Darth Nihilus Stands Amid a Field of Embers — Print & Oil Painting

He is standing inside a room that has been broken apart and lit from within. Slabs of dark stone hang at every angle around him, near ones large and blurred at the edges of the frame, distant ones shrinking away into haze, and every crack running through them glows the same hot magenta. Nothing rests on anything.

The arrangement leaves a clear pocket at the centre and puts him in it. The robe is coarse brown-grey cloth, wrapped and belted, hanging in heavy folds that are painted with a dry brush so the weave stays visible. The hood is pulled well forward and the mask underneath is smaller and dimmer than in the other paintings of him, which makes the figure feel further away than he is.

The hands are the loudest thing in the picture. The left is open, low and forward, with a knot of orange sparks turning around the palm. The right is raised beside the head and holds a blade so bright it has gone pink at the core and bleeds a magenta glow onto the shoulder.

Colour is used with almost no restraint and it works because the value range is so tight. Almost the entire canvas sits within two steps of black, and the crimson veins, the sparks and the blade are the only things allowed to be bright, so the eye has nowhere else to go.

Part of our Star Wars collection, alongside the same figure against flames drawn in flat illustrated shapes and the mask painted large in scraped red.