My introduction to the world of Pern came with The White Dragon. When I was asked to take on the assignment, I was unfamiliar with the books, so some catch-up was involved. As legions of McCaffrey fans will attest, that was no hardship!
After thoroughly reading The White Dragon, my primary concern was to come up with an exciting design that worked for the whole book, not just the front cover. The easiest way to do this, I felt, was to wrap some drawing paper around an actual book and draw the design directly onto the mock cover. This is just what I did, using pen and ink to sketch in the shapes. Later I added some loose color notes as accents to give the people at Del Rey Books an idea of where I intended to go with it. After the publisher okayed the idea, I was off and running on the actual painting.
What you see here is a scan of that original piece of drawing paper I folded around the book.
Pleased with the success of The White Dragon, Del Rey subsequently commissioned me to do cover paintings for more Pern novels: Dragonflight, Dragonquest, and other books through the years as Ms. McCaffrey wrote them and as I was available. Each of these assignments had its peculiarities and problems.
For example, a month and a half before beginning work on a painting for Moreta, Dragonlady of Pern (1983), I had broken my painting hand in my karate class. When I went to the emergency room I kept hold of a pencil so they could build the cast so that my hand and arm were in a position that would allow me to continue working as soon as possible. Two other commissions and these concept sketches, all painted in acrylics, were done while I was burdened with that cast; it was something of a trial of patience getting through the work. Fortunately, when it was time to begin the painting for Moreta, I had healed enough to permit removal of the cast. The joy I felt in my newfound freedom of movement is what inspired the sweep of intense color in the sky seen in the final cover painting.
Dragonsdawn was special for its emphasis on the fire-lizards of Pern, and I welcomed the chance to paint them in a cover illustration. The actual cover painting went well enough until the last few days, when I found I was having great difficulty visualizing the look of the water at the foot of the painting. Before I could finish it, I had to leave on a prearranged family vacation to the United Kingdom. While touring Wales, we visited Three Cliffs Bay, and I took the opportunity afforded by the spectacular location to walk a bit into the surf and look back toward the beach. I could see then where I had gone wrong in my painting at home. I looked long at the scene and tried my best to memorize it; when I got home, I was able to complete it in short order and send it to the publisher.
My cover painting for Renegades of Pern was slated to be the last one I could reliably deliver before the anticipated birth of my son, Adrian. It was going badly when, a week before his due date, I admitted defeat and started over on a new painting. Day after day, I labored to get the work done before the baby arrived and my time would be lost. But he was considerate enough to wait a few extra days, allowing me time to finish; I delivered it a mere day before Adrian himself was. A close one!
Due to a scheduling conflict, I had to begin work on the cover to All the Weyrs of Pern before Anne could finish writing the first draft of the book. Judy-Lynn del Rey had told me that I didn’t need to read the book to do this cover anyway, since Anne had a specific scene in mind for me to paint. Anne phoned me to describe the scene in detail while I took notes. As we were talking, I ended up telling her about a dream I’d had the night before of a scene with several dragons atop eroded peaks in a huge crater valley filled with dense fog. Her response was enthusiastic: She said, “Let’s do that one!” We agreed in the end that it would be best if I simply did comps of each of our ideas, and then she and Judy-Lynn could take their pick. As it happened, they chose my dream idea!
I would have been happy to paint any of the concepts floating around for this book, but it was an added treat to not only see the idea I dreamed about come to fruition, but also to have Anne write it into the book.
The first two sketches here I made from the description Anne gave me over the phone that day. When Smart Pop approached me about doing a painting, I thought of those sketches. It felt fitting that we use an idea of Anne’s for a tribute to her and Pern . . . and those sketches became the basis for this book’s cover.
With The Girl Who Heard Dragons I was most concerned with featuring the heroine of the story front and center. Though I usually try to avoid having characters face away from the viewer, the selected scene did just that. To compensate, I strove to make her pose as expressive as possible. Though I asked our secretary, Heather, to pose for my preliminary sketches, the figure in the comp that was chosen for the book cover was made up. I brushed in a full-size study of the figure on acetate and used that as my “model” while I did the full-size painting.
Since 1976, MICHAEL WHELAN has been one of the world’s premier fantasy and science fiction artists, the first living artist to be inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. He currently devotes most of his time to his gallery paintings, but during his career he has created more than 350 book and album covers for authors and artists like Isaac Asimov, Anne McCaffrey, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen King, the Jacksons, Sepultura, and Meat Loaf. His clients have included every major U.S. book publisher, in addition to such diverse companies as National Geographic, CBS Records, and the Franklin Mint. Recent book covers seen on the top of the bestseller lists include Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time novel A Memory of Light and Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings.