Drawing the Flash (motion blur effect)
Drawing the Flash with straight lines (motion blur effect)

Drawing with straight lines is not a new technique. On the contrary, the old masters (Leonardo da Vinci among them) used to sketch all the time with diagonal straight lines, as you can see here. I found the technique ideal for the Flash, so that it would create a motion blur effect similar to that he creates when he runs! 

Drawing the Flash with straight lines (motion blur effect)
Drawing the Flash with straight lines (motion blur effect)

Firstly the face was drawn in a realistic manner as most of my drawings. Also I got to use, for the first time, koh-i-noor polycolor colored pencils. They are good, even though I wasn’t super enthusiastic about them, as I was for Lyra Rembrandt Polycolor (my current favorite colored pencils). But I will definitely use them more in the future, especially for sketching and testing new ideas!

Then, the suit was drawn with horizontal straight lines, with the help of a ruler. The old masters didn’t of course use rulers, but, oh well, let’s say I am not at their level! (yet!!! 😆)

Drawing the Flash - tools
Drawing the Flash – tools

Tools for drawing the face:

  • koh-i-noor polycolor colored pencils, numbers 41 and 55
  • Faber-Castell polychromos pink carmine and juniper green colored pencils
  • Faber-Castell Albrecht Dürer pale geranium lake, sanguine and dark cadmium orange colored pencils
  • Faber-Castell Pitt oil based pencil black (not shown here)
  • Tombow mono zero pencil eraser
  • Putty eraser

Tools for making the motion blur effect:

  • Faber-Castell Albrecht Dürer pale geranium lake, pink carmine, dark red
  • Ruler for the straight lines
  • paper tissues to blend slightly the lines

The result was quite interesting, however different than what I had in mind. Drawing that motion blur effect was tricky and not as easy as it looks. But that’s common when drawing from imagination, you begin your journey not knowing how it is gonna end! I will be working a lot with this technique in the future…

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