Terran Army Marches Through the Snow — Print & Oil Painting

Snow takes the whole lower half of the picture in blue-white and pale grey, and the peaks behind it are mixed from the same two notes: nowhere in this group is the colour pushed further out. The only warmth allowed in is a narrow band of orange sky along the horizon at the right, banked over with violet cloud.

It is a march and not a battle, and everything is organised around that. A column of infantry recedes into the middle distance in single file, getting smaller and vaguer until the last of them are grey marks on white; two walking machines stride along beside the line; a tracked hull sits low at the left with its gun trained forward; and five or six angular dropships cross the sky at different heights.

Two figures are near enough to be drawn properly. The one in front strides straight at the viewer in dark plate with a rifle carried across the body, his helmet fitted with a cluster of green lenses; a second in heavier grey armour walks a pace behind him. Their lights are green here rather than the cyan used elsewhere in this collection, and against all that snow the change earns itself.

The ground has been given real care. Ice breaks through the snow in flat blue slabs, boot tracks run back along the column, the drifts are shaped by wind rather than dumped in evenly, and long soft shadows fall to the left from a sun that has almost gone.

Nothing has happened yet and nothing is burning, which makes it a rarity in our Starcraft collection: an army on the move rather than in contact. The clash between terran and Zerg forces shows what the end of a march like this one looks like.