Link Rests With a Wolf on a Forest Rock — Print & Oil Painting

The rock is the composition. It runs across the lower half as one dark wedge, its top worn flat into a shelf, and both figures are arranged along that shelf the way objects are arranged on a mantelpiece. Below it the grass is thick with foxglove and pale seed heads; above it the forest dissolves into light.

Read the equipment and you have the whole character. A strung bow lies across his knees; a quiver of dark feathers sits at his hip; a broad axe and a sword are crossed on his back, hafts up. Clipped to his belt is a flat rectangular slate with a circular blue emblem at its centre, the Sheikah device that doubles as map, camera and key in Breath of the Wild.

The wolf sits square behind him, forelegs straight, a blue-grey strap across its muzzle. It is not a pet in this drawing. Its head is lower than his, thrust forward, and its eyes are the coldest thing in the picture.

Surfaces are uniformly soft here, every edge blurred except the boots and the axe blade. Part of our Zelda collection. The same halt taken high on a sunlit cliff is the closest thing to a twin this one has, and the nap against a tree by the river shows what happens when the same traveller finally stops sitting up straight.