In working on the Codex of the Planes, I found this picture to be one of the most awe inspiring. It is a painting by the Polish artist AdZislaw Beksinski. It, along with alot of his art, captured the mood for the planes.
Here is a small excerpt:
"Gating into the Abyss is a step into madness for
the gate lies before a multitude of gates whose number the sages affix at six
hundred and sixty-six, but this is only a truth that they understand. The true
number is indefinable. Stepping through the gate one comes to the Wearisome
Path, there to walk through ether that takes one through a world of colors that
fill the nostrils with the scent of dead flowers and tastes much like terror
feels in the gut as one falls from a high cliff. But the path ends so that one
looks upon a vast field of monoliths, each a thousand feet high of jagged
stone. These are the Mansions of the Thrall and they are like fingers of bone
thrust form the earth. The sky is dark orange with streaks of white light that
burns the eye with a physical hunger for food. The light catches objects here
and there on the pillars, casting it back in images that flitter now and again
across the sky like a giant canvas. The top of each escarpment, each pillar,
range from flat to jagged. Some seem to move, to grow and shed as they do. Here
and there lights spring up in the orange dark, small, distant flickering
lights. Some clinging to pillar sides, others atop them, others still in the
canyon like gulfs below. These are Travelers, or reapers, demons or some such
creatures that haunt the fringes of the Abyss but seek the comfort of light in
the glooms of this place."
~ Codex of the Planes
