Ahsoka Tano Raises Her Blade in a Warrior Stance — Print & Oil Painting

This one is composed as a decorative panel rather than as a scene. Ahsoka stands full length and dead centre, feet planted wide, and behind her the artist has laid a large symmetrical ornament, pale spearhead and leaf shapes radiating out of a low centre over a rust-orange ground, scraped and distressed until it looks like paint flaking off a wall. It functions exactly as a halo functions: it holds the figure in place and gives the eye somewhere to rest.

The stance is asymmetrical and well observed. Her right arm is up and folded back behind the head, gripping the hilt so that a green blade shoots down and across the frame at a long diagonal; her left arm hangs low and open, fingers loose, counterweighting the whole body. Weight sits on the back leg. The pose is caught in the instant before a cut, not during one.

Costume is painted with real attention. A sleeveless maroon top, leather wraps at both forearms, a wide belt with a heavy oval buckle and a second, narrower strap crossing it, a panel of plum-coloured cloth hanging to the knee, grey-green leggings and worn brown boots. Tucked in at the right hip, easy to miss, is a second and shorter hilt.

That small extra hilt is the biography in the picture. She fought with two blades, one full length and one cut short, and the short one is the reason the long one can be swung this freely, a technique she took up as a padawan and never gave back.

Part of our Star Wars collection, beside the canvas where both blades are out at once and the misty forest study.