It wanted a pen so it could get into cartooning

$140 raised and 1 zine remaining! If we go over the number of zines I've got I'll throw something else in, I've got lots of leftover merch from when I used to table 😅

$5 for a zine and a custom sketchcard is bananas! This is a stellar chance to bag some Ripley art AND support trans rights.

Remembered "It's Thursday! Figure drawing is on Thursday!" and leapt up from the chair, then made myself sit down because I had "work to do," then forced myself to stand back up because creative nourishment is actually more important right now and I will go and STILL have time for work after.

Little Thursday lighthouses in watercolor.

We love to see it! (You can also add Garden Variety to your RSS reader, if you’re into that kind of thing.)

I have tasted of this potent brew and lemme tell you: it whips

Friends, I've spent the last few months developing an online take-at-your-own-pace certificate on finding jobs in marine conservation through Conservation Careers. It's now available for signups! Save 33% if you book soon! I'm happy to answer any questions! www.conservation-careers.com/marine/

Treasure! From the Bookseller.

Trying to find a Not Insane photo of my dad for his celebration of life invitation and let me tell you: I come by my Muppet energy honestly.

There are many things to cheer for in @schweizercomics.bsky.social's new graphic novel project, but I particularly love his top tier stretch goal: giving a copy of the book to every public library in Kentucky and making books available for free to Kentucky schools who ask for them! Incredible.

During Pride, Jey Pawlik reflects on how far they've come in their journey to become themself! In this joyful comic, they share some of the Little Trans Joys that they've collected over the years of their transition. www.ohjoysextoy.com/my-little-tr...

Just gonna leave this entry from 100 Demon Dialogues here today. Keep showing up for each other.

I’m only a quarter of the way into @vandroidhelsing.bsky.social’s The West Passage but I can already say that if somebody doesn’t pay @newjackcole.bsky.social a gazillion dollars to do the graphic novel adaptation someday I will riot

New strategy unlocked: calling my senators immediately after waking up means calling before my anxiety has ALSO had time to wake up. Too tired to be anxious. Worked a treat. Where‘s my tea.

Sketching outside the Met last fall.

Never not thinking about Lewis Hyde's A Primer for Forgetting. He opens saying he's sick of sinking every argument into concrete and will no longer "mask the native jumpiness of [his] mind." What follows is snippets, quotes, observations, short essays about forgetting all woven around four themes.

When you buy our eBooks, you own them. It's ✨literally impossible✨ for us to ever take them back, they're just PDFs that you downloaded. 1000s of pages. Buy them (at a steep discount) this week to help us fund commissioning the next year's worth of indie comics 💕 www.patreon.com/c/OhJoySexTo...

A wee female Cooper's hawk watercolor from a few years back. (Should've made those feet yellow, but we live and learn.) #birdart #sciart #watercolor

More Good Drawer (2022), for everyone trying to find their way back to a sense of creative play.

NEW ✨ introducing ‘Little Forager’ mini zine featuring the Thimbleberry — fun little handmade mini zine series about native plants that you can find and forage in the PNW. Available this Saturday at BwPCon! 11a-7p at Books with Pictures

Bellwood’s Tried and True Post-Tabling Recovery Regimen: ✅ Return home after ditching tabling goods at studio ✅ Close all curtains ✅ Fling clothes to the floor ✅ Cold shower ✅ Screech like a raptor upon remembering the Tofutti Cuties in the freezer ✅ Little treat ✅ Stare vacantly into space

Comics pals: if you need a marvelous inker or inking assistant on your team, keep Ray’s contact info handy! A true catch.

OJAI PRIIIIIIDE! Man oh man this was the most wholesome event I think I’ve ever tabled at. So many good dogs/kids/queers in one place. Does my heart good to emerge from a long hiatus and get met with such joy.

Pride Festival today! I’m tabling outside which is new for me, but I borrowed a massive canopy from a friend and brought my body weight in grapes. That’ll do, right?

Mods are asleep post Pirate Bear

Opened up the studio this afternoon.

More of this today! Gonna have so many tiny print objects on the table at Ojai Pride this weekend.

Recently finished oiling these butter knives that I whittled in Alaska during Comics Camp. They are smooooooth (like, perhaps, butter). Blessings be upon @shing.bsky.social for giving knives to cartoonists.

As a not-so-frequent digital artist I find it so hard to make time to actually *try* all the different brushes in Procreate. There are tons I’ll never use and I want to cut down on decision fatigue. Decided to set a timer and sample as many as I could to figure out what was worth keeping.

Okay clearly everyone needs a refresher on some nautical terminology definitions. I'm posting this.

Okay please help me, Bluesky. If I use the term "scuttlebutt" do you a) know what it means and b) know where they term originated?

Lesbians I‘ve encountered this year during Pride events, but they’re birds.

The Dry Brush Monarch, the Traditional Texture Deity, call ‘em what you like: Maria is firing on all cylinders.

imagining a grizzled hardboiled detective saying this while gripping some guy's lapels at a shady bar

Happy #makeaterriblecomicday I had to draw this.

I absolutely adored this book. Rich and strange and hilarious and heartfelt. Ariel is an unstoppable juggernaut. Treat yourself!

If you're lusting after the bookbinding equipment in the video I posted earlier and want to make your own for cheap: look no further.

Why not spend a soothing minute watching me hand-bind a zine for Ojai's Pride Festival this weekend?

Hot Tip: I drew a raunchy comic about two lesbian shipwrights for Smut Peddler: Sordid Past, which is one of the many fine books available with free shipping from @bookshop.org today! bookshop.org/p/books/smut...

Speaking of cartoonist lineages: this is wonderful. So often as adults we know our peers for years before we meet their parents (if ever), which makes it feel like the inverse equivalent of saying “You can really see the resemblance!” Backwards time travel heredity compliments.

Heard the unmistakable sound of my office chair swiveling while alone in the apartment and, crucially, not sitting in my office chair. Turns out: RACCOON.

Someone (I've forgotten who because I'm bad at grudges) tried to tell me pirates were "over" while I was spending years drawing a swashbuckling capybara pirate graphic novel and now I don't even have to wait till our book comes out next spring to prove them wrong. This looks rad as hell.

<3 lucybellwood.com/for-peter/

A few watercolors from an artist residency with Light Grey Art Lab in Iceland. The rocks! The moss! A blissful place. #watercolor #pleinair

Like, of COURSE I became a fucking cartoonist what else was I going to do with a parent like this?

First Father’s Day without my dad so of course I’m reading Hourly Comics from 2022 and tearing up about how irrepressibly loony and loving he was and how lucky we were even in the face of the long-term caregiving grind. I miss keeping track of that man’s bowel movements.

I got certified to scuba dive down to 40 ft last year but just learned that I prefer snorkeling as it's 1,000x cheaper & safer... anyway, a belated mother’s day drawing inspired by a magical summer diving in our vital kelp forests :')))

Thinking about that week in 2019 when I couldn't stop painting Spiders-Gwen.

Who's gonna match me $25? Yes, I know we're all broke cartoonists in the same busted industry, but the question of "Who can *afford* to make comics?* keeps getting asked, and this is how we get more voices at the table. (Also I just love a friend circle mutual aid fund! This shit rules!)