Our Lady of Darkness

by Fritz Leiber

This is a study cover - it has never been published.

This cover stands out as one of the most complex image I have done to date.  Just imagine every single one of those scraps of paper being arranged by hand!  It took hours and hours and days and days and weeks and weeks to get it right, and, while I don't doubt that in the future there will be even more complex pictures, that makes this one a little bit special to me.  

The delightfully dark and fun novel Our Lady of Darkness was so full of vivid images and ideas that I was hard pressed to actually choose which would be best to use in the image.  In the end, the of the Sutro tower (which looms throughout the book as a continuous background presence and which I painted from scratch here based on several different photos) and the spectre of 'Our Lady' herself, manifesting amid a storm of torn paper came together to suggest a rough structure.  It was completed with the idea to include all the 'real life' people who are referenced in the book - Clark Ashton Smith, Ambrose Bierce, Lovecraft, Jack and Charmian London etc - as part of the design as well.