To create this illustration, I first read the whole story of The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe various times. After, I researched various ways the story had been reproduced since its publication.

In the end, I really wanted to do my own interpretation of the Red Death and I thought the best way was to illustrate their first presence at the party where all the attendees stand in shock at their appearance.

Most of the interpretations I saw of this scene and a few ones after are depicted in black and white, red or both at the same time. But that wasn’t really the vision I had. For the Red Death, I thought it was more shocking if they wore a pure white funeral shroud covered in splatters of blood instead of doing the whole shroud in a red colour since in the story it had been described how the guests wouldn’t have paid much attention to the figure if not for the blood that reminded them of what they had left behind outside the safe walls they were in. I was also intrigued by the set-up of the coloured rooms in the castle. How the rooms were in completely one colour as much as it could be. So I drew the Red Death in a completely blue room which I thought was the room they had appeared in, along with two other people looking at them with shock and fear.