A charcoal illustration by Michael Whelan completed for the interior of Dragons of Darkness edited by Orson Scott Card.
Fans may recall that Michael’s illustration FILED TEETH was slated for the cover of this book, but the publisher used it for the preceeding volume Dragons of Light because the artist assigned that cover missed deadline.
For the record, “Filed Teeth” is the title of a short story by Glenn Cook collected in that second volume.
Because of confusion surrounding the cover, I thought this interior was an interesting find. I still have no idea which volume it was published in. Any readers have the books to check?
I have these books. The interior is published with Glen Cook’s story in Dragons of Darkness. I think there were a couple more interiors? I could be wrong. I’d need to unpack the books and have a look. (We moved last year and I have yet to unpack all of my books, but they’d be easy to find.)
Filed Teeth is one of my absolutely favorite images. I have the poster somewhere- I need to get it framed.
The Dragons of Darkness cover was done by Don Maitz.
Thanks for the info! FILED TEETH is one of Michael’s paintings that really shines when you see it in person. I could stare at the background for days.
Don was scheduled to do the first cover. I didn’t see artist credit for the second but I figured they swapped cover assignments and it was probably his work.
If you dig up the books, I’d love to see the other interiors. The one we featured here was large, about the size of a painting, but it was the only one in the envelope. Silly me, I forgot to measure it.