Darth Maul Squares Off Against an Airborne Ahsoka Tano — Print & Oil Painting

This is built as a poster rather than as a scene, and it uses four elements at two different levels of reality. In the lower left, solid and fully painted, Maul turns into a wide stance with his double blade held across him. In the upper right, also solid, Ahsoka is completely airborne: knees tucked, both arms out, a blade in each hand. Behind and around them, painted as translucent washes, two enormous faces occupy the opposite corners: his at the top left, hers at the bottom right.

The two ghost portraits are what makes the sheet work. Each one is turned toward the small solid version of the other person, so the corners of the picture stare across the diagonal while the middle of it fights. It also lets the artist show both faces at rest and both bodies in motion at the same time, which a single scene could never do.

Colour is divided strictly along the diagonal. Everything to do with him is red: twin blades top and bottom of his hilt, the red skin, a red wash bleeding up the left edge. Everything to do with her is blue-white: two blades, a grey-blue suit, cool light on the montrals. Between them the middle of the canvas is a burst of shattering glass and pale debris, and the background architecture behind that is deliberately unresolved.

His face carries the better acting. Mouth open, teeth bared, brows driven down, the yellow eyes fixed upward at the falling figure, while her expression is simple, hard concentration. He is enjoying it. She is working.

Held in our Star Wars collection, beside the version of this duel set on Mandalore and the second canvas of the same fight.