Abbie Rial (@AbbieStabbyArt on Instagram) has been taking over the art world with her illustrations. Originally from Hull, Abbie is now a treasured member of the Bloodstock Festival community, after her artistic contributions to the festival, as well as an artist that is recognised by many huge names in the heavy metal music industry.
On Abbie’s art and inspirations…
“I’ve got a load of different inspirations that I take into my own work. Some of my favourite illustrators are Robert Crumb, Norman Rockwell, and especially Eric Powell, who does this comic series called The Goon. He’s probably one of the main reasons I got back into comic making in the recent few years. But yeah, I’ve definitely had that sort of teenage influence of getting really into Japanese manga and anime and things like that. I was always really picky about anime. I didn’t actually watch much of it at all, but it was the inking side of things that really definitely inspired me, that’s for sure. Ray Zell, who does the pandora comics in Kerrang!. Ray Zell was one of my big influences as a teenager. I always followed his stuff, it was like every week in Kerrang!, I’d clip the pandora comics out. They were a huge influence on me, the art materials I use, and the style initially.”
On the challenges that she has faced…
“I think definitely one of the biggest challenges is building up an audience – that initial thing of starting out as a freelance illustrator. Luckily, social media played a really big part in that. Nowadays, it seems like Instagram has been on the decline as a medium for a lot of artists, in terms of reach and algorithms and things like that. But when I started on there, that was definitely a good place to get my work seen by a lot of people who would eventually become customers. One of my tutors from university said, ‘When it comes to being an artist, especially in the online spirit, it’s 50% the work and it’s 50% networking. It’s getting your stuff seen by the right person at the right time, whether that’s just a very serendipitous thing or not.’
Definitely get yourself an online presence as best you can. I’m not on TikTok or anything but I feel like I should be just because everyone’s there nowadays.”
On connecting to her audience…
“I think it’s finding general common interests that seem to appeal with the audience. My biggest successes when it comes to topics in my artwork have been within the music sphere, so doing artwork of different musicians or bands; that subsequently gets seen by either the band or people that know them and it kind of snowballs into that. I think the biggest leap in my career that definitely happened, it just came from one of my good friends, a guy named Paul, who suggested to me like, ‘You should do a parody of Judas Priest,’ because they’ve got the song Screaming for Vengeance, so he said, ‘Why don’t you draw ice screaming for vengeance?’, so I just drew the singer Rob Halford as an ice cream man. Then another friend said, ‘You should put that in the Bloodstock festival forum on Facebook,’ and I thought, ‘Yeah sure why not.’ It got a really good reception and then within about an hour or two, I got a message from a lady, named Vicky Hungerford, who turned out to be one of the organisers of the festival and she said oh they’re playing at the festival this year – ‘Would you like to draw each of the headlining bands so we can give it to them as a gift?’ I had to sort of walk away from my computer and scream and come back. That’s just been an ongoing thing now since about 2018, so that’s definitely been really fun.”
On finding a work/pleasure balance when starting her career…
“That wasn’t really that much of an issue initially, because the stuff that people were commissioning me to draw in the beginning was a lot of stuff that I had a lot of fun drawing anyway, like people’s families or particular characters from things, stuff for personal celebrations (birthdays, Christmases, all that sort of thing). So, it wasn’t really that bad. As I’ve developed the more sort of semi-realistic caricature style, it’s become a bit more work-intensive. Definitely around christmas time, that’s when the big commission rush comes in and it can get a little bit much. I always dedicate January and February afterwards to just drawing whatever I want to draw and just de-stressing a little bit. Funnily enough, this year, I think it was in January, I had my downtime, so I got to draw whatever I wanted. I decided to draw tiny little business card sized stippling illustrations of Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, not really thinking anything of it. It was just a really nice exercise to do and then the Ferens Open Gallery in Hull came up so I thought, ‘Oh well, it’s been 10 years and I’ve not got in. Let’s just see,’ and then they managed to get in. It always feels way more rewarding when you finally get to do something for yourself and you get some sort of positive result because of that.”
On being from Hull…
“There definitely still seems to be that slightly negative stigma about Hull from a lot of people, but generally nowadays, it’s not as bad. If anything, people use it as an impressive point. I’m always wanting to help promote other artists from Hull, especially when I travel to the U.S. to see my other half. He’s an illustrator based in Houston, and I’m always telling him about local artists and what they’ve been doing; I try to get a little bit of a network going. Hull’s definitely been a very important part of my artist journey, because I went to the Hull School of Art and Design to study animation under Gareth Slighthome, who’s again a wonderful local comic book illustrator as well. He’s had his stuff published in a fair few magazines and anthologies, so he’s definitely worth checking out, but he’s definitely been a big push for me, in getting my stuff out there a bit more and dabbling in the networking as best I can.”
