Enter Thor and my Summer of Superheroes

I sat down one day in July of last year and started to do random figure drawings, as I had been doing all along, when for some reason I wanted to draw Thor spinning his hammer. I think I was just looking for some kind of action and that's what came to mind. It stuck, and this launched me into drawing superheroes for the next few months. It makes sense—I'm trying to learn the human figure and anatomy, so it's necessary to draw muscular people. The big Thor on the right is the one I drew first, entirely from my own head. Later I grabbed a comic book and copied him from the cover there on the left, but afterwards I strengthened the spin-lines of the hammer which almost obliterated the background Thor.

Playing around with comic-style shading techniques on the head, and trying a different hammer-spinning pose. Not a very good one!

What brought on all this sudden superhero silliness? I don't know.

When I drew the first Thor, I thought it looked pretty much like the way Walt Simonson used to draw him. But I looked at the comics and wow, was I wrong! This is a copy of a Thorface he did.

Another one, and a Tharm (?) Both copied from Simonson.

Soldier dude, drawn with scribbles.

I really like Simonson's style. It's hard to do, even copying.

I decided to try a couple on my own, concentrating on proportions, because I was having trouble getting that big superhero look right. I wasn't trying to make them look like Simonson's Thor, just trying to figure out how to draw a character so bulky through the chest and shoulders. Kind of weird-looking above, especially that pose! Is he falling over backwards?

I like the Thor-portioning here. Legs maybe a little short. I chuckled as I drew the exaggerated Kirby feet. He's looking pretty mighty though.

This one had ridiculously short lower legs, so I stretched them out in photoshop. Weird looking, but there's something about it I like.

... Enough that I turned it into what I can only call ColorForms Thor. This one began a tradition of coloring my pencil drawings while preserving the line work, comic book style. I really like the colors here, as bland as the non-pose is. But I realized, if you want to concentrate on proportions, don't do crazy poses. Just standing there is best. Look how small his head is! Of course that's what makes the big guys look so big.