Hydralisk Clashes With Terran Marines — Print & Oil Painting

You are behind the marines, not beside them. Two armoured backs fill the bottom corners of the canvas, close enough to be thrown out of focus, and everything that matters happens in the gap between their shoulders. The composition puts the viewer at the wrong end of a firefight on purpose.

Green owns the picture. A cold cave glow soaks into rock, smoke and armour alike, and the tracer fire has been drawn as long curved ribbons of the same green sweeping right to left across the full width of the frame. Against that, small orange sparks and muzzle flames scatter through the middle distance as the only warm marks anywhere.

The hydralisk rears up in the centre and is built like siege equipment. Chitin plating in bone and dried blood, a hooded skull with the jaw hinged open, glowing amber vents burning through the shell at the shoulder and the hip, and two enormous scythes carried high on either side. The strain is usually described by the spines it fires; here the artist has given all the drawing to the blades.

The space is deliberately shallow. A wall of rock stands a few metres behind the creature, the ceiling comes down close above it, and there is no sky and no exit. Neither side has anywhere to go.

One of the noisier canvases in our Starcraft collection. The marine firing on a charging hydralisk stages the same meeting in daylight and from the other side of the guns.