A TIE Fighter Streaks Through a Burning City Skyline — Print & Oil Painting

The ship is nearly in our laps. It fills the centre of the canvas at a steep angle, cropped by the top edge and the bottom, and the foreshortening is severe enough that the near wing panel reads as a black wall while the far one has almost disappeared behind the hull.

That hull has been given a paint scheme worth looking at. The sphere is chrome blue with a broad red band wrapping its lower half, the eight-pane window is set into a heavy dark frame, and a red flash marks the pylon where the wing meets the body. Highlights slide around the curve in hard chips of white, the way they do on polished metal rather than on the usual matt grey.

Underneath it a city is coming apart. Towers stand in ranks going back to a green-grey horizon, orange fires burn along their flanks and roofs, smoke rolls off the district at the lower right, and one large fireball is opening at the upper left with debris still climbing out of it.

The air itself is teal, and this is what holds the picture together: the whole atmosphere is cool, so every fire in it registers as an interruption. Green bolts cross the frame in both directions, other fighters weave between the towers as small dark crosses, and a pale grey ship banks away at the far left.

A fighter with no shielding does not belong this low between buildings, which is exactly why the angle works: the pilot is somewhere he should not be, moving faster than the situation allows. Part of our Star Wars collection, next to another custom machine of this family crossing a burning battle and the moment one of these attacks connects.