Jim Raynor in Battle-Scarred Civilian Garb — Print & Oil Painting

The paint has been left exactly where it landed. Whole areas of this canvas are single loaded strokes with the bristle marks intact: the shirt is a dozen slabs of grey and white, the ground behind is three or four vertical sweeps of olive, and the hands and lower legs simply stop being described. It has the character of a study made in one sitting.

What is finished is the head. Dark hair pushed back with grey coming in at the temple, a short beard, deep sockets, and an expression that is hard to name: not hostile, not warm, mostly tired. The light arrives from the upper right and leaves half the face in shadow without softening the border between them.

The clothes carry the whole argument of the title. A plain white undershirt gone grey in the folds, an open black vest studded with a line of small red fittings, a leather strap across the chest, dark trousers, a brown belt. There is no armour anywhere, and the only piece of kit in the picture is the wrap around his left wrist.

Two details hold the damage. A bandage is tied round the right upper arm with blood soaked through it in a single dark patch, and the left forearm carries tattoos the brush has deliberately left half legible. The wound has been given more attention than anything else below the collar.

The man who leads Raynor's Raiders began as a marshal on a frontier world, and this is the version of him that belongs to that half of the story. Part of our Starcraft collection, close to the portrait beside a battle-damaged machine, which puts the same face back out in the sun.