Ciri Draws Her Sword Beneath a Red Sunset — Print & Oil Painting

Rose, mauve and dull orange in flat horizontal bands, burning lowest right along the horizon: the sky takes two thirds of the surface and sets the temperature of everything standing in front of it. A row of black conifer tops runs along the base of it, small enough to tell you the ground falls away behind her.

Sparks drift up through the whole height of the frame, a dozen or so, at three or four sizes and degrees of focus. They are the only incident in the air, and they carry the news of a fire that is never shown.

She stands square to the viewer and almost perfectly still. The left arm is bent up and back with the hand at the nape, fingers around a grip whose ring clears the top of her head, while the blade itself never enters the picture. Nothing has been drawn yet. Nothing is being swung.

The clothes take the colours of that sky and cool them by a step: a cream blouse dropped off both shoulders over a pale yellow band, an ochre leather corset laced up the front, a wide belt of silver plates studded with green gems, a purple sash knotted at the hip, dark leggings, brown cuffs at both wrists.

The face above all that is unhurried, mouth closed, eyes level and dry, and it is the flatness of that expression against a sky that colour which the picture is really built on. From our The Witcher collection, paired with Ciri drawing her sword in green magic flames for the same reach at the moment it turns into movement.