Tassadar Overlooks the Protoss Homeworld — Print & Oil Painting

The handling is flat and graphic, closer to a travel poster than to concept art. Shapes are filled with even colour, edges are clean, shadows are single tones with no gradient inside them, and the whole image is built from sand-gold, cream and a deep navy sky. It is decorative in the best sense of the word.

The city takes the left two thirds. A stepped pyramid with a great arched entrance stands at its centre, flanked by curved horns of stone that rise and hook inward, and beyond it slim spires and domes recede toward a low horizon. White crystals hang unsupported in the air above it all, with a moon and a field of stars behind.

The traffic is what makes the place feel inhabited. Half a dozen craft of the same gold and white design cross the sky at different sizes and angles, one low enough to throw a shadow, and two small figures walk along a platform in the lower left, tiny enough to set the scale of everything behind them.

The figure himself stands at the right, on the wing of a dark vessel in the immediate foreground: a tall protoss in gold and cream armour with a long banner of a cloak, one arm hanging, the head turned out over the city. He is drawn no more elaborately than the buildings are, which keeps the picture a landscape rather than a portrait.

Aiur is the protoss homeworld in these stories, and the title puts this skyline there. The vessel under his feet carries a blue eye-shaped emblem on its hull, the one cool note in an otherwise entirely warm canvas. Part of our Starcraft collection, and the close profile lit in the dark takes the same figure to the opposite extreme of scale.