Red Shift

Being a nerd, I love super heroes. Combine that with my passion for drawing and you get someone who loves drawing super heroes. However, I don't like drawing other peoples super heroes so I've taking to drawing my own. I don't know if I will ever work up the confidence or the know how to actually write and draw stories using these characters, but that doesn't stop me from designing and drawing them. This one is Red Shift. She is a speedster along the lines of the Flash. I am particularly proud of this one for several reasons. Firstly, this is the first woman I was able to draw successfully. Women have been hard for me to draw for a long time. I have much more practice with the much sharper angles and harder lines of drawing males. I've found, with women, to make it look right you have to soften the line a bit and work in more curves. The other thing I like about this one is the pose. I am really happy with how it captures the motion of sprinting so well. The name Red Shift comes from the phenomenon known as the Doppler Red (or Blue) Shift. Basically, if an object is moving towards or away from a detector (your eye, or a telescope or something), the wavelength of the light will shift (along with its color, thus the rainbow motif in the drawing) based on its speed, just like the Doppler effect in sound, but on a grander scale. This is how astronomers know that the universe is expanding. Also, I like how it sounds as a super hero name. Now, if you ever see this,

you'll understand the nerd humor. You're welcome.