And around these parts, that means it’s time to let a few monsters out.
Gargoyles. Ghouls. Vampires. Zombies. Demons. Sorcerers. Things with claws. Things with fangs. Things that probably shouldn’t have names at all.
Fortunately, fantasy and horror artist Les Edwards has spent decades painting precisely the sort of creatures we’d rather encounter on a book cover than at the foot of the bed.
So dim the lights, lock the doors, and keep something pointy (and perhaps wooden) within reach.
I’ve descended into the darker corners of Edwards’ extraordinary body of work and returned with 50 monsters, monstrosities, and assorted things that go bump in the night.
Better still, I’ve included Les’ own recollections and commentary wherever possible, giving us a glimpse behind the paintings and into the stories of how they came to be.
Please visitLes Edwards’ official website to explore more of his extraordinary fantasy, horror, and science-fiction artwork, learn more about his career, and view original paintings currently available for purchase.
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Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here
The Zengakuran, Deeper In
“A private commission. This was painted for one of my fencing buddies who turned out to be an enthusiastic gamer. The various characters represent the roles taken by the gamers. I never used to do private commissions, but I enjoyed this so much, I hope to expand this side of things. See sketch in Prelim Gallery.” - Les Edwards
Knight of the Demon Queen
“Paperback cover for a book by Barbara Hambly, published by Voyager. Sequel to Dragonsbane. When the illustrator of the first book was unavailable I jumped at the chance to do this. The challenge in painting a creature that is totally imaginary is to keep a sense of animation and I like the way this dragon looks as if he's going somewhere. I had a lot of fun with the background too. This was used on a German book as well.” - Les Edwards
Eldritch Tales; Another Imp
“One of the interior artworks for a collection of HP Lovecraft's rarely seen short stories entitled Eldritch Tales: A Miscellany of the Macabre. Edited by Stephen Jones and published by Gollancz.” -Les Edwards
When Evil Wakes
“Sphere book cover for an anthology edited by August Derleth. Contains stories by Robert Bloch, H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. Also used on the cover of Ikarie magazine and on a French book cover.” -Les Edwards
“Commissioned by Puffin Books for the cover of one of the Fighting Fantasy game books by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson. This is one of my favourite paintings of this series. It has been used on the French, Portuguese and Hungarian editions of the book and on various foreign magazine and book covers.” - Les Edwards
Eldritch Tales; A Bat-Winged Imp of Tartarus
“One of the interior artworks for a collection of HP Lovecraft's rarely seen short stories entitled Eldritch Tales: A Miscellany of the Macabre. Edited by Stephen Jones and published by Gollancz.” -Les Edwards
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror #16
“Cover for Constable & Robinson’s collection of horror and dark fantasy fiction, edited by Stephen Jones, including stories by Kim Newman, Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, Paul McAuley, Glen Hirshberg, Ramsey Campbell and Tanith Lee.
The editor wanted to use the bat image from an old painting (see Grail Quest #1, in the Vintage Gallery) so I gave it a new background via some digital jiggery-pokery and repainted parts of the bat in Painter and voila!” - Les Edwards
Black Colossus
“One of several interior artworks commissioned by Orion for a collection of Robert E. Howard stories entitled The Chronicles of Conan.
