The Flash 01

I've wanted to draw The Scarlet Speedster in a way that was worthy of the legend. This recent effort on 9 x 12" Bienfang proved to myself that I could when I threw caution to the wind and tried something new. That new method involved the background. The speed force had to be thrown in; Barry inadvertedly created it when he was struck by lightning, and his every step run generates this paradoxical energy field that all speedsters can access. With streaks of copic yellow and yellowish-red tones and white-out streaks of electricity, I conveyed the Speed Force to the best of my ability. A lot of my influence came from Ethan van Sciver's work in Flash: Rebirth while pulling in that tunnel feeling from the Cw series during those Speed Force sequences. As for Barry himself, the reds were from prawn to strong reds with some chrome orange on the highlights so that the figure interacted with the environment to a certain extent. The lightning, meanwhile, was a little more tricky. While the seams were done with a metallic yellow pen, I had to distinguish the lightning that Barry's body exudes as he runs needed to look different. Taking a risk, I used a white gel pen for the streaks on the body, and lightly coated them with yellow ochre copics. I then completed the effect by switching to a yellow ochre Prismacolor pencil for the parts of the lightning trails that were trailing of behind him in the epicentre. This is my best Flash to date and I can't wait to try my hand at a more difficult representation of The Fastest Man Alive.