I’ve always thought it would be interesting to rewrite some of the Norse myths in the vein of a hard-boiled detective story. I used that idea as the springboard for this week’s Norse art. We have Freya, the goddess of love and beauty as a cold-hearted femme fatale.
Category: Artwork
Amora the Enchantress
Amora, the Enchantress is a long-time foe of Thor in the Marvel comics universe. She has no basis in Norse mythology but I’m not going to hold that against her.
Mary Marvel
I’m still working on drawing more characters that have hair so this week’s Saturday superhero art features the lovely Mary Marvel. No stories to go along with the character this time. I just chose her because I like the Shazam family and she has nice wavy hair for me to practice on. See you next time!
Nine Worlds Travel – Muspellsheim
Hey folks, this week’s retro travel poster/Norse myth mashup* brings us to Muspellsheim. Although I don’t think you would have much of a tourist industry in a land that is “too luminous and glowing for foreigners to enter there.” That’s what the Eddas say about the place. Basically if you weren’t born there or part fire-demon, you can’t stand the heat – even if it is a dry heat.
Delirium of the Endless
We have already had an appearance from her sister Death, now it is time for Delirium of the Endless to take the stage. I picked her for a couple of reasons. First, I saw a couple of neat versions of the character on Comics Alliance’s Best Art Ever (This Week.). They usually have tons of stuff to get my muse fired up. But the second reason why I figured it was time to draw her was the hair. I have tended to avoid drawing characters with hair but Delirium has hair that is wild enough and strange enough that I figured it was a good choice to ease myself in to the world of kawaii styling. See you next time!
Nine Worlds Travel – Niflheim
While considering what kind of Norse-inspired art to do this week, I thought it would be fun to do some vintage-looking travel posters for each of the Nine Worlds of Norse mythology. Since I just posted some fast facts about Niflheim the other day I decided to start out with the land of primordial cold. I found a number of cool posters online for the different Nordic countries to give me some inspiration and dove into the piece.
That retro look I was going for uses big bold shapes and fairly simple outlines so I fired up Illustrator and got right to it. I was really happy with the results. It was bold, it had a nice icy palette, my mountains and snowscape were nice and crisp and bleak. I added Hela, rocking a dark green dress. All it needed was the text. I found a cool font and typed out Niflheim – Abode of Mists. That’s when it hit me – I didn’t have any mist at all in my picture! Niflheim translates as home of mists or misty lands and I had created this crisp, clear landscape.
Not a major problem because in addition to Illustrator I have Photoshop. We’ll just slide the artwork over there and add some nice mist. And it was easy, but then I decided I needed a little texture for the snowfield. Again, not that hard. So I decided I needed a little texture for the mountains. Then the text needed some fixing. Then… Photoshop locked up! Something is wiggy with the text engine and it crashes every time I try to do anything. I’m running an older version that isn’t supported anymore and it has always been a bit rough on Win7. Hopefully I’ll be able to work past this little hiccup later on. For now I went back into Illustrator and added some not-quite-as-good mist effects. So after considerable rambling, we have this week’s Norse inspired art and will hopefully have an enhanced version of it sometime soon.
Look, Up in the Sky!
Hey, it’s Saturday and the first one of those where I haven’t had to work in a long time. So let’s get back to our regular Saturday morning cartoon inspired art. This week I am featuring Superman himself. But not just any version of the big S, I have him decked out in his Justice Lords costume from the excellent Justice League episode “A Better World.”
I’m not one for grim and gritty heroes, but I do love this costume design. The stark black and white with a punch of white for the emblem looks good and is evocative of Superman’s ordinary costume and has a kryptonian feel to it at the same time.
See you next time!
Space Patrol B5
I’m sharing an older piece of art this week but I think it has held up pretty well. These three guys are part of the crew for a group I made up called Space Patrol B5. It is a knockoff of the many Japanamation teams from over the years. I have some rough script ideas for them and even designed a logo for the group but never took them much further than these initial concept sketches for the three male characters of the group.
The style of these guys really struck me. Cutesy, no noses, bright colors – it hits most of my buttons for what I like to draw. These guys, and the rest of the team, deserve a little more time and work once I have some time, that is. 😎
Loki Brownson
I have mentioned before that I don’t know where the ideas come from. Sometimes they slowly bubble their way up out of my subconscious. Other times they spring forth fully adult, like Athena bursting from the forehead of Zeus. (I know that’s Greek, not Norse, but I couldn’t think of a Norse example that fit as well.) The idea for this mashup sprang forth fully formed and I know from long experience that when I get an idea like this, I have to draw it to get it out of my head. Good grief, indeed.
Death is Cute
At least she is the way they depict her in Neil Gaman’s Sandman universe. Just a spunky Goth girl who seems like she’d be a lot of fun to hang out with – not that I’m anxious to meet her. I imagine she and Hela would have gotten along fine as kids. Maybe I should do a kawaii Hela and Death having a little tea party together.
Besides the issue of dealing with all that black clothing, I had another challenge with this sketch – the hair. You may have noticed that I cheat a little bit and choose a lot of subjects that don’t have much of their hair showing. There was bald Mr. Freeze; Galactus, Nova and Big Barda all wear helmets; even Hawkwoman has a mask that covers most of her head. But I decided I need to do more work at the areas where I am weak. So you’ll be seeing more characters with more hair. I’m not saying I’m ready to feature Medusa of the Inhumans just yet, but I want to push myself a bit.
Are there any characters that you all would like to see me kawaii-ify? I’d love to hear your suggestions. See you next time!
Mark Neumayer 