Artist Portfolio: Jen Bartel

The US artist tells Gary Evans how she carved out her own niche in comics, making stories about women told from the perspective of women

We meet the artist making stories about women told from women’s perspectives.

Jen Bartel went to the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City. She graduated with a BFA in illustration, but if you had asked her classmates which of them was most likely to make it after college, then “absolutely none of them would have named me,” she says.

Jen describes herself as a mediocre student. She did okay, but never stood out. She thinks this is a pretty common experience: the kid who’s the best artist in their high school goes to art school and ends up a smaller fish in a much bigger pond. But she always had “absolute stubbornness and grit.” She never gave up, never lost sight of her ambition to be a professional artist.

The artist was born in Los Angeles, but spent most of her childhood in Seoul, Korea. She attended an international school and had what she calls a mixed cultural upbringing that would influence her art: “A lot of my influences and stylistic preferences stem from having a mixed background and wanting to incorporate eastern and western aesthetics into my work.”

She was into manga like Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura and Magic

A lot of my influences and stylistic preferences stem from having a mixed background

Knights Rayearth. The big game franchise growing up was Final Fantasy. And she loved Lisa Frank, the company known for stickers and school supplies in rainbow and neon colours. These things made Jen want to draw. In her teens she started sharing work online, where she met people into the similar stuff who would became friends and, later, professional peers.

COOL-LOOKING WOMEN

Jen chose the illustration course at SVA because it seemed the best fit for somebody who want to draw for a living. She didn’t know the school specialised in “pumping out editorial illustrators.” Jen had a clear idea of the sort of work she wanted to make. She had a portfolio full of it: “basically… pin-ups of cool-looking women.” Teachers discouraged her because they believed it would be difficult for her to find work with this style.

PUNK MAMBO “This is the retailer exclusive cover for Punk Mambo, created for Knowhere Games and Comics,” says Jen Bartel.

HARLEY KICKS “My illustration of Harley Quinn created for the Birds of Prey x Puma x Jen Bartel sneaker collab – used on packaging as well as promotional materials.”

NEBULA “My cover for Nebula #1, the kick-off to Nebula’s first solo comic miniseries, written by Vita Ayala and drawn by Claire Roe.”