Skull Kid Stands on a Rooftop Beneath the Moon — Print & Oil Painting

Read this one from the bottom up. A dark wedge climbs out of the lower edge and narrows to a point, the ridge of a roof seen almost at eye level, and at its apex stand two curl-toed boots with one foot turned out. Above them come the layered skirt of red and magenta, a belt of three gold rings, the green limbs, and last of all the mask with its two enormous orange eyes.

The pose is oddly formal. Both arms are folded high across the chest with the fingers of one hand splayed, while the other hand hangs loose and clawed at his side. This is a body arranged to be looked at, and the tall narrow canvas keeps it that way.

The moon fills the top third and does not have to do much. A vast cratered face with hollow cheeks, it carries two eyes of its own, a smaller and hotter orange than the mask's, set one on either side of his head so that four lights stare out of the picture at once.

Everything else is weather. The sky is laid in broad indigo and slate sweeps that curve around the figure and warm to plum and rose along the bottom edge, and a single small sprite with pale wings and a magenta core hovers out at the left, shedding a few sparks. Part of our Zelda collection. For the same face with no body and no sky behind it, see the mask alone in close-up.