Guybrush Threepwood in the Jungle with His Monkey — Print & Oil Painting

Sunlight is coming through a canopy somewhere above and behind, and the background has been kept deliberately out of focus: broad green leaves, a ribbon of pale sky between trunks, a fern taking the light at the left, all of it soft enough that the eye slides off it and onto the face.

The sitting is the one used for the framed plate elsewhere in this collection, carried outdoors. Same three quarter turn, same strawberry blond hair tied back, same ginger moustache and short beard, same white shirt under a navy coat with a tan baldric and brass buttons. What has changed is the light, and it changes a great deal: green bounces up under the jaw, the hair goes almost orange where the sun catches it, and the collar reads warm cream instead of studio white.

The monkey has come too. It sits on the right shoulder in its small blue coat with the black patch over one eye, and out here it reads less as an ornament and more as an animal that knows the ground it is standing over.

The face is why the pair are worth keeping. Painted with real restraint, no exaggeration anywhere, the eyes narrowed slightly against the light and the mouth almost but not quite amused. Part of our Monkey island collection. The indoor version, gold rule and lettering included, is the framed portrait, and the cartoon this man began as is on the redrawn cover.