Geralt on Roach Battles a Giant Centipede — Print & Oil Painting

This one is drawn, not painted. Hard black contour lines round every shape, flat saturated fills inside them, a bright blue sky with cotton-wool clouds, and no atmosphere anywhere: it belongs to the language of comics rather than to the moody oil of most of the collection, and it is much the better for committing to that.

The creature comes out of the ground on the right and goes back into it at the bottom of the frame, so what you see is one huge arc of body. It is plated in overlapping teal-green bands, each ridged along its edge, and the head end is a knot of red-brown mandibles and hooked legs opening toward the rider. Clods of earth and broken rock are still in the air around the hole it made. A second, smaller one is pushing up through the flowers at the left edge.

The horse carries the other half of the design. Chestnut, mid-stride, ears flat, a plated brow-piece over the bridle, mane and tail thrown up, and its neck and back describe a curve that answers the creature's curve almost exactly. The two arcs face each other across the middle of the canvas, and the man sits in the gap between them.

He is standing in the stirrups with the sword raised overhead in his right hand and the left fist cocked at his shoulder, mouth open, shouting. The meadow underneath is full of yellow and pink wildflowers painted with the same cheerful flatness as everything else, pines close the middle distance, and small winged shapes drift across the sky.

The tonal mismatch is deliberate and it works: a monster contract rendered with the colour scheme of a summer holiday. It hangs in our The Witcher collection, and the ridge-top stand against a red dragon is the other picture here that treats a giant beast as something to be met head-on in daylight.