Interview with Artist Haley Simone

By Nicolas Palermo | Posted Saturday, May 1, 2021

Capturing movement in visual art is not an easy task. The Impressionists did it in their own way with loose brush strokes and an emphasis on soft colors over detail. How does one effectively portray an object in motion to fit their individual style?

Haley Simone is an illustrator from New Jersey who confronts that question and answers it by effortlessly creating snapshots of musicians on stage as they play live in front of her. Her keen eye for movement is reflected in these on-the-fly illustrations. The line work is free and the colors are inviting. I first saw Haley's work the day after I played a show with my own band. She captured the energy of the gig in a handful of portraits of myself and the other musicians on stage that day. She even got my sideburns on point! The caricatures evoked as much emotion as a photograph from that day would have. Haley Simone draws images of what she sees and our own viewpoints of waking life are enriched by them.

Hi, Haley! Where are you based out of? Do you feel that the area you’re in has an influence on your artwork?

Hey Nic! I’m based out of central New Jersey, not too far from Asbury Park. Living here has definitely introduced me to so many different music scenes — New Brunswick, Asbury, New York, Philly. I spent four years in Brooklyn previously, and had completely fallen in love with it. My work was heavily influenced by living in the city and not much else. So when I had to move back home after school, I was really torn. It was the music scene in New Jersey that really helped me find my place here again. My work followed, and all of a sudden I was documenting everything I could about another place and group of people I loved.

I wanted to talk about your live show drawings — I tend to get frustrated when drawing moving things (people, animals etc.) Your illustrations always effortlessly capture the motion and fluidity of a band performing. What’s the process when making these pieces?

Trying to draw something that’s moving is so difficult! Usually by the time you’ve finished drawing a face or a hand the figure is in a completely different position. So I try not to think about it.

The first thing that I do is allow myself to warm up. When you’re drawing a set, you’re lucky if it lasts longer than a half hour, so you want to get a few quick drawings out of the way before it starts. After that, I think the best thing you can do is allow yourself to be in the moment. You’re not trying to capture one pose exactly - you’re capturing the feeling of that moment in time. If the song is angry, let your lines be angry. If the song is soft, let your lines be soft. I only draw in materials I can’t erase — this forces me to make quick decisions. Don’t worry about getting the details right, that will become easier through practice. The most important thing is to allow yourself to record the event as you experience it.

My go-to is the Tombow dual-tip brush pen, which I cannot recommend enough! I take my sketches after a show and scan them into Procreate and edit them, possibly adding some shapes or color. I try to pick
colors that match the feeling of the band.

What was your introduction to the NJ music scene? Do you play music yourself?

A few good friends from high school got together and started a band several years back, and on breaks from school I would hang out at practices and travel to shows with them. I actually got into live music drawing specifically because I couldn’t play an instrument, but still wanted to jam with them. By bringing a sketchbook to shows, I get to quietly create alongside so many artists I admire. It’s wild to me that I didn’t think to do this sooner because almost all of the illustrations I’ve ever made has an album or two that I blasted continuously while making it. I am trying to learn the guitar, though. It's really hard.

The playfulness in your artwork reminds me of an aesthetic of cartoons and comics from our childhood (Cartoon Network, Scott Pilgrim etc.) It brings me back to a time when I’d hangout at bookstores and read comics without ever actually buying them (I was just a kid!) Who are your biggest artistic influences?

Oh boy, there are so many. Here is a painfully brief list.

Comics: Reading Mike Mignola’s “Hellboy” made me want to draw comics. His pacing and storytelling are incredible, and what has always amazed me about his work is his ability to make the space between each panel a moment in itself. I was introduced to the work of Ron Wimberly and Charles Burns in college, and their usage of the medium blew my mind. Newspaper comics have always been a source of comfort for me too —
I’ve been reading Gary Larson’s “The Far Side” and Patrick McDonnell’s “Mutts” since I was a kid.

Illustration: Phil Hale and Greg Manchess are two of my favorite painters when I’m looking for guidance on brushstrokes and lighting. Maurice Noble created many of the backgrounds for Looney Tunes, and
his usage of shapes and color schemes are such an influence on me when I’m making stuff.

