Ciri Fights in the Rain, Blood-Splattered — Print & Oil Painting

Rain is the real subject, laid down as thousands of pale diagonal strokes across the whole canvas. It flattens the town behind her into grey suggestion, puts a wet gloss on every surface it touches, and holds the entire image inside one narrow band of blue-grey.

She is caught at the top of the backswing. The blade is up and out of frame behind her right shoulder, the gloved fist closed on the grip at the level of her ear, the near shoulder dropped and the whole torso rotated toward us. The next half second is not shown and does not need to be.

The face is lit hard from the front. White hair soaked flat and stuck to the temples, brows down, lips parted, eyes wide and fixed just past the viewer's shoulder, and a long dark mark crossing the left cheek. It is an unglamorous, working expression.

The blood is the only warm colour in the picture and it has been used sparingly: a spray of dark red across one forearm, a few flecks on the shoulder and the jaw, more soaked into the pale sleeveless shirt. Against all that cold blue it reads instantly, which is exactly why the rest of the palette was held down. From our The Witcher collection, near Ciri drawing her sword beneath a red sunset for the same figure in the opposite weather.