I have a feeling this will become a painting one day.” -Les Edwards
Dagon’s Bell
“Cover painting for the novel by Brian Lumley, published by New English Library. Brian Lumley could certainly do Lovecraftian fiction when he felt like it. I think this might be my earliest attempt a" Deep One".” - Les Edwards
Creature of Havoc
“A paperback cover for one of the re-issued Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks by Steve Jackson. Published by Wizard Books. The Return of Fighting Fantasy. After fifteen years or so the hugely successful series of game books is being re-published. Although surprised that I was still above ground after such a long time the new publishers asked me to do a couple of covers as I"d done quite a few of the originals. I could hardly refuse and it was fun to return to the subject matter with new enthusiasm. Also used on the Danish and Spanish editions of the book and on the Odyssey2010 and World Horror Convention2010 joint poster. See the sketch in the Prelim Gallery.” - Les Edwards
Curious Warnings; Moonlight
“One of the interior artworks for the book Curious Warnings; The Great Ghost Stories of M.R. James, edited by Stephen Jones and published by Jo Fletcher Books.” -Les Edwards
Return to Firetop Mountain
“Cover for one of the Fighting Fantasy series of books by Ian Livingstone, published by Penguin. Also used on three French editions and a German edition.” - Les Edwards
More Weird Tales
“A Sphere cover for a collection of stories edited by Peter Haining. Includes stories by Fritz Leiber, Ray Bradbury and H.P.Lovecraft. The second of a pair. Unfortunately the first cover artwork seems to have gone walkabout. Also used on a French book cover.” -Les Edwards
Curious Warnings; The Watcher
“One of the interior artworks for the book Curious Warnings; The Great Ghost Stories of M.R. James, edited by Stephen Jones and published by Jo Fletcher Books.” -Les Edwards
Descending
“Personal piece. This painting started with the staircase. A year or two earlier I’d had considerable trouble drawing a spiral staircase. You can imagine the perspective on such a thing can get pretty complex and I was never happy that I’d nailed it completely. While I was searching for reference I came across a picture of a sweeping staircase like this and thought it would make a great compositional device. When I decided to put Mr. And Mrs. Vampire in it I wanted them to look really dead so I kept all the colours subdued except for the red dress for contrast. Mr. V bears a passing resemblance to Christopher Lee, but who better?” - Les Edwards
The Necronomicon: The Outsider
“One of several full-page interior artworks for the new Gollancz edition of the H.P. Lovecraft collection Necronomicon: The Best Weird Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft, edited by Stephen Jones.
Back in my cosmically distant and dream-haunted youth, this was the first Lovecraft story I ever read and it stayed with me down the decaying years.” -Les Edwards
Savage Heroes
“A Wyndham / Star book cover for a collection of stories edited by Eric Pendragon. Includes stories by Karl Edward Wagner, Ramsey Campbell and Robert E. Howard.” -Les Edwards
The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women
“Book cover for an anthology edited by Stephen Jones, including stories by Tanith Lee, Nancy Kilpatrick and Ann Rice, with an introduction by Ingrid Pitt. A chance to paint Ingrid Pitt is not to be sniffed at. This picture went as soon as it was offered for sale. I wonder why. Also used on an Estonian book cover. See the Prelims Gallery for sketch.” - Les Edwards
Curious Warnings; Upwards
“One of the interior artworks for the book Curious Warnings; The Great Ghost Stories of M.R. James, edited by Stephen Jones and published by Jo Fletcher Books.” -Les Edwards
The Ghoul
“A Hamlyn book cover for a novel by Mark Ronson.
I felt at the time, and still do I suppose, that this was something of a break-through painting for me, because, for the first time, I abandoned the use of photographic reference and relied solely on my imagination.
Also used on the Atlas video cover of Eddie Romero’s film Twilight People and on a French paperback cover. It was also used on an early edition of White Dwarf.
See the Prelims Gallery for the original sketch.” -Les Edwards
The Guardian
“A companion piece to The Healing Elf. It was originally intended to be part of a game, but was never used.” - Les Edwards
The Witching Hole: Nilfisk
“Commissioned by Eli Wilde for a proposed book by Framk Lambert. I wonder how much time fantasy writers spend thinking up names like "Nilfisk". Skeletons are nice to draw but I always end up thinking of Jason and the Argonauts.” -Les Edwards
Berserker
“Artwork commissioned by Sphere for the cover of a novel by Frank Spiering. Also used on a French paperback cover.” -Les Edwards
Yasmeena
“One of several interior artworks commissioned by Gollancz for a collection of stories by Robert E Howard entitled Conan's Brethren. This is a companion volume to The Complete Chronicles of Conan and contains tales featuring Conan's brothers in arms. Compiled by Stephen Jones.” - Les Edwards
