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