Luke Skywalker Ignites His Saber Before an X-Wing Battle — Print & Oil Painting

This is built as a poster rather than as a scene, and it collects three things that never actually share a moment: a pilot in his flight gear, a lightsaber, and a squadron fight happening at close range behind him. Read as a montage it works perfectly well; read as an event it does not, and it is not asking to be.

The figure is painted with real care. The orange flight suit is creased and shadowed properly at the elbow and the knee, the grey chest box and its harness are described strap by strap, and the belt with its dangling ties sits correctly on the hip. He grips the hilt in both hands and carries the blade up and back across his right shoulder, so the green runs from his fists to the top right corner as one long clean diagonal.

Directly behind him a fireball opens, painted as a churning mass of white-gold at the core and heavy grey-brown smoke at the edges. It fills the middle of the canvas and functions as a lamp: the face, the shoulders and the near arm are all lit from it, which is why the figure separates so cleanly from everything else.

Fighters cross the sky at every depth: several with the four-winged X open, one dark TIE low on the right. Red bolts cut across the corners. At the very bottom of the frame a dark city runs along the foot of the picture, lit in small cold points. Between the explosion above and the lights below there is not one square inch of restful colour anywhere.

Shelved in our Star Wars collection with the same fighter at full speed and the pursuit above the battle station.