Chasms of Malice
“Commissioned by Puffin Books for the cover of one of the very popular Fighting Fantasy game book series by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson. Also used on the French edition of the book and on a Slovakian book cover.” -Les Edwards
Demons of the Deep
“Commissioned by Puffin Books for the cover of one of the very popular Fighting Fantasy game book series by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson. Also used on the French and US and Portuguese editions of the book.” -Les Edwards
The Witching Hole: Snargg
“Commissioned by By Eli Wilde for a proposed book by Frank Lambert. Always fun drawing monsters, especially if he's called Snargg.” -Les Edwards
Smoke and Mirrors
“The cover for Smoke and Mirrors, a collection of screenplays, teleplays, stage plays, comic scripts and treatments by 13 masters of Horror and Fantasy. Edited by Richard Chizmar the book includes scripts by Joe Hill, William Peter Blatty and Neil Gaiman. It is published by Cemetery dance. see the Prelims Gallery for the sketch. I must be a little immodest here and say that I'm immensely pleased with this picture. For some reason it just turned out exactly right. I was very reluctant to sell it.” - Les Edwards
Eldritch Tales; Rising
“One of the interior artworks for a collection of HP Lovecraft's rarely seen short stories entitled Eldritch Tales: A Miscellany of the Macabre. Edited by Stephen Jones and published by Gollancz.” - Les Edwards
The Gate Keeper
“This started out as a personal piece but became the frontispiece for Curious Warnings; The Great Ghost Stories of M.R. James, edited by Stephen Jones and Published by Jo Fletcher Books.” - Les Edwards
Clash of the Titans (1981) painting
“One of two paintings I did for this film. The clients were going to combine the two paintings in various ways to create several different posters . This was pre Photoshop so it might have been an expensive business. In the end they were never used.” - Les Edwards
Kane; Naichoryss
“One of five interior illustrations for Death Angel's Shadow by Karl Edward Wagner published in 2015 by Centipede Press.” -Les Edwards
Into the Fire
“This is my painting for the souvenir book of the World Fantasy Convention 2014. The brief was to commemorate the First World War. Rather than do something with trenches and barbed wire I wanted to depict the madness that seems to overcome entire nations. The symbolism is a bit heavy perhaps but it says what I wanted it to say.” - Les Edwards
The Fate of Arthur Jermyn
“This started out as a version of one of my illustrations for HP Lovecraft's Eldritch Tales. I didn't want to paint another jungle background at the time so it gradually evolved into this. I enjoy painting rocks as you might have noticed.” - Les Edwards
Incubus creature design
“One of the sketches I did for the movie Incubus starring John Cassavetes. I spent a week in Toronto turning out drawings like this and talking to the lady in charge of the special effects who had worked on Dr Who.” - Les Edwards
Incubus creature design
The Scarlet Gospels; Quo’Oto Rising
“One of the illustrations for Clive Barker's The Scarlet Gospels, published by Earthling. I think this is my favourite of the images I painted for this book. I was after a sense of scale and I nearly got it.” - Les Edwards
The Wood
“The cover for Guy N. Smith's novel commissioned by New English Library. It was re-issued by NEL in 1988. It was also used on a German magazine cover and used by the band English Dogs on their CD Metalmorphosis.” - Les Edwards
Concept drawing of a Satyr for the film “Dark Hollow”
“Drawings for a proposed movie by Paul Campion called Dark Hollow. The movie never saw the light of day sadly. I would have liked to see how the special effect dept. handled this.” - Les Edwards
GrailQuest gamebooks #3, 4, 5, 6
Blood and Iron; The Goblin’s Grin
“I painted this little chap to go on the endpapers of Blood and Iron, a book of my early work published by Games (Bless 'em) Workshop. It was also used on the back cover of the book.” -Les Edwards
Concept drawing of a Satyr for the film “Dark Hollow”
“One of a couple of sketches I did for a proposed film by Paul Campion, called Dark Hollow. Sadly I don't think it was ever made. The client wanted a horned satyr like creature and I would have loved to see how it turned out on film.” - Les Edwards
The Trees of Lufford
“I spotted these trees on a walk on the South Downs and thought they might be suitable for a painting one day. It turned out to be a more elaborate piece than I'd originally thought. The image of the woman is derived from Faestock on Adobe Stock.” - Les Edwards
The Monsters Escape
“This was a private commission which was great fun to do. The client’s idea was to reverse the traditional gothic romance cover where a woman is fleeing in fear from a forbidding looking building and have a horde of monsters making their escape. I found it’s next to impossible to make monsters look scared but I had a good time painting them and managed to squeeze in a Sidney Jordan reference. Can you spot it?
