Triss Merigold's Portrait in Fiery Red Hair — Print & Oil Painting

Hair is the composition. It enters at both top corners, fills the full width of the canvas and falls past the bottom edge, and because the light is behind her the outermost strands go transparent orange while the mass underneath holds a deep red-brown. The face sits in the middle of it like something found in a bonfire.

The colour engine is simple and ruthless: gold background, scarlet hair, warm skin, and then one cool object. That object is the jacket, teal and sage green, and it is the only place the eye can rest, which is exactly why it has been put at the collarbone where the artist wants you looking.

The face repays the attention. Green-hazel eyes under straight dark brows that read almost black against the red, a heavy scatter of freckles across the nose and both cheeks, and a mouth built from three or four wet highlights and very little drawing. The modelling is soft everywhere except the eyes, which are hard-edged.

The jacket is patchwork. Cream leather panels joined to teal, olive and ochre ones, every seam marked with a visible run of blanket stitch, the collar turned back and slightly frayed. A small rectangular plaque of turquoise and green enamel hangs from a black cord: a working sorceress's jewellery rather than a court one.

Triss of Maribor was counted among the dead at Sodden Hill and turned up alive afterwards, which is how she ended up known as the Fourteenth of the Hill, and fire is where her talent actually lies. From our The Witcher collection, and the quiet render of her glancing back in shadow is the same woman with every one of these colours turned down.