Dogmeat & Lone Wanderer — Print & Oil Painting

An immense disc hangs behind the clouds and fills most of the sky, banded and cratered and far too close. Nothing in the games puts a planet like that above the ruins, so read it as the artist's own weather, a way of making the horizon feel occupied.

Under it the cloud does the real work. A great tower of cumulus climbs out of the hills, lit yellow-green along its edges by a sun that never appears, and the light it throws down the road is the only thing separating the walker from the ground he walks on.

Man and dog are both seen from behind, both in silhouette, both already several strides into the picture. He carries a long weapon slanted over one shoulder; the shepherd trots at his left hip with its head slightly turned. Neither figure has a face, which is the right decision for a protagonist the player invents.

Everything else is scenery with the colour drained out of it: dead trees, telegraph poles, transformers still bolted to their crossarms, collapsed shacks on both sides of the track. The palette runs olive and grey with one warm band along the road itself.

From our Fallout collection. Its opposite in mood is the painting of the dog left behind at the porch, which is this same journey a minute earlier.