Skull Kid Stands in a Misty Forest Cave — Print & Oil Painting

A hole has been torn in the foliage and the whole picture is built around it. Mossy rock and hanging roots close in from every side to leave one pale grey opening at the centre, roughly egg-shaped, and a second smaller one at the upper left. Everything inside those openings is fog; everything outside them is dark green.

The figure stands in the middle of the larger one and is smaller than a thumb. Ragged clothes, a straw hat, a mask with two orange lamps for eyes and a crown of pale spikes, arms held slightly out from the body. It is not doing anything. It is simply positioned exactly where the light is, which is worse.

Two fairies flank it, one gold and low to the left, one magenta and higher to the right, painted as soft blurs with a star of light at the centre. They are the only saturated colour above the ground line.

Across the lower half the artist has scattered dozens of small blue and green points among the leaves, out of focus in the near foreground and pinpoint sharp at the middle distance, which gives the undergrowth a depth the flat grey background refuses to have. Part of our Zelda collection, alongside the rooftop under the moon and the same figure looming over a small Deku scrub.