Ahsoka Tano Crosses Blades Before Anakin's Silhouette — Print & Oil Painting

Two figures occupying the same space, painted so that one of them is only half present. Anakin stands at the centre with his back to us in a long teal robe, shoulders squared, the back of his head and a suggestion of light hair all we are given: no face, no expression, no way in. Ahsoka stands directly in front of him, and she is the one turned to face the viewer.

Their arms make the picture. Both of hers are stretched out to full span, and both of his run along beneath them in the same line, so the four limbs read as one wingspan shared between two people. A hilt sits in each of her hands and a pale blade extends from each, straight out to the left and right edges of the canvas. It is a rare thing to see a duelling stance painted as an embrace.

She is very young here: short montrals, the early red top and grey leggings, the dark red bands wrapped up both forearms. The face is small and painted with almost no shadow: chin up, brow drawn, mouth slightly open. Nothing in it is confident. Everything in it is willing.

The handling is loose throughout, closer to gouache than to oil. The background is a wash of deep teal and green, dragged and scraped rather than blended, with hundreds of small gold sparks drifting across it and a bloom of amber light behind her hip. Edges dissolve everywhere; nothing in the picture has a hard outline except the two blades.

From our Star Wars collection. For the same pairing painted much later, after the name he answers to has changed, see the canvas with Vader's helmet.