Gino D'Achille's cover for Night of the Coyotes by Philip Ketchum

My main point of this post is to note the cover art to this Ballantine Western: it's by internationally known illustrator Gino D'Achille.

Until recently I knew D'Achille's work as a fantasy artist, primarily because of his covers for Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series published during the 1970s, before the cover art was turned over to Michael Whelan. D'Achille's Barsoom covers were stark, with little flash of the sort I was used to seeing on Robert E. Howard's books or others by ERB, such as the Krenkel or Frazetta covers used by Ace for the Pellucidar and Venus series. D'Achille's nearly monochromatic paintings appeared blah on the bookshelves next to those over-the-top representations of heroic men and nubile princesses.

And when Michael Whelan's covers started to appear on the Barsoom books, it was like seeing 3-D HD TV after watching nothing but black-and-white on a tube cabinet set.

Looking back now, those covers have an appeal.

But this blog is about westerns.

I hadn't realized D'Achille had painted covers for westerns until I saw this one. It's rather dark (especially when compared to his Barsoom covers), but very effective. It caught my eye.

Exploring the artist's Web site, turns out he has executed quite a few western covers -- including the Piccadilly Western series Hart written by John B. Harvey.