change forces us to cut back on fossil fuel use.

  Those trade winds that drove ships thousands of miles across the globe are still kicking.

  CA: So how did you get interested in 18th century boats?

  LB: I didn't really grow up a sailing kid. Ojai, CA (my hometown) is about a 20 minute drive from the ocean — lots of boats and nautical stuff, good surfing, beaches, what-have-you — but I wasn't on the water a ton as a kid.
  I loved the beach, I loved the ocean, but sailing wasn't really something I thought about. I think I even *went* on a replica vessel on a school field trip when I was in 5th grade or something, but it didn't stick.

  So in high school I got really into theater (there's a ton of theater in Ojai since it's all basically Hollywood ex-pats who got fed up with the rat race and moved to the country), which got me involved with Shakespeare Festival, which got me interested in pirates.
  CA: So pirates are to blame?

  LB: Always! I always blame pirates. They're terrible. My childhood best friend and I were… probably a little obsessed. We'd watch Cutthroat Island over and over and make forts in cliffside caves and choreograph fake sword fights on the beach.
  I also loved reading Swallows and Amazons as a kid, which my mom gave to me when I was…ten? Eleven, maybe?
  But really pirates were the gateway drug. They were very "in" at the time. The kicker with all the pirate stuff was that there wasn't much to do aside from read history books and historical fiction and wear stripy socks and dress up to go to high school.
  Which… I did. A lot.

  And Renaissance Faires were really enthralling but, again, lots of walking around buying expensive leather gear, not a lot of actual boat stuff.

  Photo Credit: Jeremy Francis

  CA: Technically I suppose you could've murdered someone and stolen their stuff.

  LB: I have a sailor friend who made a "Kill pirates and take their stuff" bumper sticker. It's very popular with tall ship sailors.
  Because we get mistaken for pirates all the time! It's inevitable. Merchant mariner erasure is totally a real thing.

  CA: So how did you go from loving pirates to actually working on a tall ship?

  LB: So I subscribed to this (bear with me) pirate quarterly magazine called No Quarter Given, and they had a section where they'd talk about replica ships making port visits and doing pirate festivals and things.
  And one day in high school I got to googling and found a huge list of tall ships currently active around the globe. The first entry on that list was the Alvei, a vessel based in the South Pacific, and when I clicked through to get website there was a huge banner ad informing me that I could sail aboard a real live tall ship and live the life of an 18th-century sailor.
  It blew my mind.

  CA: How long was it between finding out you could do that and actually doing it?

  LB: So I think that research rabbit hole was sometime during my junior year of high school, and obviously I wasn't going to get the cash together to fly halfway around the world and work in New Zealand for six months, so I looked closer to home.
  The Lady Washington and her sister ship, the Hawaiian Chieftain, come through Ventura every January on their West Coast tour. Every year we'd read about them in the paper and then totally fail to get our shit together and go visit.

  But that year I was so ready. I hounded my parents until they agreed to book us on for a 3-hour Battle Sail, where the two ships go out into the harbor and fire black powder guns at each other for a while.

  I still have some old disposable camera photographs from that first sail and I'm just beaming like a lunatic the whole time. There's a series of lines called brails used to haul in the big sail at the back of the vessel (called the spanker — I know) that generally take a lot of hands to haul in, so I got to jump in and volunteer during the trip.

  It was totally intoxicating — all the shouting and heaving and running around. And the crew were so cool. They were grubby and sunburned and obviously having the time of their lives.
  I asked them how I could sign up to volunteer as soon as we started heading back to the dock, and two months later I spent my entire spring break in the Bay area doing my two week training on board.

  CA: I imagine that it is not easy work.

  LB: The shouting alone burns at least 800 calories. But then I was a shouty kid so it seemed pretty perfect.
  The Lady's volunteer program involves that two week training period (and keep in mind you're living on board the whole time, sleeping in a bunk in a compartment with seven other people and next-to-no privacy), and then you can stay on as long as you like working as a deckhand or training to take on a paid position.

  So after that spring break trip I impatiently finished up at school before going back twice in the summer/fall, and then returning for a three-month tour the following spring.

  CA: What was that like as a woman? I ask because obviously at the time the ships were made, it was almost entirely men on board so they're not really set up for women.

  LB: The thing I loved about going to work on the ship for those first two weeks was that nobody cared how old I was or what gender I was or really about anything that would've mattered socially in high school. I was enthusiastic and willing and I pulled my weight. That was enough. It was so refreshing, being seventeen and constantly worrying about fitting in or behaving the right/wrong way.
  In terms of practicalities, modern tall ships do have marine heads so you don't have to hang your backside off the headrails to pee.

  CA: That is a major benefit.

  LB: Though the wind on your nethers is a pretty nice sensation, I must say.
  The folks who gave me grief for being a lady sailor were almost exclusively passengers and the general public. Mostly older guys who would call me little lady and insinuate that I didn't know port from starboard, which got old.

  CA: How much time, total, have you spent on tall ships to date?

