Denis Loubet popped by the Sword & Shield Forums here and posted the image you see to the right in a topic there. This was an especially cool thing for him to share with us all:

Here is the composition that the Ultima II cover might have possessed had I done it at Richard’s request back in the day. Lord British was consulted on the elements and layout. I did this pen and ink illustration on Bristol Board for a $25 patron of my Patreon campaign. Once a month, one of the $25 patrons gets to choose the theme for a physical piece of art. This fellow chose the Ultima II cover as his theme.

And here is the link to Loubet’s Patreon campaign, by the way; he forgot to include it in the forum topic.

As noted above, this is a really cool thing for him to have shared, for which we here at the Ultima Codex are thankful (and a hearty thank you also goes to whomever requested that he draw this piece!). The Ultima 2 cover was…always a bit weird, and remains something of a tonal departure from the cover art of the rest of the series. Even Ultima 1, for all of its spaceflight and I-Can’t-Believe-They’re-Not-TIE-Fighters, still had a knight battling a dragon on the cover.