Skull Kid Looms Over a Small Deku Figure — Print & Oil Painting

The canvas is tall and the two figures are stacked in it rather than set side by side, so scale does all the talking. The upper two thirds belong to a masked giant: a broad dark head crowned with two pale curving horns, a ring of tusks around the jaw, and a single oval lens burning amber where an eye should be. A red-black plume spreads behind the shoulder like wet feathers.

Below and to the right stands the small one, barely a fifth of that height. A pale wooden face with two round dark eyes, a green cape, a wide green skirt, and one arm lifted toward the giant in a gesture that could be greeting and could be pleading. The painting declines to decide.

Everything is handled in broad wet strokes with no drawn edges at all. Trunks are single vertical drags of grey-green, the ground is a scumble of dark green and white that only resolves into standing water once you notice the reflections in it, and a band of pale discs runs across a red mass at the base of the picture.

Colour is nearly drained out: grey-green throughout, red-violet concentrated in the giant's robes, and a scatter of small teal sparks floating in the gap between the two heads. Part of our Zelda collection, and the Deku figure floating on a flower before glowing spirits shows the little one on his own.