Imperial Fists Marine Firing Through Battle Smoke — Print & Oil Painting

The muzzle flash has been painted as an object. It sits on the right of the canvas as a dense white and cream mass with volume and edges, closer to a cloud carved out of plaster than to light, and it is the brightest thing in an image otherwise made of dark olive and brown.

Out of that murk the marine advances at a walk, bolter braced across the body in both hands, the upper body turned slightly into the shot. The plate is a filthy mustard yellow scraped back to bare metal at the knees, the helmet is deep rust red with a wide visor, the right shoulder carries a black and white quartered shield, and a gold eagle spreads across the cloth at the hip.

Skulls are mounted above the backpack and one more swings at the shoulder. Behind him a second marine has been reduced to a helmet and a shoulder in the smoke, and a pale disc, sun or detonation, glows behind them both and puts a hard outline along his left arm.

What holds the piece together is the narrow range of values. Everything sits within a step or two of everything else except the flash and the eagle, so the eye is pushed onto those two points and the rest is left to be felt rather than read. It sits in our Warhammer 40.000 collection, a step away from the Terminator leading marines by night.