Zelda Reaches for Leaves Among Lily Pads — Print & Oil Painting

The camera is up in the branches looking down, unusual enough to be the first thing you notice. The whole floor of the picture is water carpeted with lily pads, laid in six or seven different greens and tilted toward us, and the figure is pressed into the lower half of that field.

She is crouched on the pads with one knee down, twisting up and back to reach a broad leaf at the top left corner with her fingers closing on the stem. The face follows the arm around and ends up looking straight up at the viewer, green-eyed, mouth open, caught mid-effort rather than posed.

The costume is a blue tunic with gold trim at the collar and cuffs, white sleeves, a wide leather belt, brown leggings and boots ringed in gold. A single blue clip holds the hair back on one side. It is drawn tight and clean, with the crisp line and glossy shading of commercial anime illustration.

Behind her a white horse stands in the shallows with its head lowered toward the water, its tack picked out in violet and gold, and vertical threads of falling water break across the top of the frame. Pink petals float among the pads. From our Zelda collection, next to Zelda glowing amid blue lotus flowers for the same princess in the same element, held still.