Animation: Thurop Van Orman’s “The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack” was that incredible realization that animation didn’t have to be one thing — it had hand-drawn animation, stop motion, cut-paper. Everything. Watching that show along with Laika films like ParaNorman made me want to learn how to create stop motion. Patrick McHale’s “Over the Garden Wall” inspired me to learn storyboarding
and digital painting. I still remember the first time I experienced Redline, directed by Takeshi Koike. That movie just made me want to draw better.

Recently, I’ve been admiring the work of Dedouze, who has completely revolutionized the use of Grease Pencil in Blender. I also just finished watching the anime adaptation of Koyoharu Gotouge’s “Demon Slayer” — the art style and usage of 3D animation was amazing. I love drawing to Screaming Females, Murder by Death, and MF DOOM.

Are you working on any projects right now that you’re excited about?

For the first time ever, a lot of my projects are actually under wraps right now — but I am looking to take on some new commissions in the next few months!

As for personal work, I am working on a series of illustrations for fun about a bunch of little demons who hijack and steal a car from a used car dealership. I can’t wait to share them.

Where can we follow you and find your artwork?

Thanks so much for having me!

My music-based website is www.haleydrawsmusic.com. You can follow my work on Instagram @haleydrawsmusic!

Interview with Artist Logan Stahl

By Nicolas Palermo | Posted Thursday, March 4, 2021

In her book What it Is, underground comics legend Lynda Barry explains that fantasy worlds in art aren’t created to escape reality. Rather, their existence helps us to stay in reality. To bear it. “We have always done this; used images to stand and understand what otherwise would be intolerable.”

Logan Stahl is an illustrator from NJ whose images help me do just that. The sci-fi inspired worlds that his characters inhabit portray, but are not limited to: scenes of warriors battling insect-like beasts, buildings that somehow look both ancient and futuristic and nomads trudging through seemingly endless deserts (are they escaping something or just wandering to feel alive?) Logan takes hints from comic book and manga greats that many of us deeply admire, but his style is still distinctly his own.

Hi Logan! How are things?

Logan Stahl: Hey, thanks for reaching out! I’m doing pretty well, all things considered.

Where are you currently based out of?

I live in Somerville, NJ.

What are your favorite mediums to work in?

I primarily work with felt-tipped pens for linework and photoshop for colors. They’re what I have the most experience using and they’re both cheap, quick, and clean to use. I regularly work with markers and colored pencils as well, and for a while I was taking oil painting classes until COVID got in the way. In general, I enjoy working in any medium, but I’m usually limited in my choices by time, money, and desk space haha.

You mention in your Patreon account bio that you are “hugely influenced by Moebius, Otomo, Wayne Barlowe and Miyazaki.” When I look at your work, I see these influences coming through — especially in the way your characters interact and in the colors and shading. How did you initially discover these artists? What works by them had the biggest impact on your style?

Wayne Barlowe I found first. I had An Alphabet of Dinosaurs as a kid, and I still think it’s one of the most superb collections of paleoart ever produced. I also had Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials and Expedition. Everything he does is just perfect — he brings the gravitasand drama of an artist like Thomas Cole or Jean-Léon Gérôme to illustrations of aliens and demons and dinosaurs. I never get tired of going back through his books.

Otomo I discovered in my tail end of high school — I think Akira was the first anime I ever actively sought out to watch and I was blown away. I tracked down the manga soon after that and devoured it. I find his art almost intimidating — the soaring cityscapes and labyrinthine industrial depths his characters inhabit are daunting in their scale and complexity, and no details are ever sacrificed for convenience or simplicity in his work.

Moebius I found my freshman year of college, around the time I started drawing seriously. For quite a while I didn’t know anything about him or his comics — I just kept finding more and more drawings by him on the internet, each one more evocative and bizarre than the last. The color, the linework, the designs — all of it enchanted me and still does. He’s definitely the artist I’ve spent the most time trying to emulate.