  LB: Haha, not nearly enough.
  Maybe six months total, which is peanuts compared to most of my full-time sailor friends.

  CA: Let’s talk about the fact that you have "full-time sailor friends” --- what do they think about your comics work?

  LB: The trouble was I went away to college after that first long stint, and then would sneak away to visit friends working on other southern California vessels, or see the Lady when she came to the northwest, but everything was being shoehorned in around school or, later, starting my career as a cartoonist.
  Every sailor I've spoken to about the comics loves them, which is the sweetest and best thing.
  I won't lie that I have some anxiety about putting this out as a proper book collection, because the readership will grow wildly and I may get a load of people coming in to tell me that I've got all my facts wrong.

  Fact-checking generations of oral tradition and hearsay can be, uh… a little tricky.

  CA: So, with the book --- you did a bunch of minicomics about tall ships. Are they fiction? Auto-bio? Historical?

  LB: A messy blend of all three! Haha.
  The series started as a short comic about how I got into tall ship sailing, and some of my first impressions from being aboard.

  As I started adding more issues, it became a platform to document some of the neatest things I'd learned while sailing — traditional nautical tattoos, weird sailors tools and terms, etc.

  In Issue #4 I capitulated and did a pirate-based story about the facts on "walking the plank" which, as I had long suspected, wasn't nearly as popular or practical a method of execution as many suppose.

  Then Jim Mockford, a friend to the Lady Washington and a maritime historian in his own right, proposed collaborating on a historical anecdote about the original Lady Washington, so we got to do a bit of a tone shift for that.

  It's been pretty varied, but I've really enjoyed it as a path to figuring out how best to make this a more extensive series.

  There's still so many topics to cover.

QUOTED: "Bellwood captures emotions and anxieties familiar to anyone who does creative work, providing striving readers motivation and daily affirmations."

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Print Marked Items
100 Demon Dialogues
Publishers Weekly.
265.17 (Apr. 23, 2018): p72.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
100 Demon Dialogues
Lucy Bellwood. Toonhound, $14.99 trade
paper (144p) ISBN 978-0-9882202-4-9
This collection of peppy motivational cartoons for artists began as a project for a 100-day online challenge.
Each day, Bellwood posted a one-panel cartoon of herself struggling with an "inner imp" representing her
creative anxieties. The cutely sneering little black shape criticizes her artwork and her life, offers poor
advice ("If you never turn it in, they can never tell you it's bad"), and gives impossible, conflicting
instructions. In response, Bellwood's cartoon avatar learns to grow more confident and optimistic to counter
the imp's predictions of doom. Some installments show the duo going through the typical life of an indie
cartoonist--drawing, traveling to conventions, fretting over social media, taking a few precious days off--
while others are fanciful cartoon representations of problems like juggling too many projects or balancing
work and life. It's a light volume, as might be expected from a comic that started as a casual online
challenge; more a series of illustrated aphorisms and off-the-cuff daily thoughts than a fully fleshed-out
narrative. And, appropriately enough, the art improves as the book progresses. Bellwood captures emotions
and anxieties familiar to anyone who does creative work, providing striving readers motivation and daily
affirmations. (BookLife)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"100 Demon Dialogues." Publishers Weekly, 23 Apr. 2018, p. 72. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A536532917/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=61eaf013.
Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A536532917
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Baggywrinkles: A Lubber's Guide to Life
at Sea
Children's Bookwatch.
(Apr. 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com/cbw/index.htm
Full Text:
Baggywrinkles: A Lubber's Guide to Life at Sea
Lucy Bellwood
Toonhound Studios LLC
http://www.toonhound.com/studios.htm
9780988220294, $19.99, PB, 132pp, Ages 9-12, www.amazon.com
Diana Perry
Reviewer
This book is a fast-paced graphic novel about two adventurous lads who learn all about life aboard a ship.
Young readers will learn nautical terminology and how to navigate all kinds of waters without the modern
equipment we have today. Kids will feel like they're part of the crew as they battle land-lovers, search for
treasures, and visit all of Europe as real-life, sword-wielding pirates.
Please Note: Illustration(s) are not available due to copyright restrictions.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Baggywrinkles: A Lubber's Guide to Life at Sea." Children's Bookwatch, Apr. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A537853131/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=585be6cd.
Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A537853131

QUOTED: "The only downside to this collection is its brevity—here's hoping Bellwood has more stories on the way."

