Tyrande Whisperwind Beside Her White Tiger — Print & Oil Painting

A shaft of light falls between the trees at the right and both figures in the picture are attending to it. She has raised her left hand into it, palm forward, fingers open, with the light catching the edge of the gauntlet; below and in front of her the cat has lifted its head toward the same beam. Neither of them is looking at the viewer and neither is looking at the other.

The animal is painted with real observation. White fur laid on in short strokes with black stripes broken rather than continuous, a heavy jaw, a pale muzzle, one visible eye of clear green, and a thick striped tail curling round the fallen trunk it is sitting on. It takes up the lower right quarter of the canvas and it is the most carefully finished thing in it.

She is armoured rather than robed, which is worth noting in a group that usually puts her in white. Deep plum and maroon plate, a pauldron ending in three curved claws, a vambrace edged with dark feathers, and a bodice of shaped panels over a bare midriff. Her hair is blue-black with a teal streak, her skin is lavender, and two gold marks run under the eyes.

The wood is thick and wet. Moss on the trunk, ferns at the base, a canopy that lets almost nothing through, and pale mist drifting in ribbons across the middle distance. The greens are held dark so that the light shaft and the cat's coat carry all the brightness.

The great cats of her people are not pets and not exactly mounts either. They are raised alongside the riders who will use them, fight in the same formations, and are given names and lineages in the way warhorses are elsewhere, which is why a picture of a commander standing beside one without a saddle or a rein reads as two colleagues rather than as a woman and her animal. From our World of Warcraft collection, next to the same woman up to her waist in a still pool at night and another woman of that people beside her black panther.