I’ve long felt that the Cleric Quintet is an underrated series, from a writer who gets a lot of undue flak simply because he’s popular. (Protip: disliking something popular does not make you cooler than the people who like it).

I have several of the books in this series from the first print run, and I’ve always loved the art for the series’ final installment, The Chaos Curse. If you play D&D, you’ve probably seen Jeff Easley’s art at some point. The guy joined TSR in the early ’80s, and continued to produce official D&D art up to at least D&D 3.5.

His official website has some very nice, easy-to-browse galleries.

I love this piece. Tabletop art tends to focus on characters and monsters. Occasionally you might get a sketch of an item, but most of the time there’s some kind of living creature at the focus of the image. And while that’s all well and good, I think illustrating environments is extremely underrated. As GMs, its our job to describe environments in a way which will paint a picture in the player’s minds. So it makes sense for us to imagine and share pictures of the types of environments we need to describe, doesn’t it? How would you describe this room in a way which is short enough to hold the players attention, but still covers all of the important details?

You can see more of this artist’s work on his tumblr. He also maintains a an OSR blog which you may have heard of.

A couple years back, my local comic book store came into possession of a large number of oldschool Dungeons and Dragons modules. I bought as many of them as I could afford, and have thoroughly enjoyed owning them, reading them, adapting them, and basking in their marvelous artwork. I’m sure a lot of that art will end up as part of this series eventually if I continue with it, but this one holds a special place in my heart. Among the modules was an early D&D supplement, the Player’s Companion: Book One by Frank Mentzer. This is the cover. The artist is Larry Elmore, whose artwork you’ve probably seen before. Dude is prolific.

Where to begin? The sweeping landscape in the background speaks to me of endless adventures and armies charging across the planes. The castle at the end of the long road gives me a feeling of power. For some reason I imagine the knight is the lord of that castle, and he’s here defending his lands with his own sweat and blood. The dragon is just perfect. It maintains what I would consider the ‘traditional’ dragon anatomy, while also appearing sleek and limber enough that it isn’t just a lumbering colossus as dragons are often portrayed.

And then there’s that sword. What the hell is up with that sword? That is some serious Cloud Strife shit right there, right in my oldschool D&D! I like to imagine that the sword was left on earth by a defeated angel, and the knight’s purity of spirit allows him to wield it even though it is far too large for him.

Darlene Pekul is responsible for a lot of artwork in AD&D. In addition to the iconic unicorn which graces the inside cover of the Dungeon Master’s Guide, Darlene’s loopy signature shows up a few dozen more times elsewhere in the book, as well as on other products from that period. And while her personal website is down as of this writing, it had a lot of cool stuff on it when it was online. Hopefully it comes back soon. [Edit: It is back online, and you should check it out!]

I particularly like this piece from the back cover of In Search of the Unknown, because I love snapshots of adventuring parties. These characters aren’t iconic. You don’t know who they are, why they’re fighting Troglodytes, or even what class they belong to. The characters have no established personalities or traits. They are expressed entirely through this piece of artwork, which gives the viewer a lot of leeway to imagine.

I also like that the majority of party members in this piece appear to be women. Rock on, Darlene!

I’ve often wanted to find something I could do on Tuesday and Thursday each week. I’ve had a lot of various ideas in the past year, but ultimately none of those ideas worked out. This, however, seems simple enough that I can keep up with it easily, and interesting enough that my readers ought to enjoy it. Every Thursday I’ll post artwork which inspires me in my writing or my tabletop gaming.

I’m not sure if this will be popular or not, so consider it a trial run for now. Let me know how you feel about it so I know whether I should keep it going, or drop it as a regular feature.

This piece is from Teddy Wright, who does a lot of fantasy artwork. In early 2010 he did a few different pieces like this one, where everything is a stark contrast of black and white. I’ve featured his work on Papers & Pencils before, but with the start of this series I wanted to do so again. I’ve come to really appreciate simple black-and-white paintings, and this one (along with the Succubus linked above) are among the most memorable pieces I’ve encountered.

If you have any ideas for artwork or artists I could post on Picture Thursday, you can let me know in the comments, or send me an email. And, incidentally, if I’ve posted your artwork and you’d like me to remove it, just let me know! I want to respect your rights to your work.
 

It’s pretty self-indulgent of me to post this, so it’s going up on a Tuesday when there wouldn’t normally be any post anyway.

Long ago, in days of yore, I played World of Warcraft. A lot. Truth be told, I love that game. I think its overall quality has gone downhill over the years, but I still love it, and have very fond memories of the time I spent playing it. And aside from being massive amounts of fun, the game fostered a number of positive changes in my life. It gave me a vessel with which I could remain close to some of my friends even after I moved far away, and it allowed me to make new friends, one of which I’m now involved with. Without the years I spent playing World of Warcraft, I never would have started writing Curse of Senility. If I hadn’t started writing Curse of Senility, I never would have been noticed by WoW Insider and hired by them to write Blood Pact. And without the confidence of knowing that people were willing to give me money for making words, I don’t know if I would have ever taken writing seriously enough to bother maintaining Papers & Pencils as long as I have.

So yeah, WoW played a big role in my life. And my character in WoW, the only one I ever took very seriously at all, is Sentai Grehsk, The Corpse Seeker. My warlock was the first character I rolled, and he’s the one I’ll always love. On the Silver Hand Role Playing server, I was the senile old warlock who rambled on about how much he loved fancy hats, and behind closed doors became a cunning, and sometimes ruthless, diplomat. It’s a little embarrassing just how much time and effort I put into the character and his backstory. And it is really cool to see him drawn so awesomely, courtesy of my very talented ladyfriend.

But if you don’t care about WoW, it’s just an awesome picture of a wizard. That’s cool, right?