Zeratul Crouches on a Fiery Ridge — Print & Oil Painting

The finish here is a rendered one. Every surface carries a physically plausible highlight, the depth of field falls away behind the figure exactly as a lens would drop it, and airborne embers are scattered at three separate scales in front of and behind him. This was built in three dimensions and lit, not brushed.

The pose is a coil. He crouches on a spur of rock with the weight low and forward, one leg folded beneath him, the right arm thrown out with the fingers spread and curved, the left dropped and back so the blade projecting from that gauntlet points away behind him. Nothing has happened yet.

The blade is the only saturated thing in the picture. It is a straight taper of green light growing out of the vambrace, bright enough at the root to bleach out entirely, and it throws a faint green cast along the forearm and onto the rock beneath. Small green stones set into the shoulder plates repeat the note at a whisper.

The armour is bronze and olive over a body that is genuinely alien: long limbs, a narrow ribbed torso, a heavy brow above deep sockets, and a mass of thick cords hanging from the back of the skull to the waist. A tattered cloak in the same dark tones drags off to the left.

Behind and below him the ground burns. A black storm sky takes the whole top of the frame, orange fire licks up the rock at the bottom right, and the embers rising between them are the only movement in the canvas. Part of our Starcraft collection, and the banner-shaped canvas where he meets a wall of spirits catches the same figure at the moment the waiting ends.