Tag: illustration

Death is Cute

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Fenrir pupAt 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!

Posted by Mark Neumayer

All-Father

On By Nobody's HomeIn Artwork1 Comment

Odin_posterYes, it is Thursday and time to post some Norse-inspired art, and no, the piece I gave you a sneak peek of last week is still not done. There are times when producing art is a battle with self-doubt and right now I am not winning this particular battle. There are also times when you have to realize that a particular piece of art just isn’t coming together and set it aside. That is where I am at with the Viking axe artwork I was creating. I still think it is a cool concept, but my artistic skills aren’t yet at the level I need to pull this off.

However, I did not want to leave you all empty-handed. (Or would it be empty-screened?) I was playing around with some ideas of a holiday gift for a friend of mine and the inspiration struck me to throw together this little piece. The Hope poster meme is a bit old but I felt doing something with Odin is particularly appropriate at this time of year since many scholars argue for him as the original model for Santa Claus. I’ve never seen a one-eyed Santa but considering how artists have messed up by giving Vikings horned helmets for all of these years it is not that hard to imagine them messing up on the number of eyes as well.

Happy Holidays!

Happy Thorsgiving

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Thursday is Thor’s day and it is about time I offered up a kawaii version of the god of thunder. I’m sure my wife will be sad to see this sketch owes more to the Norse traditions than to the Marvel Comics edition. (She has a crush on Chris Hemsworth.) I’ve also gone with the traditional short-handled hammer. Loki kept messing with the Dwarves when they were creating some magical items for him. While the other items came out fine, the Trickster managed to distract the Dwarf working the bellows so that Mjolnir came out with a shorter than normal handle.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates it. Happy Thorsgiving to the rest of you.

Posted by Mark Neumayer

Big Barda

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It’s Saturday, which means it’s time for some kawaii superhero art. I was thinking the other day that my doing this every week must be some sort of throwback to the old Saturday morning cartoons I watched as a kid. Yes, young ‘uns, we used to only be able to watch cartoons one day a week when I was little. Oh, the horror!

This week I have another super-heroine for you – Big Barda. She is part of Jack Kirby’s New Gods pantheon so we have a little mix of comics and mythology going on today, which is especially appropriate for this blog. He used a lot of strong female characters in his stories and Big Barda certainly ranks among the top tier of DC characters for power. On top of that, I love Kirby’s designs. He always included so much cool detail into the costumes. It’s really fun to work them up into the kawaii style.

If you want to see more Kirby-influenced art, head on over to to the Kirby-vision blog. Lots of neat work by different artists all offering up their own versions of characters created by the king.  See you next time!

Posted by Mark Neumayer

Valkyrie Art

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Hey, it’s Thursday so it’s time to post some Norse-themed art. Once again, this is in a different style from some of the stuff I have posted before. I can’t help it. Like Whitman said “I contain multitudes.” Except in my case it appears to be multitudes of artists who can’t decide on one way to draw things.

This stylized valkyrie was part of the background on the original cover for my book Valda & the Valkyries. I decided to polish her up and give her the spotlight treatment today.

The Heart is Bold that Looks on Gold

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I’ve been posting kawaii artwork on Thursdays and I intend to keep on doing that. There is a problem with this week’s artwork – I don’t like it. I’m working on the kawaii version of Sleipnir but so far I haven’t been able to come up with anything I feel is good enough. (Those eight legs keep getting in the way of each other.) But I still wanted to post some kind of art so I did this piece.

I love the artistic style  that Games Workshop uses for the Dwarves in their Warhammer game. It’s kind of weird because although I have read a lot of issues of White Dwarf magazine and pored over websites about the hobby I’ve never actually played the game.

The Dwarves in the game are very attached to their ancestors and frequently decorate weapons and armor with these little iconic representations of them. The GW artists have done a great job of invoking the look of the various carved images that we find on stones and wooden relics from the Norse countries. I did this piece to represent one of these icons before it is attached to a piece of armor.

I’m happy with the art although I do think the lines are too precise. This is a side effect of me creating the base in a vector drawing program. I’ve create my original lines and shapes in Adobe Illustrator and then bring it on over to Photoshop where I add textures and effects. I’ve been using both programs for over fifteen years so it is often easier for me to do something in the program than it is using paper and pencil. The knotwork is so much easier in the digital realm – you got to love that Undo button! If you’re interested in the process I use to create digital knotwork you can check out a tutorial I did. The tute is a few years old but all of the same principles still apply.

BTW, the line in the title comes from JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit.

Posted by Mark Neumayer

More Kawaii Artwork

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This week’s kawaii offering features Jormungandr. He is the colossal sea serpent that encircles the globe in Norse mythology. That’s really big, but I figure the guy couldn’t have been born that large even if his mother was a giant and his father was Loki. So we have my version of him when he was a wee lad.

This is the third in my series on Loki’s kids. We’ve covered Hela and Fenrir already so the only one left is Sleipnir. He’ll be racing onto the scene next week.

Posted by Mark Neumayer