🦀 December Scuttlebutt
Welcome, shipmates, to December's Scuttlebutt blog post roundup!
This feature started as a way to capture everything I'd published to my website and Patreon in a given month, but I last sent one in, uh, June of 2023, so I'm doing a bit of curating.
The biggest thing I wanted to share is that Shay Mirk and I are hosting a Comics and Coffee hangout at my studio in downtown Ojai on the 26th! (That's this coming Thursday.)
We’ll be there from 11am-1pm with ample supplies (pens, paper, zine templates, staplers, and table space), plus delicious coffee from Pinhole Coffee, tea fixings, and home-baked treats. I’ll also have books and plush toys on hand if anyone’s flush with Christmas cash and looking to pick up some swag to take home. The studio is located at 918 East Ojai Avenue.
Here's some highlights from my blog over the past year and a half:
- One Thing Several Ways "We are living through a transformative and dangerous era."
- Echolocation Part of me feels sad that the hype machine burns out so quickly, other parts are happy that these small-scale experiments go to ground.
- Sketchnotes: For the People Notes from a recent informational webinar run by For The People, a fantastic team aiming to get more people actively involved in defending and championing libraries.
- Laid Low No one was asking me to work, so I could actually work.
- A String of Letters Acronyms to live by.
- First Among Seconds How many times have I scooped lotion from a jar?
- Tender/Dangerous Touch is a cornerstone of survival in this season.
I've also shared a fair amount of stuff on Patreon
(Posts marked with a ✑ are free for everyone to read. Posts marked with a ✒︎ are just for Patrons. Join us!)
- SECRETS ✒︎ In which I invite people to show off the secret presents they can't wait to see opened.
- Moving Picture Dispatch ✒︎ A little video tour of the studio and a look at what's on the drawing board. Including a tour of a kelp farm!
- LIZARD TIME ✒︎ A discussion of character design pitfalls when you're on a deadline.
- Where Life Dwells ✑ Getting back into the swing of warming up.
Finally, on the subject of Patreon, I want to make sure everyone knows that beloved cartoonist Kate Beaton also has a Patreon page, where she's been sharing exquisite diary comics, touching essays about family history, and deep dives into the local issues that impact her home in Nova Scotia. I cannot recommend her work highly enough.
This year has been a strange mix of things. I'm realizing that most of my efforts have gone toward simply hauling myself back up to the ground floor of my own life. This work takes time. As my pal Emerald said the other night "Our quads are ripped on the astral plane."
Hope to see some of you on the 26th, and to write a little more often in 2025.
❤︎,
Lucy
P.S. I finished the quilt I wrote about in October's newsletter!
