🌊 Summer Bottleship
Hello, friends—
This is Adventure Cartoonist Lucy Bellwood and you’re subscribed to my very rare newsletter! (If you want to jump ship for any reason, you can unsubscribe at the bottom of this message.)
I’m writing to you from Columbus, Ohio, one week into a month-long journey across various cities in the U.S. to attend academic conferences, comics conventions, museum exhibits, and friend reunions. There is so much to share, but I’m also carrying a host of complex feelings about nearly losing my dad to pneumonia this spring. It’s hard to know how to start a peppy promotional email when you’re still pinching yourself and asking “Did that really happen? He was dying? And then he wasn’t? How do I metabolize this?”
I’d planned this trip long before he was hospitalized. Before he was dying, before he wasn’t dying, before we made the decision to move him to assisted living after so many years of caring for him, day in and day out, at home.
In the first draft of this email, which I maybe started a month ago, I said “my house is empty and my heart is full of confusion and relief and sadness.” Everyone asks how we’re doing, and I don’t know how to answer.
In the midst of the chaos, a friend said, very wisely:
“I hope whatever you hope will happen happens.”
Sometimes it isn’t about getting better. Sometimes we have to acknowledge that death is in the room. Sometimes death pops in for a visit and then says “…nah” and leaves again. Those visits are disorienting and stunning and funny and bleak. They leave you feeling untethered from the world.
I am trying to re-tether myself.
You can find me tabling this weekend in Ann Arbor, Michigan at the Ann Arbor Comic Arts Festival (A2CAF). The show is free and runs 10-5 on Saturday and 11-5 on Sunday at the Ann Arbor District Library. There are live drawing events and panels and games, and the roster of cartoonists in attendance is truly fantastic. I’ll be at my table all weekend aside from one panel on Sunday afternoon:
2:30 - 3:30 PM | 4th Floor Program Room
That's a Wrap! Roundtable DiscussionScott McCloud (Understanding Comics, The Cartoonists Club) joins Lisa Naffziger (Deja Ross Speaks to Freaks), Lucy Bellwood (Baggywrinkles), and Lillian Xie (Beary Long Day) to discuss creativity, art, and their lives in comics to close this year's A2CAF. The discussion will be moderated by Ruth McNally Barshaw (Ellie McDoodle).
(Some illustrations from the kelp farming primer poster I recently finished.) While my dad was in the hospital I managed to give a really fun talk for the Aquaculture Information Exchange on why cartoonists are singularly well-positioned to do science communication work. (The inciting project for this was a giant poster about kelp farming that I’ve been working on for months and cannot wait to share…soon!) You can watch the talk replay here.
The hardest thing about being gone this month is not getting to run into the garden every morning to stare at the sunflowers I planted this spring! Growing sunflowers has been on my list for years, and I love that it finally happened. This one did make it open before a left, but the others remain a mystery. One of them was about seven feet tall when I left and even if it never blooms I just admire it so much for getting that far.
If you’re anywhere near Mystic, Connecticut: I’ll be in the area the week of June 16th, sleeping aboard the Joseph Conrad at Mystic Seaport by night and participating in the Fourteenth International Melville Society Conference by day. The conference is a private thing, but if you’d like to come look at boats with me, reach out. There will be time in-between intense academic discussion for wandering around.
Patreon Corner
Everything I do is made possible by Patreon, which I’ve been using for ten years now? Unfathomable. Here’s a selection of posts that’ve gone up since I last sent a newsletter. (Posts marked with a ✑ are free for everyone to read. Posts marked with a ✒︎ are just for Patrons. Join us!)
✑ And just like that… - reflecting on ten years of patronage
✒︎ Bird Commission (with a twist) - how do you draw a gay robin?
✒︎ Seacritters Snapshot #10 - slogging along on pencils, trying to stay motivated
âś‘ May Community Zoom - Patron Josh Horton sailed around Cape Horn aboard a massive tall ship this spring and was kind enough to come give a talk about it for our monthly Zoom meetup!
âś‘ D: / :D (or, Motivation Two Ways) - how to reward yourself for creative work
✒︎ Seacritters Snapshot #11 - I finished the pencils and started on inks so everyone gets to hear about NERDY DRAWING STATS!
Blog Stuff
Still writing on my own website because it’s 2025 and websites are cool again. Here are a couple notable posts from the year so far.
Ramble #35 (I have to confess I misspoke when I recorded this and named Melanie Gillman as the other cartoonist at the Newberry event! Incorrect! Leaving it in because I do still love their foraging comics so much. But Marnie Galloway was my actual Newberry compatriot.)
More Words Than I Thought I’d Write About Email on a Wednesday
I’m going to wrap this up for now because it’s time to go to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum and get emotional about how many generations of cartoonists have come before us, all drawing little pictures in boxes, all telling stories about things that mattered to them, all trying, in one way or another, to be found.
If you want to reply and let me know how you’re doing: I’ve been having good luck asking people to just pick ten words that give a snapshot of their lives right now. Try it.
Take care out there, and I hope to see some of you very soon.
xo
L