Artanis and Selendis Stand Side by Side — Print & Oil Painting

Focus does the introductions. The figure on the right is sharp to the last rivet, close enough to the lens that the shoulder runs out of the frame; the figure on the left is a step further back and softened just enough to sit behind. The background, a dark hall with pale blue lights strung across it, is dissolved almost to nothing. It is a photographic decision rather than a painterly one.

Both suits are built from the same vocabulary in different proportions. Curved white plates, deep blue underlayers, and thin lines of pale blue light following the seams of the armour, up the collar, along the pauldron, around the crest of the helm. The nearer helm is broad and smooth with one long horn sweeping back; the further one is narrower and carries three sharp prongs.

What identifies each of them is the eye. In both cases it is a single slit of hard blue-white light set behind the faceplate, and neither figure has any other feature to read. That is a good deal of trust to place in one shape, and it works: the two heads are unmistakably individual.

The surface has the polish of a rendered film frame rather than the tooth of a canvas, so it prints cleanest at moderate sizes. Selendis was raised to Executor by Artanis and carried his fleets, and pictures of the two of them together are always pictures of a chain of command. From our Starcraft collection, opposite Artanis seated on his throne of stone.