Geralt Draws His Sword Before a Spectral Beast — Print & Oil Painting

Everything in this canvas is blue except the leather. Sky, mist, ground and monster are all mixed from the same cold family, and the only warmth admitted anywhere is the tan and rust of the armour, which is why the figure holds together at all against so busy a background.

The creature at the upper right has been painted in exactly the same value range as the air behind it. Wings spread wide and ragged, a hooked beak open, a long tail curling down and away into the bottom right corner: at a distance it half dissolves into the sky, and you have to look for a second before you find where it ends. That is a much better way of painting a ghost than making it transparent.

The gesture is a reach, not a swing. His left arm is up and across his own face, hand closed on the hilt behind the shoulder, blade still sheathed and pointing back over his head. His weight is level, both feet planted. Nothing has started yet.

The armour repays a close look: overlapping brown plates riveted with brass studs, a shoulder guard laced at the seam, a wide buckled belt, a small pouch on the hip, and a star-shaped medallion sitting at the sternum on a short chain. The rendering is loose but the construction is consistent, which is not always true of fantasy armour.

It sits in our The Witcher collection. For the same silhouette against something with feathers and considerably more mass, see the griffin fight in a golden field.