@siracusa I haven’t found confirmation that John Berkey was also a Matte Painter for the movies, but I think he was. He had a way of choosing the right colors and suggesting more detail than was in the painting with a few parallel and perpendicular marks suggesting realistic highlights. I had the movie poster for Delaurentus King Kong that he did, you could get lost in the cityscape that ‘wasn’t’ there.
Of course many space ships on paperbacks with all sorts of radio antennas poking out of them