Pop Art Oil Paintings. All Original Oils on Canvas using images from Marvel
Comics
Marvel Comics - My Muse
Most male artists have a beautiful woman as their inspiration, but my muse was Marvel Comics and especially
the Silver Surfer. In my teenage
years when I wasn’t planning to be the next Lennon & McCartney, I decided to become a great artist. I
hadn’t a clue how to paint, but I went to my local artists shop and got myself an easel, some oil paints
and brushes.
I wanted to take comic book images and turn them into oil paintings. I knew that
Roy Lichtenstein was doing the same thing, and
making a lot of money, so the market was there. However, whereas the successful
Liechtenstein was emphasising the origins of his images by even painting the comic
printers colour dots. I wanted to make the 2 dimensional drawings as ‘real’ as possible - (the characters WERE
real to me)!
Pop Art Oil Paintings
of Marvel Comic characters

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Hand
Painted Galactus - Oils on Canvas (20" x
30")
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Luckily copying from comics became respectable in the 1960’s with the Pop Art movement taking
images from mass culture and changing their context. Andy Warhol’s ‘Campbells Soup Can’ and
Marilyn Monroe multiple images are famous
examples. Marvel Comics were keen to be associated with such a high profile art movement, and even changed their
name to ‘Marvel Pop Art Productions’ for a short time in the sixties.

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Surfer &
Galactus - Oils on Canvas (27" x 23")
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Looking at the oil paintings now there is one aspect preserved from the comics. None of the characters have
any eyes! Comic printing at the time was not sophisticated enough to show small details such as eyes, and without
any artistic training I didn’t dare fill in the gaps!
John McNally
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