Miyazaki I discovered when one of my best friends brought over a DVD of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Nausicaä to me is just perfect — I couldn’t ask for anything more in a story. In style it’s like a pastiche of all the 60s/70s/80s sci-fi / fantasy novels I grew up reading and in substance it’s pretty darn heavy. Over the years I’ve been working my way through the rest of the Ghibli canon, but Nausicaä will always be my favorite. Fun fact: Moebius actually named his daughter Nausicaä, after Miyazaki’s titular princess, and Miyazki has said he “directed Nausicaa under Moebius’s influence.”

Your bio also mentions that you’ve been published in “RPG zines.” The hands-on, DIY process of making zines is so crucial to the foundations of underground art and music scenes. I love that they’re still prevalent today. With that being said, I’ve never heard of that specific kind of zine. What exactly is an RPG zine? How did your collaborations with these RPG zine-makers come about?

Well, you’re in good company because I hadn’t heard of RPG zines either before I started working on them haha. The gist of it is this: RPG zines are fan-made supplements for tabletop role-playing games (“TTRPG”s or “RPG”s), such as Dungeons & Dragons. Usually they’ll contain homebrewed settings, adventures, or gameplay rules and they’re pretty short in length. The first art commission I ever did was when someone online reached out to me to ask if I could illustrate a zine for them. Since then my work has been featured in a few relatively successful zines, and I guess my name’s been spreading through the RPG community because I’ve had pretty steady work doing those kinds of illustrations for the last year or so. I myself don’t play TTRPGs too often (from a lack of experience and time, not from a lack of interest or enjoyment), but I’ve gotten to meet a lot of really cool people doing this kind of work!

Also, to respond to what you said about art and music zines — I would love to work on more stuff like that. I’m really into the Jersey DIY music scene and I actually did cover art for a split EP between a couple local bands a few years back but unfortunately nothing more since that.

What is your favorite part about your artistic process?

I love being able to visually represent something that started out as an idea in my head. It’s incredibly satisfying to look down at a piece of paper and see a picture of something that I had only imagined before. It’s the same thing that’s kept me drawing since I was a kid and it never gets old.

Do you have a favorite project or piece in recent memory that you’d like to talk about?

From 2018 to late 2020, I wrote and illustrated a sci-fi / fantasy book written in the form of a travel journal. It’s called Coelum and I put a lot of love and effort into it. The art and writing is all complete, I’m just working with my publisher to actually put it out there, so hopefully that should be available digitally in about a month or so and, if everything goes according to plan, we want to do a physical release at some point as well. Aside from that, I’m currently working on an RPG zine called Desert Moon of Karth written by Joel Hines that’s all about space cowboys and aliens slugging it out on a desert planet. It’s delightful to illustrate and it made over 40 times its funding goal on Kickstarter, so that’s something to check out if you get a chance. Heavily inspired by Dune, Cowboy Bebop and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom books — all stuff that I love dearly.

What are you working on now? Where can we follow you and find your art?

Right now in addition to Karth I’m working on more RPG zines and lots of smaller commissions here and there and that’s probably going to take up most of my time over the next couple months. I’ve also been working a bit on a collaborative book with a few of my friends who are also illustrators. It’s going to be a faux buyer’s guide to space mercenaries, with each of us designing and illustrating a bunch of sci-fi bounty hunters and writing up stories for them. That’s kind of on hold at the moment as we’ve all been (fortunately!) busy with commissions, but it’s something I look forward to getting back to down the line.

If you want, you can follow me on twitter, Instagram, or Tumblr:
https://twitter.com/Lil_Tachyon
https://www.instagram.com/liltachyon/
https://lil-tachyon.tumblr.com/

Thank you so much for speaking to me, it’s been a pleasure!

Interview with Illustrator Keith Glidewell

Artwork by Keith Glidewell

By Nicolas Palermo | Posted Wednesday, October 17, 2018 

From the Andy Warhol/Velvet Underground collaborations of the 60s to RISD alumni Talking Heads, to the anime-inspired characters that make up Gorillaz, visual art has been almost if not equally important to the history of music as the music itself.

