Instagram Pick of the Week | Conor Nolan
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This weeks its Conor Nolan, a self-described illustrator/designer/printmaker- but he’s working on a tidier way to say that.
What is Instagram for you?
I try to use Instagram as a way of constantly keeping people looped in to what I’m doing, whether it’s sketches that I’ll just pop in my story done in ink or pencil, or if it’s finished illustrations. I’m sometimes a bit hesitant to put commercial commissions up there so I like to use it as a way to keep doing personal stuff. It’s kind of a tester for what might go on my website so I’m updating it a lot.
Why/when did you decide to start sharing your work on there?
When I first got Instagram I didn’t really know how it worked. I started putting up sketchbook doodles and it was nice to see people liking my drawings. I would eventually put up actual finished pieces around my final year of college and since then it’s been a really good motivational tool and has just kept growing.
How would you describe your style?
I messed around with different kinds of printmaking for a while and learned a lot about different types, which has always fascinated me. I try to keep that in my work and keep the human feel to what I’m doing, even in the more polished and finished stuff. So I guess you could say my style is made up of bold and bright shapes, rough brush strokes and a use of layering and colour similar to that of screen printing or risograph printing.
What materials/equipment do you mainly work with?
I start everything on paper, so I’ll work with a MUJI mechanical pencil. I’ll go over everything with a Pentel pocket brush pen on sheets of layout paper, drawing sections separately by colour. Then once all that is done, everything is scanned, then I’ll work with all these shapes as vectors in Illustrator, and finally add a bit of texture in Photoshop. When I explain it it sounds really long and removed from the actual initial drawing but to me it feels like it comes full circle and the energy in the lines and textures stops everything from losing its handmade feel.
Who has been or currently is an influence on you?
John Buscema’s comic book covers, Quentin Blake’s work for Roald Dahl which I obviously saw loads of as a kid, Where the Wild Things Are, Beautiful Losers, Holidays by Jean Jullien, old professional wrestling, lumpy drawings of Disney characters on Ice cream trucks.
What are your must-follow accounts on Instagram?
I have tonnes of these but you should definitely give them a look: usfolkillustrate, davidjmcmillan, jaydeperkin, the_project_twins, signsofpower, brenroy1, ruan_van_vliet, fattiburke, fuchsiamacaree, grimickis, fionaamcd and probably a lot more but there’s more than enough really great people everyone should follow.
