Striking Scorpion Eldar Crouching by Firelight — Print & Oil Painting

Half of this canvas is burning and the other half is empty green-black, and the figure has been wedged into the seam between them. Very little is drawn tightly: the flames on the left are a few loaded strokes of yellow and white, the structure they are consuming is barely indicated, and the darkness on the right is flat enough to read as a wall.

Against that looseness the body is modelled hard. The warrior crouches on a curved metal hull, one knee down, torso twisted to the left, and the fire finds every ridge: the modelled abdomen, the collar, the raised forearm. A thin highlight runs the length of the sword arm and out along the serrated edge held high behind him, close enough to count the teeth.

The helmet stays in shadow apart from two red eye slits, and that is the strongest thing in the picture. It gives the head an animal quality the armour would otherwise soften, all smooth curves and mandibles. Dark strands fall from the back of the crest like wet hair.

The whole image runs on a single hue split into hot and cold, chartreuse where the fire lands and bottle green where it does not, with one small bar of red at the hip. It belongs to our Warhammer 40.000 collection, and stands beside the Scorpion kneeling in an alien forest, which takes the same armour into full colour and fine detail instead of firelight.