Shenanigans & Tomfoolery

The Flash is my favorite superhero.

He’s visually striking (a red blur with lightning all over), is ridiculously overpowered and has a great rogues gallery so it should come as no surprise that he’s a character that gets repeated every few months in my sketchbooks.  Below is my latest rendition of him and after the break I’ve posted some of the other Flash drawings that I’ve done over the years.

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February of ’07: I have no idea what was going on with the hatching.

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August ’07:  Looks really awkward. And where’s the lightning?

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Late ’07:  Even more awkward, almost a step back. Sigh.

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Early ’08: Kinda stiff but getting there.

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August ’08: I tried something different here but I feel like I could’ve done a lot better at the time.

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Looking back at these drawings, and going back to that first one I did recently, I came to the realization that it took me over two years to do a drawing of the Flash that I was satisfied with. It’s not an easy character to draw because there’s only so many ways you can draw a guy that’s just running but, overall, I’d say this set is a good measure of my progress (or lack of sometimes) in two years’ time.

And the lightning, my god, the ligtning. It’s so difficult to draw effects like fire and smoke and lightning for me because these things in the real world move almost randomly with no discernible patterns. I went and looked at how other artists rendered lightning and I finally, finally drew it in a way that looked pleasing to me.

Thanks you, Ethan Van Sciver.

Related posts:

1. Sketchbook Update – 9/21/09
2. Sketchbook Update – 8/28/09
3. Sketchbook Update – Christmas Edition
4. Sketchbook Update – 11/5/09

Posted in Comics, Sketches |