Terran Marines Fighting in a Ruined City — Print & Oil Painting

Depth is the subject. The picture is three times as wide as it is tall and every centimetre of that width has gone into building recession: two figures at arm's length on the left, a burning street behind them, a plain of small explosions beyond that, and a horizon of towers dissolving into red dust at the far right.

The two nearest figures are the only ones drawn in full. One kneels behind a heavy weapon with the barrel resting on rubble, in blue-grey armour with the visor open and a cyan lamp burning at the temple; the other stands over him in darker brown plate, one arm braced on a wall, watching a different direction entirely. They are covering two arcs, which is a real thing soldiers do and not a thing illustrators usually bother to draw.

Everything past them is fought at a distance. Tiny muzzle flashes prick the middle ground, four or five plumes of black smoke stand up out of the ruins, tracer streaks cross the sky at the same shallow angle, and low buildings run away in a grid on the left. Nobody in that half of the picture is more than a few strokes.

The right side turns organic. Spurs and ridges in brown-purple push up through the streets, the colour of the ground changes, and the architecture simply stops. Whatever holds that end of the city is not building with stone.

The whole canvas sits inside one narrow band of dull red and ash grey, which is exactly why the cyan of the armour lamps carries across a room. Part of our Starcraft collection, and the wider clash between terran and Zerg forces takes the same war out of the streets.