Taylor Wells isn’t too old for coloring. In fact, she’s made it her career.
Wells is one of many students embracing alternative forms of art not taught at the University including comics, cartoons and illustrations.
Wells, a painting and drawing senior, is part of a team that creates, draws, colors and compiles a 20-page comic book that has become one of the most popular creator-owned series in the industry, garnering critical acclaim in the process. The comic is even in talks of being made into a television series on Showtime.
“Chew,” created by John Layman, who also writes the plot and word bubbles of the comic, and drawn by Rob Guillory, follows Tony Chu, a cop with the special ability to get psychic impressions from the food he eats. Released every five weeks, Wells has been the color assistant on the comic for more than a year.
“Ultimately, it’s a guy who solves crimes by eating nasty shit,” Wells laughed.
But the process of creating the comic is not what one might expect.
Wells said Guillory, who draws the scenes in pencil first and then pen, will share a page with her through Dropbox, a file hosting service, meaning Wells can do her job from anywhere in the country or even overseas, as she did when she studied abroad in Europe in 2011.
Using Adobe Photoshop, Wells then adds colors to the previously black and white pages. She applies filters to darken the colors to match the look of “Chew.” When she is done, Wells sends the pages back to Guillory, who checks her colors and makes changes if he doesn’t like the ones she picked. Layman then adds word bubbles to the page.
“One thing about comics — especially today, especially mainstream — it’s almost an assembly line in that they have someone who writes it, they have someone who pencils it, someone who inks it, someone who colors it, someone who letters it and sometimes, even more stuff,” Wells said.
Once all 20 pages of the issue pass through this multi-step process, the comic is sent to the publisher. Wells said it normally takes her about three to five hours to finish applying the colors to a page depending on the complexity of the art for “Chew.”
Wells said it was “serendipity” that landed her the job with “Chew.”
As one of the artists she admired, Wells said she sent her work to Guillory to get critiqued. Wells said Guillory was impressed and responded with positive feedback. Later, at Wizard World New Orleans Comic Con, Wells again ran into Guillory, and she showed him more of her work. A few weeks later, finding himself in need of a color assistant, Wells said Guillory called her and offered her the job.
“I try to promote local talent when I can, so I reached out to Taylor, and we’ve been working together since,” Guillory said in an email. “It’s not glamorous work, but Taylor’s contribution to the production of the book is a huge help in keeping ‘Chew’ on a regular schedule. She’s timely, professional and easy to work with. You can’t really ask for more than that.”
Wells said she’s been interested in comics since she was a young Sailor Moon fan, but it wasn’t until later she realized the
depth some comics offered.
“I started looking at comics that were just completely bizarre and out there and started realizing that there was so much more than people realize, and you can do so much more with the medium than people realize,” she said.
But her path to comics wasn’t easy.
Although she started out as a graphic design major at the University, Wells said she knew that wasn’t where she needed to be and switched to painting and drawing.
Wells said the School of Art places more emphasis on the painting aspect of the major and largely ignores drawing.
“I’ve had a lot of trouble fitting in at LSU because I’m a painting and drawing major, and it is so painting-oriented,” Wells said. “Drawing is completely pushed to the wayside, I feel.”
She said although her professors were understanding of her dilemma, they couldn’t help her, and her schoolwork didn’t reflect the kind of work she wanted to do with comics.
Jake Lebas, painting and drawing junior, faced similar problems.
Lebas said he wanted to go to school for illustration, but most state colleges, including LSU, don’t offer the option.
“It’s kind of hard to find your niche and get good at what you want to get good at when you’re doing schoolwork on the side that doesn’t relate,” he said.
Lebas said his dream is to illustrate books, album covers and movie posters.
Hoping to create work he could use in his portfolio, Lebas has concentrated on landing a job that would allow him to illustrate but has had little success so far.
Rod Parker, director of the School of Art, said the decline of illustration began with the rise of Photoshop in the ’80s. This made illustrations much more accessible, easier and cheaper, he said.
“Up until then, if you wanted to create an image, you’d have to draw it,” Parker said, noting LSU and many other art schools offered classes in illustrations at this time.
He said around 2000, schools started dropping their illustration programs.
However, Parker envisions hand-drawn illustrations will make a comeback.
“Now what will happen is things will go the other way,” Parker
said, noting the rise of Etsy and other handmade websites that have popularized crafts “touched by the human hand,” saying this shift foreshadows the resurgence of illustration.
Although the University doesn’t have a major or an individual class for students like Wells and Lebas, it has offered a summer class for those interested in illustration.
Keith “Cartoonman” Douglas was brought in by the University to teach a summer class recently, although he wasn’t asked to teach this past summer. He said it was mostly high school students who attended his class, but he believes there’s a big interest in illustration in the area because the University, or anywhere else around, isn’t teaching this alternative style.
He speculated the reason some colleges don’t offer this degree is because most college art professors think of commercial art and illustrations as a lesser form of art compared with traditional paintings and drawings.
But Douglas said cartooning takes just as much skill as any other form of art. It’s not that cartoonists don’t have the ability to paint traditional art, he said, it’s just that some people, like himself, prefer to have more fun with their work.
Joshua George, a 2012 painting and drawing graduate, said he never faced difficulty at the University trying to learn the mechanics of illustration.
George’s problem was learning to understand the business side of the art world, he said.
“It’s not so much that I needed a teacher to teach me about illustration but how do you make the business connections,” George said.
It’s a daunting task George said he still hasn’t mastered.
George has been trying to launch Chickenlegboy, a character he created 13 years ago that’s intended to be a children’s book. He said he believes the character, which is literally a drumstick with a face and appendages, is a truly original creation.
The story revolves around Earl, who tries his hand at sports, at first not achieving success because of his short stature, but finally utilizing his chicken leg head to excel at soccer and football, according to the cartoon’s website.
George said so far no publisher has expressed interest in the story.
And finding a way to crack into the illustrative industry may be harder than George thought. He said he is currently learning on his own until he can find someone to help him.
George’s current goal is to find an agent who can make the business connections that he can’t and set George up with illustrating jobs.
For those artists lucky enough to land a job, that first step could make all of the difference.
Wells said being employed by “Chew” puts her in a very good position. The job has introduced her to other comic book artists as well as given her the opportunity to pick up first-hand experience in the comic book industry.
Wells said she ultimately wants to create her own comic and do the pencil and ink work, much like Guillory does on “Chew.” She said her experience with the comic helps, but she is now focused on drafting versions of her own comic for her senior art studio project to show that she can do more than apply color to a comic book. However, she mentioned she wants to work for “Chew” as long as possible.
Wells said she likes comic books because they can communicate more than other mediums of communication.
“There’s a lot of things you can say with a comic that you can’t necessarily say with just a picture and you can’t say with just words,” Wells said.
