Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker Drawing Their Sabers — Print & Oil Painting

Two figures rising out of the same cloud, one set behind the other, and the whole lower third of the canvas given to dark billowing shadow that their robes disappear into. Nothing below the knee is drawn. They are standing in a bank of smoke that the painter has let eat the bottom of the picture.

Obi-Wan holds the upper left, in three-quarter profile and looking off to the side rather than at us. Brown outer robe over a darker tunic, a wide belt, the beard trimmed close, the hair swept back off the forehead. His blade comes out low and to the left, held one-handed and angled down, at a guard so relaxed it barely counts as one.

Anakin is placed lower and in front, closer to us, and he is the one facing forward. Both hands are locked on the hilt with the blade running down and out to the right, the jaw is set, the brows are down, and the eyes are fixed somewhere below the frame. His face is unmarked. There is no scar through the right brow, which places him earlier than the version most people picture.

The two blades are the same cold blue and they leave the frame in opposite directions, which stops the pair from reading as a single unit. Behind them the ground is a pale grey-white haze lit from above, scattered with fine white specks like drifting dust, and the light gets stronger toward the top of the canvas. The handling is soft throughout: no hard edges anywhere except the two blades.

The arrangement puts the older man behind and the younger man in front, which is both a compositional choice and an accurate one. From our Star Wars collection, next to the pair standing back to back and the day the two blades were finally turned on each other.