Ahsoka Tano Grips a Glowing Saber Close — Print & Oil Painting

Both hands are in the frame and both are working. The near one is closed around a hilt held upright against her sternum, its blade running down and out through the lower left corner; the far one, at the right edge, carries a second hilt laid back along the forearm with the emitter pointing behind her.

The blade is put down as a white core inside a sheath of pale blue, and it supplies all the light in the lower half of the canvas: a cold rim along her knuckles, a line under the jaw, one lit edge on the inside of a lek. Above the shoulders the modelling comes from somewhere else entirely.

The finish is smooth and hard-edged, nearer to a fighting game portrait than to oil. Skin runs from orange to deep rust in the shadows, the facial markings are white, the eyes pale, the lips almost black. The montrals band grey-blue and white in wide stripes and the lekku are long enough to leave the picture on both sides.

Her kit is deliberately damaged: a blue sleeveless top slashed open in several places, a wide segmented belt with a plain oval buckle, brown fingerless gauntlets, dark leggings cut through at the thigh. It is a costume designed to show what it has already survived.

That reversed hand is hers rather than the painter's invention. She fights with the blade laid back along the arm, an unorthodox grip that suits deflecting blaster fire and leaves opponents guessing, and it is the quickest way to recognise her in silhouette. Part of our Star Wars collection, alongside the same weapons handled in near darkness and another close study with a lit city behind her.