A while back I was reminded of one of my favorite Frank Frazetta fantasy illustrations and as I recall this may have been one of the very first I saw back in my youth before I knew anything about Frazetta or fantasy art in general. It is a striking piece full of energy and strong eye catching color. It was published in 1964 which was just at the dawn of Frazetta's transformation from one of the best draftsman and inkers to becoming the legendary master of fantasy illustration. So he hadn't quite reached the heights of his fame yet and his artwork was not always returned to him by the publisher. As far as I know the original was long lost which is why we don't see any high resolution reproductions of it anywhere. It is sad to think it may be collecting dust in some forgotten attic or worse tossed away after being photographed for the press. Illustration originals just weren't that valued back then.
After hearing a relatively positive review of the book, and wanting to get a good copy of my own I tracked down a well preserved used one rated as "very good". When it came in I wasn't disappointed, it certainly has wear on the edges but the cover is clean and in very good shape. So naturally I scanned it in at very high resolution. Then using Photoshop's content-aware fill and some elbow grease to clean up stray pixels I restored the cover to the best I could get it. The quality is only limited by the limitations of the original printing.
Now whenever someone does a search for this image I hope they get this high resolution copy that as of now is the best one you will find on the net. I know because I have searched very hard for a long time to get a good image of this and there wasn't one. Until now.
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