Mace Windu Igniting His Purple Lightsaber — Print & Oil Painting

This is built as key art rather than as a scene. The canvas is tall, the ground is close to pure black, and across the top the artist has set the saga logotype above the single word WINDU in wide serif capitals, ruled off underneath with a thin line. Everything below that is one head and one blade.

The blade rises the full height of the picture at the left, a white core inside a violet corona, and it is the only light in the image. It reaches the face at an angle, which is why the near cheek, the brow ridge and the bridge of the nose are lifted forward while the far side of the head sinks into the ground with no edge to it at all.

The face is worked closely and not flattered. A shaved head with the light raking across the scalp, deep folds bracketing the mouth, skin stippled and uneven under the glare, brows down, jaw set. He is not looking along the blade. His eyes go off past our left shoulder, and the expression sits somewhere between contempt and patience.

Measured brightness is about an eighth of full and the saturation just over half, which describes the canvas exactly: almost nothing lit, and what is lit is drenched. Skin, collar, robe and background are violet or they are nothing. One hue has been given the entire picture.

The colour is the character. His is the one blade of that shade on the Council, and he built a fighting form to match it, a style that takes an opponent's fury and feeds on it while staying just inside what the Order would allow. Painting him in his own light, slightly too much of it, is the correct decision. Part of our Star Wars collection, next to the full length painting of him standing over the fallen and the man he went to arrest.