Okay so admit it, when you think of art that winds up on a bathroom wall, you think of something like this:
Okay so admit it, when you think of art that winds up on a bathroom wall, you think of something like this:
Either bold statements about the smells and sights of the room or the smells and the sights of the people around the bathroom (remember middle school?). Despite this predisposed notion, many schools at all levels, have publications whose sole purpose is to go up in bathrooms for people to read. VCU is no exception, with the Stall Street Journal.
Recently, new comics have started to appear in VCU’s bathroom rag. These comics depict facts and tips from the university’s Wellness Resource Center, known colloquially as “The Well”.
Gwendolyn Wood is the recent VCU graduate who writes and draws the single panel strips for The Well. Before Wood graduated with her Communication Arts degree, she chose to take a scientific illustration course because she has always liked animals.
Despite always being the person with a funny animal fact, Wood didn’t like scientific illustration very much. She took what she had learned and moved it into her tongue-in-cheek animal physiology posters.
“What scientific illustration requires is super detail-oriented realism, making it look as real as possible,” she said. “I have a lot of fun stylizing so there’s no real middle ground for me there. That’s what the posters are- my middle ground.”
That scientific illustration class, however, is where this opportunity came to her. In an attempt to shake things up, the class’ professor brought in Linda Hancock from The Well. After doing a group project for Hancock in class, Hancock contacted Wood about refining the work for The Stall Street Journal.
The project eventually snowballed into working for The Well regularly, drawing the ram comics. A byproduct of a synergistic relationship between Wood and Hancock, the end results are some pretty hilarious comics.
At the beginning of February, when this comic was released-
-it was all over the VCU campus.
The comic was all over people’s instagrams and the briefly popular “doit4vcu” snapchat in between VCU freshman’s weed and VCU freshman’s breasts. The comics, about safe drinking and safe sex, were being shared completely organically.
It was the type of virility anyone who makes content in 2015 hopes for.
But that comic went through a lot before it saw the light of day. Before the ram said “absolutely” to its “condom-slacking” partner, it just made its contorted face. Wood said that the ambiguity didn’t cut it. It’s too important to The Well get the message out.
“One of the biggest processes at The Well is review,” said Wood. “We are very careful about not being exclusive, anything like that. We want to make sure these comics are funny, but they don’t hurt anyone’s feelings because The Well is about making people feel good.”
Wood mentioned that she has been heavily influnced by anime, calling herself a “huge anime nerd”. The rams’ exaggerated expressions and wide eyes reflect this. Wood said that during the development of the comics she had to pull back some expressions because they were too anime.
The most wide-eyed the rams have been is in the comic that Wood said “speaks to her”- the first popular ram comic nicknamed “7 layer dip”:
When someone asks if you wanna take shots but you really just want seven layer dip like pic.twitter.com/2XvjSYaTfY
— RunningAroundRecords (@rar_rva) January 29, 2015
“Honestly, college parties with food are just such a level above college parties with only drinks,” Wood said. “It’s just more fun.” She said it was a good marker of effort put into the planning of the party.
Despite the success of the strips, Wood isn’t planning to pursue a career in comic book writing.
“I enjoy comics and in a short form I’m happy to draw them,” Wood said. “But you’re never going to see a graphic novel from me.”
She said that short attention span for comics is the reason why.
“If you do a finished piece of art it can take you three hours and people will sit there and stare at it for a while,” she said. “You can spend six to eight hours on a page of a comic book and people are like ‘okay, where’s the next page?’ It’s just a little too much work for me.”
You can view Gwendolyn Wood’s work at http://www.gwendolynwood.com