On Abbie’s favourite and proudest moments…
“I think getting to work with some of my favourite bands has definitely been a big positive thing. There’s this Italian melodic symphonic death metal band called Flesh God Apocalypse, and I was a big fan of their band anyway, and I started doing little bits of fan art here and there. One bit of fanart I did of the vocalist led to the rest of the band going, ‘Oh I want one, I want one,’ so it rolled on from there. I gave them the original drawings at a concert and took a picture with them. Then, it was just before the lockdown actually, one of the members got in touch saying, ‘Can we use the drawings you did of us for t-shirt designs?’, and I was just like, ‘Yes, absolutely!’. Roll on to during lockdown, the vocalist, Francesco, started doing a live stream series for, I think it was Nuclear Blast, which is the label that they’re on and he was interviewing a different musician on the label every week. He got in touch with me and said, ‘I want to do something a little bit different for the promotional stuff. Each week, as soon as we know who the person is, can you illustrate the guest and we’ll use it on the promotional flyers and stuff like that?’. It’s great! I’ve got a little compilation on my youtube channel of clips from these live streams, where all these like very popular musicians I really like give me a little shout out or something and like talk about my little drawings. It’s crazy! You think of me as like a little 12 year old kid stealing my brother’s metal CD and it just completely changed the course of everything for me. I would never have thought in a million years that I’d be on a sort-of friendly basis with some of these musicians that I was listening to.”
On Abbie’s go-to music…
“It’s such a mix. I’ll go from metal to stuff like Tom Waits. Tom Waits is easily one of my favourite musicians of all time. On regular rotation, it’s got to be like Type O Negative, for one of one of the main ones, a bit of Deicide, a bit of Motörhead. I like a lot of cheesy 80s stuff as well; I really like the band Heart. I’m a sucker for a cheesy power ballad as well, like Devin Townsend – huge phenomenal influence on me, that’s for sure. Oh and King Diamond… easily regular rotation for me. Alice in chains as well. I’ve got a really good mix of just the regular rotation stuff that I have on in the background, and I’m a sucker for a bit of lo-fi beats to chill and study to, and The Blues Brothers soundtrack as well because I grew up on it.”
On what’s coming next for Abbie and her art…
“I definitely want to do more comic books, that’s absolutely for sure. I want to get back into doing more caricatures of musicians, and make that more of a staple again. I’m going to be doing some collaborations again with my other half, so that’s gonna be that’s going to be interesting. We’ve got quite a unique set of styles that contrast and complement each other at the same time, so it’ll be nice to have that going. I’ve got Bridlington Comic Con coming up in September, so people can feel free to come and see me at that. I think the main push for me has been wanting to get a physical comic done, because it’s something I’ve wanted to do since I was a teenager. It was one of those things where I thought, ‘Oh I’ll start it later, oh I’m not good enough yet, I’ll start it…’ so it’s nice just being at the point where I’m actually starting it. If I dislike it, then that’s just my problem… I’m just going to keep going with it. I think that’s the artist’s curse, just seeing every little imperfection, even though it literally does not matter. Hopefully, again, doing more work with Bloodstock Festival, as always. It’s always such a good event and if I can ever get my artwork in, because they have an on-site art gallery. The main organiser of the festival is actually an artist who’s done album covers and things like that, so they have that on display every year with a bunch of other guest artists from the sort-of metal genre, so if i can get in there then that would be that would be the bee’s knees, definitely.”
A message to aspiring artists…
“Draw what you love to draw. There’s this excellent quote by a manga artist, called Naoki Urasawa, from this series he did called Manben, which is basically him interviewing different manga artists. There’s a quote from one of the episodes, where he says, ‘If you don’t draw, the story won’t start,’ and I think that’s such a powerful quote. If I didn’t draw the stuff I wanted to draw, it wouldn’t have gotten seen by the people, who in turn made my career what it is today. So draw what you love, and you’ll find a crowd that is appreciative of your stuff. You might get some naysayers, but they’re not the people you want around. Draw for fun, try and get commission work in when you can, and always try to find the joy in stuff. There’s obviously stuff that is a bit more of a task to draw than other stuff, and it’s a bit of a fight to get through it, but it’s always worth it in the end. Stay positive life… life’s good, we’re here, we’re breathing.”
Final notes…
“Check me out on Twitch – Twitch.com/AbbieStabbyArt. Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays around lunchtime, I’ll draw very silly stuff. I’ll draw comics of my car on Fridays, which is everyone’s favourite day of the week on the channel. We call it ‘Abomination Friday’, where people send me donations and I will draw whatever weird thing they want me to draw. We’ve had some very interesting stuff in there. The next one I’m gonna do is Samuel L. Jackson as the Fairy Godmother… that’s a request someone made, and they’ve sent me the money, so i’m gonna get it done. Come check me out, it’s a good time, and you might even see Norman the cat turn up, so if that’s not an incentive, I don’t know what is.”
Find Abbie Rial Online:
Instagram – @abbiestabby
Twitch – @AbbieStabbyArt
