Ahsoka Tano Studies by Coruscant's Nightlit Skyline — Print & Oil Painting

No fight, no ruin, no weather. Ahsoka sits at a desk with her cheek propped on one fist, elbow planted, reading a large illuminated panel laid flat in front of her. Her other hand rests on the glass. It is the posture of somebody five hours into something dull and not finished with it.

The desk is a still life and the artist has clearly enjoyed assembling it. A tilted reader glowing amber with columns of text; a slim lamp on a jointed arm; a small domed droid the size of a jug; a shallow bowl of dark food and a cylindrical cup; a folded dark rectangle; a potted plant crowded up against the window. Sprawled across the middle of everything, taking up more of the desk than any object on it, is a large brown-furred animal with tall pointed ears, fast asleep on the paperwork.

The colour scheme is doing the work. Everything beyond the glass is blue: a night city of towers, spires and stacked lit windows running back to a cold horizon, with traffic reduced to threads of light. Everything on this side of the glass is warm, and it is all borrowed from the two screens. Her face is lit from below by the desk, which is why it reads as tired rather than dramatic.

The detail that matters is lying at the near left corner: a lightsaber hilt, set down flat, unlit, in among the cups and the crockery. Whatever else this life involved, a great deal of it was homework in a lit room above a city that never turned off.

Hanging in our Star Wars collection, with the speeder canvas crossing that same skyline at speed, and the golden portrait taking the face alone.