Contact Me At: michaelnolan1983@gmail.com







Tuesday 13 December 2011

The Terror

A digital painting I did for the themed week over on Islander Art
I tried making this gif of my progress on it, here goes. Click to View

Friday 2 December 2011

Watercolour Practice

I have this little water colour pad I carry with me, it only measures about 3 inches by 2 inches. But it fits happily in my pocket with my little watercolour compact thing with its own tiny brush and I also have a water pen, a handy dandy way of always being able to use them.
Here's a few pages from the book anyway.



Tuesday 29 November 2011

Work work work

I'm currently looking for work like a crazy person, so if you or anyone you know wants a commision or anything art related Im the man.

On a slightly different note, here's me holding a kubotan I made for fun. Carved from a branch of a pine tree that was cut down near Beena's house. I did the whole thing with my swiss army knife, including sawing the branch off. Versatile little tool. The design was then burned on with a pyrography tool.

Forgive my sticking out tongue, that happens when I concentrate.

Friday 25 November 2011

A little update

A little more done to the angel
And another quick painting of Poison Ivy from Batman. I do intend to give her clothes of some sort, this is just a mid state of the process

Tuesday 22 November 2011

Angel face

Getting back into digital painting today, didn't want anything in particular so I started painting over a sketch I put up a while back.
Iv been trying to keep in mind that each part is a seperate solid shape with volume, instead of a single feather or strands of hair, it actually makes everything a lot easier.

Thursday 17 November 2011

Radio time

Islander Art is going on the radio boys and girls, look at us achieve notoriety. We were invited along to Cork FM's sunday night art show to talk about Islander Art and art in general I guess. Should be fun either way. So, if your super duper bored and wanna listen in on sunday, here's a link Cork FM so even if ya miss it or cant listen to it for some reason, lucky lucky you can download a podcast. 

Sunday 13 November 2011

Abhainn na Laochra

My other piece for the exhibition. The same technique as the previous one, just with black ink.

Saturday 12 November 2011

On Mushrooms!

An ink wash piece for the exhibition on Monday (it's all chestnut brown ink by the way) took a few days

Thursday 10 November 2011

Islander Art Debut Exhibition

 
I will be showing some of my work at Islander Art's first exhibition from the 14th to the 29th of November in the Roundy in Cork. The Roundy can be found here HERE and their site is HERE. If you have facebook you can find the event HERE. So if you're in Cork, stop by any time in the last two weeks of November to see the super awesome work of all the Islander Artists in lovely frames and everything

Saturday 5 November 2011

Life drawing from... photos



Some sketches

Apologies for the lack of updates lately, life n all that, what harm. Some sketches for idea's I have for the upcoming Islander Art Exhibition



Tuesday 11 October 2011

Meanwhile...

I have not been getting my art on much lately, I have been sketching a lot but nowhere near as much as usual, nor have I been animating as I should be. Tonight however I was filled with the desire to do something a little more worthwhile, so I started on a promised traditional piece to a friend. I'm sure you all remember the Cúchullain piece from a week or more ago, well its that, but as I said, traditional. So far, just a pencil sketch followed by alot of very faint ink washes until this
Apologies for the poor quality, its an A3 page and my scanner is only A4 so I had to take a picture. I have never been very good at fading my washes away in a smooth gradient, but I'm a lot better than I used to be, so I suppose practice does indeed make perfect. 
That big white line aross the corner is my headphones cable by the way and theres my sexy liquid holding tray at the top, I dont know what it's actually for or where I got it, but it does a great job where it is now.
So just a load more washing to finishing him up, then the easy task of a some complicated knotwork to finish it off that I definitely wont make any mistakes with.
Definitely.

Wednesday 5 October 2011

shiori and gnaf wip

Something Im working on for my love. Her character Shiori and her pet wolf Gnaf, I wanted to do something a little different, so I went for a sort of transitional walking image, you get it.

Sunday 2 October 2011

Oisín the poet

Oisín (pronounced ush - een, for those non Irish amongst ye) was the son of Fionn, I drew him already remember. Oisín's story is the saddest of all of them, a sorry end to a great warrior poet. If you want to know more about him you may as well buy a few books and get to reading because there are a lot of different versions of what happened to him, my personal preference is in Lady Gregory's Irish Mythology, my bible. But if you dont want to go to any trouble, check him out on wikipedia link Now they say on there that his son Osgar or Oscar was born and raised on Tir na nÓg, but in most stories he grew up in Ireland and was a member of the Fianna, so I dont know. Its all very confusing

Cúchullain again

The greatest warrior of all time, Cúchullain, the hound of Ulster.
He was never a King in life, but in the tale of his death a prophecy is made that on that day 3 kings would die, it is explained to Queen Mebd the three kings were Cúchullain, the king of warriors, Laeg his friend and the king of charioteers and Macha the grey, Cúchullain's horse, the king of horses who went on to kill another hundred or so warriors even after Cúchullain died. I shall do them two next.
After giving Fionn in the previous piece a big giant sword, I thought the savage Cúchullain would be better shown with just bloody fists.
In all the books on Irish myth that I'v read, there has never been a very accurate description of what Cú looks like, even though everyone else is described in great detail. But of the fleeting descriptions, they normally say he was small and of a grim countenance with dark hair.

Saturday 1 October 2011

Inking away

I got back from Dublin this afternoon, myself and Beena went up for the night to see Batman Live. Great show, go see it if you can. Anyway, on the long drive I did some scribbling and filled my pocket sketch book so I scanned out anything I liked and was inking them there for a bit of practice. So, I present my version of Mr. Hyde (Toby's favourite for some reason) and a cowgirl in the wind

It should be noted, we popped into Forbidden Planet whilst in the big smoke and I bought a wolverine graphic novel drawn by John Romita Jr. His style makes me drool and cry, but I think my inks on Mr Hyde there a direct influence of staring at his work since I got home.

Monday 26 September 2011

A days work

I was supposed to spend the day animating, but due to a lack of the backgrounds I needed and me being sick (man flu is a terrible disease that women dont understand) I ended up drinking vast quantities of tea and drawing these, in pencil and ink first, then scanned and digitally inked for the fun of it

Thursday 22 September 2011

Practice makes perfect

So, some sketching from today, more messing with the watercolours and I bought a set of water brush pens for 4 euro 50 yesterday, which was odd since there were single ones for sale next to them for 8 euro each, sense, it has left. The point is that I was watching the master James Gurney working in one of his vids on youtube and he was using them to ink, I thought "isnt that novel" cos I think like that, so I got them and started having fun. Let me tell ya, they are fun, one filled with a heavy mix of black ink and water so it flows well and the other with just water for washing, if you can and are so inclined, give it a try.





Tuesday 20 September 2011

Monday 19 September 2011

Monday 12 September 2011

Run Spartan Run

Curious to see how this runs on other peoples computers, let me know what you think. Isnt he cute though :)

Saturday 10 September 2011

More sketches of an evening








Dont... dont ask about the sloth thing, I just draw whatever my mind presents to me

Friday 9 September 2011

Some sketches of an evening and a pirate

Hello all, as the title suggests, some drawings of the past day or so done idly as I watch t.v. and whatnot. And what I consider a finished picture of the pirate captain woman.