Tassadar's Crowned Head Against the Stars — Print & Oil Painting

The crop is close enough to count the veins. It runs from the top edge of the picture down to the collar with barely a finger's width of clearance at the temples, and there is nothing else in the frame at all except a wash of dark teal with white stars scattered through it. No shoulders to speak of, no setting, no gesture.

At this size the protoss skull becomes a piece of sculpture: a high domed cranium split by a shallow central ridge, a face with no mouth anywhere on it, and skin the colour of blue stone marked with fine dark veins that follow the bone underneath. Two white-blue eyes sit deep under a heavy brow and are the only part of it that could be called an expression.

The gold does the ceremony. A crest of banded plate arcs over the crown and ends in a small teal gem set exactly between the eyes, a raised collar sweeps up behind the neck, and copper bands with rivets close the pauldrons on either side. Every one of those pieces is symmetrical, and that symmetry is what makes the head read as a rank rather than as a person.

Facing the viewer straight on against a starfield, the portrait behaves like an icon, which suits a caste that fought a war on the strength of its convictions. Part of our Starcraft collection, and the study of him summoning lightning under a red sky puts the same crowned head into motion.