Instagram of the Week | Brendan Conroy
We love Instagram! Why? Because it gives you access to tonnes of visual art at your finger tips! Follow @thisheadstuff to stay up to date with our finds on our favourite app!
Every week HeadStuff’s Visual Arts Editor will feature posts from their favourite artists on Instagram. So add the hashtag #thisheadstuff to be featured!
Up this week is illustrator and designer Brendan Conroy aka @brenroy1. A recent graduate from NCAD, he uses digital and practical techniques to create playful, thoughtful and cheeky images. We love his tongue-in-cheek cultural references and potent sense of fun!
I only really started to use Instagram relatively recently. When I finished my degree I decided that instead of applying for internships, I’d give myself 6 months to work on my portfolio and try and squeeze more of my personality into my work, one of the results of this is that I usually end up with A LOT of work in progress, so instead of those lonely jpegs sitting in my computer, I like to purge them onto my Instagram.
Over the four years of college you obviously meet and make friends with a lot of creatives, so for me it’s a great place to track their progress on a day-to-day basis. A lot of illustrators have their official channels to showcase their work, which is obviously great, but I almost prefer seeing the process of how they get to the final piece. I guess people can be a little precious in what they actually put up on their ‘official’ site.
NCAD was… how should I say this.. an experience. We were the first year graduating from the new 3 year course so we basically became the experiment. The college seemed to be going through a tough time which, for me was noticeable. It seems to have settled down now though. The tutors were really wonderful though and helped us out as best they could. In the future, I believe the design campus could really benefit from more of a cross over with the different departments.
Materials: A fine liner, ink brush and nice paper. I’m not too precious to be honest. Anything that makes a nice mark/line is fine by me.
Influences: Max Fleischer, Kyle Platts, Jiro Bevis, Garbage Pail Kids, McBess, Sweet wrappers, He-Man, 1950’s Flim-Flam, Viz, Donald Trump, Love, loneliness, Guinness and Peace.
Must-follow accounts on Instagram: @jessronagrooming @fruitStickers, @ermsy, @jacksachs, @auctioneerbeats @trumpsbury @aranquinn @benzohickey @cnr_nln
