Ragged Claws Network » Paul Lehr

Look Here: Six (more) SF covers with art by Paul Lehr

RC — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 14:52:29 +0000

From my personal library of disintegrating pulp:

[CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE]

My favourite image in the above group is Lehr’s wraparound cover for John Boyd’s The Rakehells of Heaven, even though the display font used for the title and author name is overbearing and, in places, difficult to decipher! To view all of the covers with art by Paul Lehr that I’ve posted so far, click here.

Look Here: Two early, one late, by Paul Lehr

RC — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 20:28:13 +0000

None of the following three covers with art by Paul Lehr really hits the mark. The painting on the cover of Hellstrom’s Hive (1982) is especially anemic; as far as I am concerned, it has very little of interest to say about Frank Herbert’s novel, the SF genre, Lehr’s chosen subject matter, or anything else other than, perhaps, the vain hope that slick technique alone would be enough to fulfil the brief. (Yes, I understand the idea here is that the viewer is supposed put together the visual clues to realize that the red barn, farm house, windrows of hay, etc., are actually located on a planet that is not earth, and that the tiny figures on the hill are not merely your typical human farmers but something more sinister; however, when such a simple idea is so blandly and schematically worked out, how can the viewer’s reaction be anything but boredom?) The fact that Lehr’s hypothetical hope turned out to be not so vain after all — the painting, obviously, was published — seems to me to have been less likely an endorsement of the painting as an effective cover illustration and more likely a tribute to Lehr’s long track record as a distinctive, reliable, and admired SF cover artist.

Click here to view all of the covers with art by Paul Lehr that I’ve posted so far.

Look Here: Two from ’72, with art by Paul Lehr

RC — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 01:11:06 +0000

To view all of the covers with art by Paul Lehr that I’ve posted so far, click here.

Look Here: Four more SF covers with art by Paul Lehr

RC — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:51:47 +0000

A nice variety of covers by Lehr this time around. I especially dig Lehr’s 1967 cover for Margaret St. Clair’s The Dolphins of Altair, even if the exact location of the dorsal fin on the central dolphin (who, to Lehr’s credit, really looks like he is carrying a weight on his back) is slightly mysterious. I don’t know about you, but I’m happy to chalk this one up to artistic license… the fin is entirely hidden by the woman’s body and that’s all there is to it…

Click here to view all of the covers with art by Paul Lehr that I’ve posted so far.

Look Here: More Paperback Covers by Paul Lehr

RC — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 14:15:16 +0000

Somebody out there likes Paul Lehr’s work; I know this not because people post to tell me they like it but because the Ragged Claws Network blog stats show regular visits to the Paul Lehr category. So, on with the show:

Look Here: Four More SF Covers by Paul Lehr

RC — Thu, 20 May 2010 15:55:08 +0000

Notice that the publication dates of these covers by Paul Lehr, scanned just this morning directly from the library of yours truly, range from 1969 to 1980. I’m sure some people think of Lehr as a bit of a one-trick pony, but with this little group of four, one gets a nice sense of Lehr’s quiet versatility as an image maker, in a nutshell, as it were. Oddly enough, Frazetta later painted an image, entitled Torment (1986), of a guy impaled on a curvilinear structure that would not look out of place in the future city hinted at in the Gunner Cade cover — which perhaps tells you all you need to know about Frazetta’s attitude to modernity — but Lehr’s flamboyantly attired, bubble-helmeted hero is about as far from the half-naked, heavily muscled, hard-charging Frazetta archetype as one can get. Yes, the Glory Road and Power of Blackness covers are fairly typical Lehr productions; however, with the cover for The Centauri Device, Lehr charges boldly into John Berkey territory, and acquits himself very well indeed.

Look Here: Two SF Covers by Paul Lehr

RC — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:59:32 +0000

Click here to view all of the covers by Paul Lehr that I’ve posted to date.

Look Here: Five More by Paul Lehr

RC — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:41:31 +0000

Click here to view all of the Paul Lehr paperback covers I’ve posted so far.

Look Here: Four More Covers by Paul Lehr

RC — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:26:43 +0000

The 1964 edition of The Deep Range by Arthur C. Clarke with the cover by Paul Lehr is a pretty cool find, I think. It’s a pity the artwork is obscured by the title, etc., but the book is in excellent condition, so it scanned fairly nicely, and of course, it is instructive to compare it with Lehr’s later covers, which, unlike The Deep Range, typically combine highly saturated colours with a strict adherence to traditional colour schemes.

Look Here: Again, Three by Lehr

RC — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 16:28:56 +0000

That makes 16 covers by Paul Lehr displayed here, with more to come…