Take NJ native Keith Glidewell, for example. When he isn’t noodling bass riffs for the emo/punk group Ditz, he’s doodling exaggerated, whacked out cartoons that you could easily imagine on your favorite Adult Swim show. Although still images, the facial expressions and body language of his characters give them an animated quality. Some of them might even reach out to hand you a beer. Many of these doodles become finished products that adorn the album covers and fliers for his own band.

I spoke to Keith to learn about the creative process and inspiration behind his work.

Where did you grow up? Do you feel like the area you live in and your experiences there have had an effect on your artwork?

I grew up in Florence, NJ which is a small, blue-collar town in Central Jersey—right on the Delaware River. When I say that Florence is small, I'm not exaggerating; I graduated with 97 kids. Most people are shocked when I tell them that, but I thought it ruled. Everyone knew each other and that was super humbling. For the most part, there weren't social cliques and this allowed me to get to know people on a personal level that I wouldn't have otherwise. I was exposed to many different cultures and ways of thinking. On top of that, I had a really, really great group of friends (that I'm still friends with today), and we spent most of our time building forts down by the river, playing "office chair hockey," and hanging out in cardboard dumpsters at the middle school. I think the area that I grew up in and the experiences I had there absolutely has an effect on my artwork. Florence gave me a good look at people and what it means to be human, and I try to reflect that in my characters. 

What is the process for making your doodles turn into album covers or show fliers?

I kind of stumbled into making artwork for bands and as a result, stumbled into being in a band myself. I had been posting character designs and doodles on Instagram for a while and, although a few people commissioned me to do design work for them, I was mostly doing it for fun. One day my buddy Todd asked me to come up with a logo for his new band, Ditz, and he sent me the demos to listen to while I worked on it. He also let me know that they were looking for a bass player. The design took a few days and the band loved it, and I ended up liking the demos so much that I tried out for the bass part. Now I play bass in Ditz and handle the design work which has been extremely rewarding.  I was always a huge fan of James Heimer's illustrations and how he branded The Wonder Years' early stuff. He had such a distinct style, and that's something I try to accomplish with Ditz.

Your characters appear cute and goofy at first but many of them seem to have very “human” qualities to them (i.e. smoking cigarettes, partying, being violent). Is this a style that’s influenced by any artists in particular? Do you give your drawings a hidden darker quality consciously or is that just how they end up?

My work has always been pretty gross! In high school, my math notebook was filled with drawings of people vomiting or smoking giant cigs or giant cigs vomiting up people. I think that gross-ness stems from me being obsessed with shows like The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, Superjail!, Spongebob, and Courage, The Cowardly Dog. As I grew up, I got into R. Crumb and I really dig all of his characters and their exaggerated features. All of these shows and artists influenced me greatly and I take a little bit from each one. I always appreciated the fusion of innocence and the sad/gross parts of being human. Characters can be both charming and disgusting and that's something I like to highlight in my artwork. 

In addition to drawing, you have a talent for animating. How do you bring your doodles to life? What is the process for making animated cartoons? 

I didn't consider animation as something I'd like to do until my uncle, cartoonist Mark Tatulli, told me that I had the potential to do it. So, I picked up a few animation classes at TCNJ and fell in love with it. I'm interested in 2D, frame by frame animation and I have this overly complicated process (that involves drafting, inking, and coloring in one app and then editing the frames together in another), but it works for me.  As much as I love animation, I like to stick to pre-production like storyboarding and character designing! 

What projects do you have planned next as far as visual art goes? What about in music? 

Well, artistically, since I JUST graduated college, I've been doing personal work. Doodles and gross characters— things like that. I'm going to start posting on Instagram daily again, and I'm excited. My senior year made it hard to do that and I can't wait to get back. I also have been working on a few short films and music videos, which is another passion of mine. Musically, Ditz has been writing a full-length record, smoking cigs, drinking a bunch of beer, and playing shows. We're going to keep doing that!  

What accounts could we follow you at for updates on any new art or music?

My instagram account is: @keithglidewell where I post drawings, film stuff that I'm doing, and pictures of my big dumb head. The Ditz account is: @ditztheband. This is where we post show dates, video clips we have, and pictures of our big dumb heads.