Link Among Giant Wandering Chests in the Woods — Print & Oil Painting

The joke is scale. A treasure chest normally sits at ankle height and waits to be opened; this one stands three times the height of the hero, propped on jointed legs, with a keyhole shaped like a heart cut into its front panel. Two more of the same size flank it, rounded and striped in gold, green and blue, each balanced on its own set of stubby feet.

Link is down in the lower centre of the picture and he is deliberately small: green cap, green tunic, a pale shield on his left arm, and a sword mid-swing trailing a white arc. What he is swinging at is a small green blob with one white eye, hovering just clear of the blade.

The whole scene is worked in loose scrubbed strokes, closest to soft pastel, with the grass laid down as thousands of individual bright flicks in three or four separate greens. Nothing carries an outline, and the colour is pushed well past what grass actually does, which is exactly right for a world seen from directly above.

The edges do the world-building: a flowerbed behind a white picket fence at the right, a stone path curving toward a dark cave mouth in the corner, a red heart and a scatter of white sparkles floating where the grass has just been cut. Part of our Zelda collection. The rain-soaked cottage shares this overhead viewpoint, and Link playing music for a dancing Deku sprout keeps the same taste for the comic side of the series.