Tim White

By Alex Ness
January 17, 2021

I was going to write a short piece to describe the power of the right cover on a book, comic book, or even record album or CD.  I had an example in the cover by Tim White illustrating the work Icerigger, which made me immediately want to buy it.  It had jumped out at me, made me imagine what the interior of the book was about.  That short journey was then tempted to change direction when I saw the original cover in full, without trade dress by Dean Ellis, and thought, wow that is a great cover too.  I preferred the Tim White version, and wasn't made to choose back when I was a 14 year old kid.  But still, now I had a thought, what other books had one cover and upon changing cover did sales change.  And that was all before I looked up on the Science Fiction Data Base other book covers by Tim White.  Which then led to my seeing if what I read was correct, on Wiki.  And it was correct.  Tim White, an artist I liked the work of very much, had died in April of 2020. According to one source, he died of Covid.  The two other sources don't say that, so I don't know what he died from.

He blew me away in terms of how he presented an image, his color choice,  his skills in creating new work that didn't consistently replay other works.  He was an original.

His work appeared on magazines and books, cards and art collections.  I'll miss his work very much.  And I've no doubts that his family will miss his person.

These are my favorite covers of HP Lovecraft works. When I learned they were also done by Tim White I smiled, he was a very talented artist, and he could do works of any genre, since the only limits one has, is the width and depth of an imagination.