BATTLE GROUND — Soon after Tatum Howlett started drawing as an 8-year-old, she took to dreaming up monsters. She occasionally went too far.
“Sometimes I would draw them too scary,” said Howlett, now 17. “I would crumple up the paper, throw it away and have to leave the room. It happened a handful of times.”
The Ridgefield High School senior has kept drawing, especially monsters, although now they don’t scare her too often.
“I like drawing animals with human heads, because I feel like usually you see the opposite,” she said. “Those scare me. It’s a good exercise for drawing. And facing my fears.”
Howlett started thinking seriously about art when she was about 14 after learning it could be a possible career path. She’s determined to give a career as an artist a go, and after she graduates this spring, she’s going to skip college to take an internship with Helioscope, a Portland-based studio of cartoonists, illustrators, writers, concept designers, graphic novelists and storyboard artists.
“Drawing makes Tatum most happy,” said Kimberly Howlett, Tatum’s mother. “I want my children to live a happy life and do what they are passionate about, regardless of a wage push. Within the comic art world, you can have great success without a formal education. When you have the talent, the recognition will follow.”
Tatum Howlett is already earning some recognition for her work. Earlier this year, she won a Gold Key from the 2017 Washington State Scholastic Art & Writing Awards for her comic “Bernadette & Raymond Get in Trouble.” The four-page comic follows the title characters, with Bernadette as a student living in an apartment and Raymond living in a trash can outside the apartment. Raymond, who can transform into a werewolf, tries to get Bernadette to come out and hang with his pack. The landlord hears the werewolf and thinks Bernadette has a dog in her apartment and is not happy about it.
Howlett is still drawing monsters and other fantastical creatures. She regularly updates her webcomic, “Hell Pig,” which follows a trucker who feeds on hitchhikers.
“I’m inspired by situational things, like making food, cleaning the house, just every day things,” she said. “I’m really big on the roommate trope right now, just two people living together in a little apartment. It’s like, what if take this every day situation and add in an interdimensional space tiger to it?”
Some of her stuff gets pretty violent, and Howlett said she doesn’t always want to show it to family and friends. Her mom doesn’t mind, though.
“I am amazed every time she finishes a piece,” Kimberly Howlett said. “The detailing and expression that flows from her is wonderful. It is true that she is reluctant to show some of her work to friends and family due to violent content. I just reassure her to not worry about being perceived a certain way because of (her) art and that there is a crowd for every genre.”
Howlett hopes one day to draw for a big industry comic.
“I want to be able to hold one of my publications in my hands,” she said.
But Howlett also likes creating her own work. She’s constantly trying to improve, and will have even more time to work on comics once she’s done with school. She said if she’s focused, she can get a page done in two to three hours between inking and sketching. If she’s going to color the page, she scans it onto her tablet and colors it there. She’s also trying to improve her storytelling. Howlett is currently working on a comic about a guy who has a epiphany about life after meeting someone in another realm while on a drug trip. She hasn’t planned out the story too much, and wants to see where it ends up just trying to follow along while drawing.
Howlett knows that art is important in conveying a story, too.
“Having an engaging story is a great way to grabbing a reader’s attention,” she said. “You can do that with a dynamic art style, one that really pulls in the reader. One of the first comics I remember is these ‘Tintin’ comics by Herge my dad had. They were in French, but you could understand what was going on because they were so well drawn. I’d love to be able to put out tons of work with so much detail.”
