His parents held various jobs, though he has stated that his mother and sister were skilled designers,[8] and attributes his early childhood interest in drawing to them.

[8] He worked a number of dead-end jobs,[7] and it was while living on his own at age 18 or 19, and became friends with people who read comics, that he realized he could make a career out of it.

Charest expressed surprise at how he obtained his first monthly series work so soon after breaking into the field, stating in a 1987 interview in Comics Scene, "I never thought I would get my own book this fast.

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.

[14] 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.

[14] Travis describes the feedback he received from his colleagues thus: "My editor encouraged me to be faster, while Jodorowsky always said, 'Don't listen to them, I'll distract them, you do what you want.'"

[8] Humanoid Publishing selected Serbian artist Zoran Janjetov, who previously worked on the Incal books John Defaul and Technopriests, to complete the art for the project.

[14] In 2008, a limited edition printed volume hardcover of Spacegirl was self-published by Charest and Big Wow Art, collecting the first 56 strips of the series.

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.

[17] 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.

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.

His cover for Batman/Catwoman #6 (October 2021), for example, was made entirely in this method, which he explained was due to time constraints that required him to finish it more quickly.