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Baggywrinkles: A Lubber's Guide to Life
at Sea
Publishers Weekly.
263.27 (July 4, 2016): p71.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* Baggywrinkles: A Lubber's Guide to Life at Sea
Lucy Bellwood. Toonhound Studios, $19.99 paper (132p) ISBN 978-0-9882202-9-4
Bellwood's stints as a deckhand on the Lady Washington, a modern-day replica of an 18th-century brig,
inform this funny and enlightening comics collection, which is part memoir, part breezy overview of
nautical history and lore. In six longer comics and several interludes, she discusses her own introduction to
confusing nautical terminology ("So I'm guessing you could easily find me the for 'topms 'tays 'lhalyrd,"
jokes a crewmate), the scourge of scurvy, the dubious history of plank walking, and a notable voyage of the
original Lady Washington to Japan, more than 60 years before Commodore Perry showed up, among other
topics. Bellwood is a gifted raconteur, skillfully blending historical anecdotes with irreverent contemporary
humor ("So we're gonna need like ... all of these," two admirals tell a Sicilian lemon farmer, aiming to curb
scurvy). Her artwork, meanwhile, is in line with of-the-moment creators such as Kate Beaton and Lucy
Knisley, and her chunky line work also nods to woodcut prints and tattoos, the latter getting their own
chapter, too. The only downside to this collection is its brevity--here's hoping Bellwood has more stories on
the way, nautical or otherwise. Ages 9-12. (BookLife)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Baggywrinkles: A Lubber's Guide to Life at Sea." Publishers Weekly, 4 July 2016, p. 71. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A457302985/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=41e11193.
Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A457302985

"100 Demon Dialogues." Publishers Weekly, 23 Apr. 2018, p. 72. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A536532917/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018. "Baggywrinkles: A Lubber's Guide to Life at Sea." Children's Bookwatch, Apr. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A537853131/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018. "Baggywrinkles: A Lubber's Guide to Life at Sea." Publishers Weekly, 4 July 2016, p. 71. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A457302985/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.

• Between Human and Truth
  http://betweenhumanandtruth.com/review-100-demon-dialogues/
  Word count: 721

  QUOTED: "100 Demon Dialogues is ... a loving reminder that insecurities are natural and that we need not be alone in dealing with them."

  Review: 100 Demon Dialogues
  July 19, 2018 Emily Reviews
  100 Demon DialoguesThe fact that I backed Lucy Bellwood’s 100 Demon Dialogues on Kickstarter probably gives you an idea of what I think about this book. But if you want to know exactly why I supported this project, read on.

  Summary
  In 2017, cartoonist Lucy Bellwood’s set out to complete her second 100 Day Project. This time, she would return to a concept she’d dabbled with since beginning full-time work as a freelance cartoonist: a tiny demon embodying her doubts and concerns about life and career. Over the course of three months, she illustrated a series of comics starring herself and this demon, each comic shedding more light on the relationship between the two.

  100 Demon Dialogues collects these comics and pays homage to the community that sprung from Bellwood’s project.

  Let’s Get Into It…
  I followed #100DemonDialogues on Instagram and fell in love with Bellwood’s art and story-telling abilities. When Bellwood announced that she would make a book, I jumped aboard the kickstart almost immediately. The reasons are quite simple: Bellwood’s comics are relatable. Each comic reflects something I have experienced in my own life – from concerns over creative output, to doubt about the validity of self-care, and worry for the state of the world.

  The concept of illustrating one’s inner demon is simply elegant, and Bellwood allows this concept to shine through the use of (mostly) a single square panel per comic/page. I love Bellwood’s smooth lines and shading and the mix of realism and metaphorical images within the collection. The images are fun and motivational (like comic 14, which shows Bellwood with a jetpack on her back, about to launch), as well as cute, heartfelt, and beautiful.

  Some other cool things about this collection:

  Bellwood’s been working to make sure that she offers an accessible version for those who need/want it. You don’t see a lot of people talking about accessibility, especially in industries that are so image-based, like comics.
  The book features some bonus content, so those who followed on Instagram get a little something extra
  You can get a super cute demon plushie to accompany your copy
  While each comic is somewhat self-contained, addressing a different situation or conversation, a grander theme emerges as one makes their way through the collection. The little black inked demon is a doubter, a whiner, and a discourager, as we might expect of the voice of self-doubt. But Bellwood illustrates that the relationship between artist (or individual) and demon is more complex than this. The demon is also a sympathetic figure in some of Bellwood’s comics – a child in need of comfort, or an over-protective voice encouraging us to avoid what it believes is dangerous. And that’s part of what I love about this personification. It shows the diversity in the ways our doubts manifest themselves; the demon is the voice of our loudest doubts and quietest concerns. He is a source of motivation at some points, a reminder of our (realistic and valid) limits at others.

  The honesty in these comics inspired many online while Bellwood was completing the 100 Day Project, and I think you can see the impact of the many comments and stories shared on Bellwood’s Instagram (and elsewhere) is reflected in the comics themselves. The final few comics especially focus on community, and when I see them at the end of this collection, I a filled with all kinds of warm fuzzies. Ultimately, this little book is a reminder that we are not alone. And that gives me hope.

  I think many of you, regardless of whether you consider yourself an artist or creator, will feel the same way.

  Final thoughts: Lucy Bellwood’s 100 Demon Dialogues is an enchanting collection that explores self-doubt, imposter syndrome, creativity, and community. It’s a loving reminder that insecurities are natural and that we need not be alone in dealing with them. I encourage everyone to get a copy or gift a copy.

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