Alexstrasza's Clawed Hands in Dim Firelight — Print & Oil Painting

The hands are the argument. Both gauntlets are red plate that tapers past the knuckle into four blunt curved claws, one hand raised near the left shoulder with the fingers half closed, the other lower and turned inward, and they are drawn with harder edges than any other object in the picture. Everything above them is a woman; everything at the end of her arms is not.

The horns carry the same idea. They are a deep violet-blue rather than gold or bone, banded twice with metal, and they rise from the temples and curve outward well past the width of the shoulders. Against magenta-pink hair and a warm complexion they are the coldest colour on the canvas.

The light is low and comes from below and to the left. It picks out the collarbone, the inner edge of one horn, the rim of a gauntlet and the gold banding at the hip, and lets everything else fall into a brown-grey murk with a few unresolved red shapes in it. Brightness is low and the contrast is high for this group of six.

The face is turned three-quarters up and away with the chin lifted, the eyes gold and half lidded, the mouth closed. The armour is minimal and ornamental, red and gold with a violet stone at the sternum and a low gold belt, and it has clearly never been designed to stop anything.

The walking shape is a courtesy and it is never quite finished. Dragons in this world take a mortal form in order to be talked to at all, since almost nothing will hold a conversation with the original, but the disguise is always partial: the horns stay, the eyes stay, the hands keep something of the claw, and anybody who knows what to look for can find the tell in about a second. A painting that spends its whole light budget on two clawed gauntlets and a pair of horns is pointing straight at the seam. From our World of Warcraft collection, next to the same queen with a small flame lit in her palm and the same queen airborne with a spear across her body.