Contact Me At: michaelnolan1983@gmail.com







Thursday 3 October 2013

Discworld

Discworld fan art, because, lets face it, its the best series ever written
The Witches of Lancre
 Tiffany Aching with some Feegles, Magrat Garlick, Nanny Ogg with Greebo and Granny Weatherwax
 Nanny and Granny chilling out while Greebo kills things
 I have this feeling if Beena ever joined the watch she would become Judge Dredd of Ankh Morpork
The Feegles take Roland to the underworld to save the Summer Lady as it happens in Wintersmith

Saturday 3 August 2013

Definitely finished this time

OK, so after some feedback from the client I have made a few alterations to the portrait. I took the red out of the cheeks and lip, and made the lip a little less fat too. The badge on the guys cap had to be totally redone also as he had been promoted since the picture I was given for reference was taken but nobody told me :) such is life, I actually much prefer it now, I think it looked a little cartoonish with the rosy cheeks but I was going to the reference, I have since been told it was a very cold day the day the picture was taken, hence the redness. But it's all good now. The colour in the picture doesn't match the actual painting but I'm not much at photographing my work.

Saturday 27 July 2013

Finished portrait

Thought I would post the finished portrait of that guy from the navy I was posting the process of last time.
I'm not happy with it really, but I never am.

Saturday 20 July 2013

More portraits for the Navy

Well look at that, almost a whole month since last I posted something! I have been a very busy boy with this course I am on, just finished the latest module, object oriented design in java, three weeks to learn everything up to an intermediate level, Ill be lucky to retain half of it I think.

Well, this weekend I get to settle into the over-whelming heat to do a commission I got to do a portrait in oils for some guy in the Irish navy.

Apparently they saw the one I did of my Da a long while back and thought it would make a nice gift for whoever the guy is. As always the picture I got to paint from is crap and fuzzy, but what can ya do.

I started this at about 2 pm today and its now 3 in the morning and I'm at that stage where I swing between thinking its OK and wanting to take a knife to it. What do you think? Also, feel free to be jealous of my totally professional studio setting, i.e. the kitchen table.



The center one is a bit terrifying, granted, but everything looks crap in the middle of being done. I always want to stop at the point of having blocked it in with the brown, if I could just do painting like that I would be a happy chappy.

Anyway, apparently some other guys in the Irish version of a Navy are waiting to see how this turns out to see if they want to get commission me for their own, so who knows, maybe Ill be posting more of these.

Tuesday 14 May 2013

Shiori and Gnaf

My girlfriend is a writer and two of her main characters are a young mage named Shiori and her comrade Gnaf the wolf, they travel their world fighting monsters and demons and righting wrongs, all that good heroic stuff. I painted this for her.
 I started off painting this piece with acrylic, but didn't like how it was going, so I scanned it and carried on digitally.

I block in random colors with textured brushes.
 
I don't usually use textures, but it made life a lot easier to use some for the forest floor here. They were used sparingly and blended in.
 
I painted up everything else, trying to keep detail on the main focus of the image and painted into the textures to help them disappear.

The whole point was to create a feeling of comfort, warmth and safety, whilst also giving the odd feeling that they are being watched, hence the point of view, I don't know if I achieved that, but I do get the smell of campfire when I look at it so that makes me happy :)

Hermy

A quick Hermione painting, lots of potter fan art lately.

Saturday 4 May 2013

Dumbledore and Fawkes

A little fan art for a group collaboration over at deviant art of Albus Dumbledore and his pet phoenix Fawkes.

Thursday 2 May 2013

Beena

A portrait of my love, Beena.
Done with pencil and charcoal and a knead-able eraser.

Friday 19 April 2013

Masters

I was inspired by a post on the Islander Art blog recently to draw some of my favorite internal martial arts masters. From left to right - Wang Shu Jin, Sun Lu-t'ang and Cheng Man-ch'ing

Saturday 9 March 2013

Gravedigger 3

Spent another couple hours on it, didn't like the actual guy digging anymore so I painted him out, he may get added back in later.

Thursday 7 March 2013

Gravedigger 2

Just an update on the previous piece, I tend to fuss over the final details when Im making an image up without any planning so it takes longer to finish

Tuesday 5 March 2013

Saturday 2 March 2013

Under the grass

I love to watch hours of videos on youtube of people painting landscapes, mostly game designers and what not but still, its amazing to see. I'm fairly terrible at it myself but I do love to give it a go every now and then.
I wouldn't say this is finished but it will do for now. A little society that lives under the grass near a giant lucky four leaf clover, because why not.

Wednesday 20 February 2013

The Oracle

Was looking for something to paint the other day and came across this sketch from my old sketch book
So I decided to use as limited a palette as possible in the blues
Iv been working it up on and off for a couple days and this is where I am with it, I am quite proud of the coals if I do say so myself



Friday 8 February 2013

Snake

A drawing from my sketchbook that I then altered a bit in photoshop

Friday 25 January 2013

Under the mountain they lie

From the Irish mythology of the Fianna. After the High King of Ireland starts to fear the power of the Fianna he has them routed and disbanded. Fionn and what was left of the Fianna were broken hearted and according to legend went into the earth to await a time Ireland would need them again.

Comic book cover

I got a commission recently to draw someone as a superhero on their own comic cover so I thought I would post my process for it.
When I first got it I started sketching straight away without knowing what the guy looked like just that he liked Castiel from Supernatural and wings in general, along with other superhero stuff and swords.

After getting some pictures to work from I started doing more sketches


The person that made the commission liked the one with the sword so I worked that out some more.


With the pose settled on, I started fleshing it out more and practicing on the likeness.




I did the inking in paint tool sai and then took it over to photoshop for colour and text.