Outside of my normal style, this painting was created to celebrate the birthday of my close friend Chris McInnis, curator of Über Cool Stuff, a Geek Boutique located in London, Ontario. Considering what a colossal comic geek Chris is, I wanted to create something special to mark his birthday, and as we’re both fans of Jim Kirby’s classic character Galactus, it was a foregone conclusion that he’d be the inspiration.
The illustration is heavily influenced by Jim Lee’s interpretation of the character, and depicts a sullen Galactus— Devourer of Worlds— peering over the rim of a new world, contemplating what is about to happen.
Happy birthday Chris!
“Meanwhile…”
36x36in
Acrylic on panel
2011
This piece is in the private collection of Chris McInnis.
Nice work, Nik! We can feel the power cosmic! Love that texture on the planet. We were doing a Kirby-inspired painting the other night and wondering how to get more texture on our planets. You got it!
Hi,
What a beautiful painting! How did you get that amazing texture on the planet? The graduation of colour is so good that the retina reacts as if faced with a light that might get too bright. Brilliant, indeed…
@MARS @iain Thanks!
The texture on the planet was actually pretty easy to create. I paint in a two-stage process where I build up surface textures with modelling pastes and palette knives, then wash, glaze and sand in the second colouring phase. To see an overview of a painting from start to finish check out this page: http://nikharron.com/painting-6-bit-message-from-beyond-the-great-divide/
In this particular painting, the planet texture was created with two layers of texture. The first layer was laid down with Liquitex Modelling Paste, which dries to a plaster-like finish— rough and with high absorbency which allows it to soak up the glaze later. It has a tendency to crack when applied too thickly, and I applied it thick with this in mind.
The second texture layer was applied after the first had dried, and used the smoother, lighter Tri-Art modelling paste which dries smooth and glossy and has low absorbency. This could also have been done with straight Titanium White paint. This application picked up the highlights from the previous layers. Fine detail was created in this layer by spraying water drops, which impact to leave the small circular craters.
The differences in the two texture mediums means that during the colouring, I was able to scrub the applied paint with a damp cloth and it preferentially was removed where the second, glossy layer was applied, and was absorbed preferentially by the rough one.
Lastly, the sense of light was heightened by using lower contrast on the planet compared to the rest of the painting, lending that illuminated, swamped out highlight feeling.
Cheers.
[...] an artist’s site. Nik Harron – who we admittedly never heard of before – posted a painting of Galactus and linked back to our post on Jim Lee’s version of this character first brought to life by [...]