Also to be used on the cover of “Gaslight, Ghosts & Ghouls A Centenary Celebration of R. Chetwynd-Hayes, edited by Stephen Jones and published by PS Publishing.” - Les Edwards
Entombed
“Cover for a book by Guy N Smith. Used on a German book too.” -Les Edwards
We Have Put Her Living in the Tomb
“This started out in a completely different direction but magically evolved into a version of Madeline Usher. It might have been because of the woman's white hair. I was experimenting with colour again but strangely it wound up rather monochromatic. Just the feel I was after though.” - Les Edwards
Eldar vs. a Greater Demon
“This is a follow up piece to "Eldar Warrior" from the same Gaming Universe and for the same client. We went for a bit more action in this one. Apparently these guys have magma for blood. You wouldn't want to get in their way.” - Les Edwards
There is something wonderfully fun about fantasy when it gets a little ugly.
Not every enchanted forest needs to sparkle. Not every castle should be welcoming. And certainly not everything lurking beyond the torchlight needs to be beautiful.
Sometimes we need the gargoyles, ghouls, demons, vampires, shambling dead, and nameless things with entirely too many teeth.
For 50 years, Les Edwards has been giving those things form . . . and occasionally giving the rest of us good reason to leave the lights on.
And October seems like exactly the right time to acknowledge them.
Until next time, Monstrously-attuned Adventurers...
Keep the Adventure Going Strong!
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💬Tavern Talk
❓Which Les Edwards creature would you LEAST like to encounter after dark?
❓Do you prefer your fantasy art wondrous... or wonderfully horrifying?
❓Which classic monster: vampire, werewolf, zombie, demon, ghost, etc. never gets old for you?
THE MONSTERS ARE OUT... AND THE MIST IS SPREADING!
Well, Adventurers... apparently I’m not the only one who enjoys wandering into monster-infested territory!
My newly released dark fantasy folk album, Tales of Adventure: Monsters in the Mist, has already racked up over 2,000 plays on SoundCloud in less than a week!
That’s a whole lot of wandering souls venturing into the fog. And to everyone who’s already given it a listen and those who purchased the enhanced package on Gumroad — THANK YOU!
If today’s 50 monstrous masterpieces by Les Edwards have put you in the mood for more things that go bump in the night, I’ve got just the soundtrack for your next dark fantasy adventure.
13 tracks of banshees, kelpies, restless dead, phantom pipers, black hounds, and other creatures lurking along forgotten roads.
🎧 You can listen to the complete album on SoundCloud for a limited time, but if you’d like to own the adventure and support more original Rediscovered Realms creations, the downloadable edition on Gumroad includes all 13 tracks, a 17-page digital booklet with lyrics and stories, and high-resolution cover artwork — all for just $4.99.
The mist is calling, Adventurers. Will you answer?
🎧 Already enjoying the album on SoundCloud? Next time you’re there, please give your favorite tracks a LIKE, leave a COMMENT, or SHARE them with a fellow adventurer. And most importantly, FOLLOW Rediscovered Realms on SoundCloud! Every bit helps more listeners discover the music and keeps the adventure going strong!
BRODRYK’S SHOPPE OF MONSTROUS DISTRACTIONS
“Bah! Fifty monsters and ye still want MORE? Fine. Brodryk has shelves for adventurers with questionable taste.”
Feeling inspired by all those ghouls, gargoyles, and things-that-should-not-be? Try conjuring a few of your own with Scared! How to Draw Fantastic Horror Comic Characters — the very book used to summon the Sea Hag from the blank page last October.
Or, if drawing your own monstrosities sounds suspiciously like work, grab some colored pencils and descend into the Fantasy Activity Books collection in the Rediscovered Realms Shoppe, where you’ll find Fighting Fantasy and other dark-fantasy coloring books waiting to be brought horribly, beautifully to life.
“Draw ’em. Color ’em. Just don’t blame Brodryk if one of ’em starts moving.”
“Remember to check out the Rediscovered Realms Amazon Storefront for the most epic gift-giving ideas for those important adventurers in your life (including yourself 🗡)” - Brodryk (Shopkeep)
(As an AmazonAssociate1 I earn from qualifying purchases)
DARE TO DELVE DEEPER?
More dark & monstrous delights from Rediscovered Realms...
Spread Adventure Awesomeness! Don’t just Stare - SHARE! If you know other Adventurers who would enjoy this newsletter, please share it with them directly or on social media.
