Borderlands Pirate Resting on Gold — Print & Oil Painting

Light comes through a shuttered window on the right and lands on a floor made entirely of coins. That is the engine of the picture: a warm shaft cutting across a dim ship's hold, striking a heap of gold, and bouncing back up to light everything else from underneath.

She sits in the middle of it with one leg folded and the other stretched out, a tricorne tipped forward, dark hair loose at the shoulder. A pale breastplate is buckled over a dark coat with epaulettes, the trousers are tucked into high boots, and both hands are occupied: a long-barrelled pistol in the right, resting across the knee, a broad straight blade in the left with its point in the coins.

Behind her the hold is built from timber and iron. Curved beams meet overhead, a bolted metal door frames the window, chests spill their contents at the left edge, and a faint painted device shows on the planking above her hat.

It should be said plainly that nothing in the image is specific to Borderlands. There is no cel outline, no Pandoran hardware, no character mark that would fix it to the series, so the link is the pirate campaign the second game added rather than anything in the drawing itself. Taken on its own terms it is a well-lit character painting of a captain counting her afternoon.

From our Borderlands collection. The nearest thing to it in mood is the portrait of Lilith, another figure at rest in a room full of other people's things.