 All paintings , photography and art direction is credited to Julian Schnabel and the Red Hot Chili Peppers . The woman featured on the cover of By the Way is Stella Schnabel , Julian Schnabel 's daughter and Frusciante 's then @-@ girlfriend . Regarding the artwork , Frusciante noted : " My girlfriend 's father offered to do the album art , so we sent him rough mixes of eight songs , and he just got the vibe of the album from that . He said that he wouldn 't be offended if we didn 't like it , but we loved what he did . He 's also given us great covers for all the singles . He 's a true artist . " 
