Thor Roars With Lightning Coursing Through Both Hands — Print & Oil Painting

The mouth is wide open and the whole picture is arranged around it. He faces us square on, head thrown slightly forward, long hair swept back off the temples, the beard full, and the shout is drawn with the teeth showing and the tendons standing out in the neck. Both eyes are burning a hard cyan white with the glare washing over the cheekbones.

Current runs down both arms. It starts at the shoulders as thin filaments crawling over the plate, gathers as it descends, and collects at the hands into two dense white blue masses that spill sideways past the hips in ragged sheets. More of it forks up behind his head in three long branches against the dark.

The armour is dark blue grey with round silver bosses at the chest and shoulders, a red mark at the sternum and banded forearms, and the artist has let the lightning eat into its edges so that the outline of the figure is broken in a dozen places. He is not holding anything.

Behind him a wrecked field recedes into the dark, lit by scattered dull red fires and littered with pale debris, everything softened and low in contrast. Blue leads the measurement with cyan second at moderate saturation and low brightness.

There is a name in the stories for the state this picture is drawing. It is a battle fury that multiplies his strength and takes his judgement away with it, and his father made it an offence under Asgardian law precisely because of what he becomes while it lasts. Painting him at full voice with power pouring uncontrolled out of both hands and no weapon anywhere is painting the thing he is not permitted to do. Part of our Marvel collection, next to the same power held perfectly still, hands open at his sides and a shout under the winged helm in a red cloak.