Fresh Paint: Guardian of the Awesomizer!

 

The source image for our painting is the cover of Defenders #55; Marvel, 1978. We believe Gil Kane penciled this cover in a style very much informed by Jack Kirby. You can see the initials of a signature along the lower left edge.

We dug the weird headgear the Red Guardian sports on this cover as he trashes the world’s crappiest super-team. The cover is the best thing about this book, believe us. The inside is a train wreck. Don’t say we didn’t warn you! We got it for fifty cents to decorate our wall, and the cover inspired us.

Here is the original cover:

fresh paint: Heart of the Awesomizer!

Happy Hearts Day, Martians! Here’s a painting we wrapped up last night as a gift. It’s acrylic, enamel, and Sharpie marker on a 16×20 canvas like the rest of our Awesomizer series. Enjoy!

Voyage to the Awesomizer!

Shortest days of the year, so we thought we’d paint the sun. Inspiration for “Voyage to the Awesomizer!” came from a page of DC’s “Mystery in Space,” included below.

We are far from being professional art photographers, so imagine the background as the vivid white it really is… Acrylic, enamel, marker on canvas.

Son of the Awesomizer!

Here’s a Jack Kirby-inspired painting we finished up this weekend now that we’ve got a little break between semesters. We’ve got some more paintings posted in our Sketchbook on the Paints page.

Inspiration for the main figure came from a Jim Steranko illustration we found in the Nick Fury collection. You can see a version of it at a Steranko send-up on Diversions of the Groovy Kind.

Captain Victory Gallery Finale: Behold… The Awesomizer!

Wow – it has been a lot of fun hosting our Captain Victory Gallery! Jack Kirby has certainly melted our brain circuits with this collection of splash panels. So much so that we were inspired to take one of his images and paint our own version – a tribute really, to the King. You can see below what we came up with. We hope you feel some similar inspiration from Jack Kirby, and that you go on to seek your cosmic destiny in bigger and bolder ways!

We’d like to give a special thank you to Alex Ross Collector for re-tweeting our Captain Victory posts, bringing in veritable legions of the cosmically curious. We also give props to Diversions of the Groovy Kind for sending truly titanic traffic our way to join the summer celebration. Guys and gals, we love comic books! Stick around. We’ve got even more to enthusiastically share with you. Thanks for reading!