Flying Pony Studios Collections
Collection File FP-002
Anchor: A Strange Tale of Time
Production Artwork and Design Studies
The illustrations on this page document the creation of Anchor: A Strange Tale of Time. The book is a standalone new pulp short story in the tradition of uncanny horror stories seen in Weird Tales during the 1930s. Anchor is an introduction to the world of the Time Keepers, a semi-mystical race of other-dimensional beings.
The cover art follows the older tradition of occult and mystery tales from the 1920s. The choice of older images stems from the melodramatic “staginess” of the earlier pulp cover paintings, which suits Anchor’s aesthetic.
The short story includes a rich array of interior artwork, including pieces in scratchboard, pen and ink, graphite, waxy pencil, and coquille paper. The front cover was rendered with alcohol markers and colored pencils. Although some of the modern materials used are not archival, the finished artwork was digitized, and the originals are stored away from light to preserve them for the future.
Curator’s Note
The pieces gathered here show the development of the book’s cover from the first edition to the second. Alongside finished illustrations are preliminary studies, rejected concepts, and comparative examples documenting how the visual identity of the book evolved. Like the working drawings preserved in museum collections, these pieces reveal decisions that are often invisible in the finished publication.
Book Cover
Cover Study: Anchor (2019 → 2025)
In 2025, the cover was redesigned with greater technical and aesthetic refinement. Rather than discarding the original entirely,
selected compositional elements were retained and reinterpreted within the revised version, preserving continuity between the two iterations.
The Initial Design
The initial cover design was to have been the heroine’s much-thumbed journal, an important part of the story.
The idea was later discarded as it didn’t fit the usual type of dramatic action seen on pulp magazine covers.
The First Edition Cover
Design
A historically accurate color palette is as important as the subject for a cover painting. Since the development of this cover,
I have created standardized color palettes based on pulp magazine cover paintings from the 1920s, 1930s. and 1940s.
Preliminary Painting
Preliminary paint sketch for the Anchor first edition cover. This piece was created in casein,
used in commercial illustration before acrylic paint became common.
Final Painting
Anchor’s first edition cover painted in casein.
Historical Reference for the Second Edition Cover
1925 Mystery Magazine
The inspiration for the second edition cover was the July 1925 cover of Hutchinson’s Mystery Story Magazine. This popular British pulp magazine
reprinted heavily from the U.S. pulps, especially Detective Tales, Detective Story Magazine, Weird Tales, and Ghost Stories. It seemed to me that this magazine, which was
originally referential to Weird Tales (but with better cover artwork), would be an appropriate homage for Anchor’s second cover.
Anchor’s Second Edition Cover
Key elements from the first edition cover were retained in the second, such as the clock striking 11:00 and the expression of stark terror on Lucy’s face.
Interior Artwork
Frontispiece
Scratchboard was a common illustration technique used for interior magazine art during the pulp era. In science fiction art, most notably by Virgil Finlay.
This piece shows Time Agent, Phylesse, preparing for translation through the Time Arch. Her Egyptian dress is part of a larger motif in the Time Keeper books.
Character Illustrations
These spot illustrations were created using graphite pencils and show the principal characters:
Lucy Dean, Time Agent: Mytah, and Time Agent: Phylesse.
Book Decorations
Simple chapter header decorations were often used in older types of novels to differentiate chapters or sections of a book.
Here are a few of Anchor’s decorations rendered simply in pen and ink. The Egyptian motif persists through these small decorations.
The “Also Rans”
“Lucy’s Dream”
This piece was planned as a full-page illustration showing Lucy’s dreams of her missing partner, whom she couldn’t quite remember.
Although the concept was a good one, the picture never fully gelled for me and was discarded.
Initial pencil sketch of “Lucy’s Dream”.
Final pen and ink rendering of “Lucy’s Dream”.
Conclusion
This short story was heavily illustrated, much more so than would have been typical for a pulp magazine. That initially led some readers to mistake it for a graphic novel, although Anchor was always intended to be an illustrated short story. One of the traditions of early twentieth-century publishing was the illustrated story, in which artwork accompanied the narrative while leaving the storytelling entirely to the prose. As with my other books, the goal was never simply to imitate vintage illustration, but to understand how those artists worked and to apply the same visual language in creating a new story that could comfortably stand beside the originals.
Published Edition
Anchor (Lucina Press edition)
Flying Pony Studios: New Pulp Art Honoring An Older Tradition
(Please note that all the images and text on this page are protected by copyright. All images and text are copyright, Sara Light-Waller, 2026. All Rights Reserved.)