Travis Charest

Charest was born in 1969 on a farm in the small Canadian town of Leduc, Alberta. His parents held various jobs, though he has stated that his mother and sister were skilled designers, and attributes his early childhood interest in drawing to them. His earliest exposure to genre illustration came through Metal Hurlant, which his uncle collected. American comics were not among his earliest reading, and his initial drawings were of life, such as animals. ==Career==

Charest did not initially know how to parlay his drawing ability into a career, as there were no schools where he lived for such an endeavor, and did not foresee it as a profession. as well as many artists from the early 20th century. Charest spent six months continuously producing new sample art and sending them to various publishers, including Marvel Comics and DC Comics. He was selling plumbing supplies at the time he got his big break in the comics industry. when DC Comics hired him to provide the art for a Flash story in ''Showcase '93 #3 (March 1993). Later that same year, he illustrated WildC.A.T.s Special'' #1 (November 1993). He subsequently illustrated back-up stories featuring Voodoo and Warblade in issues 8 and 9 of the regular series (February and March, 1994). He became the regular artist of the series with issue #15, illustrating the title during the runs of writers James Robinson and Alan Moore. While his initial work for Wildstorm was characterized by large amounts of cross-hatching, which was popular among the Image Comics founders and their imitators, Charest's style began to evolve as he looked to other designers that piqued his interest. His last regular issue on WildC.A.T.s was #31 (September 1996), though he later returned to illustrate the title's 50th issue (June 1998). He also did many covers and unpublished private commissions. During San Diego Comic-Con that year, the president of the French publisher Les Humanoïdes Associés invited Charest to lunch, where he offered the artist the opportunity to work on The Metabarons. Charest, having long-enjoyed ''L'Incal'' by Moebius, had aspired to work for the same publisher, and was "thrilled" by the offer, relating, "I was very young, ambitious and they told me that I could make complete pages, painted, not just drawn in pencil. I was going to live in Paris with my girlfriend, painting all day. 'It will be great!' I told myself." In September 2022, Marvel released Fantastic Four: Full Circle, an original graphic novel written and illustrated by Alex Ross, in which Ross utilized for the titular group's uniforms a stylized numeral "4" that Charest had designed in 2013. In the 2024 Expanded Edition of the book, Ross wrote, "Artist Travis Charest had designed a beautiful '4' for an armored suit I saw in his 2013 sketchbook. I sampled his approach and tried to vary it, but eventually, I felt I couldn't improve upon it. Once Full Circle was moving forward, I asked Travis for permission to use the exact style of the 4 which he generously gave me." ==Technique and materials==

Charest usually prefers not to employ preliminary sketching practices, such as layouts, thumbnails or lightboxing, in part due to impatience, and in part because he enjoys the serendipitous way in which artwork develops when produced with greater spontaneity. He also prefers to use reference only when rendering objects that require a degree of real-life accuracy, such as guns, vehicles, or characters of licensed properties that must resemble actors with whom they are closely identified, as when he illustrated the cover to Star Trek: The Next Generation: Embrace the Wolf in 2000. Charest previously illustrated on regular illustration board provided by publishers, though he disliked the non-photo blue lines printed on them. By 2000, he switched to Crescent board for all his work, because it does not warp when wet, produces sharper illustrations, and is more suitable for framing because it lacks the non-photo blue lines. Charest uses mainly 2H lead to avoid smearing, and sometimes HB lead. For ink wash, he uses Rapidograph ink, and waters it down to three hues in order to achieve light gray, medium and charcoal tones, in addition to straight black. He applies the wash with watercolor brushes of various sizes. To ink linework he uses Rapidographs of all sizes. For color work, Charest uses Aquarelle watercolor pencils and acrylic paint for airbrush work. He also uses white Pelikan ink for additional effects such as highlights, fades and blends. Charest stated in 2000 that while he did not use a computer for his artwork, he would be using one soon, and anticipated they would be a necessity for professional artists. According to Charest, the time he needs to finish a given page varies, depending on how fast his editor needs it, and what he is being paid, though because he came to prefer producing artwork that takes longer than the norm to complete by the time he left Wildstorm, he stated in 2000 that he no longer found it feasible to be the regular artist on a monthly series. He points to WildC.A.T.s/X-Men: The Golden Age as an example of a book that took him considerable time (under a year), though he stresses that he finished it on time. ==Influence==

Charest's work has influenced artists such as Chrissie Zullo, Shelby Robertson, and David Marquez. ==Personal life==

As of 1995, Charest was living in San Diego, California. As of 2020, he had a wife and a ten-year-old daughter. ==Bibliography==