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.
I really love that mushroom in the pot going on on the left of the altar there. That blotchy shadow part to the upper right is cool too; I figure its chunks taken outta the wall due to age but my mind went “Screw that! That’s a shadow, the skeleton’s immortal soul twisted into an undead being that hungers for the souls of the living!”.
Cool stuff here LS.
My favorite bit of art is in the AD&D PHB; two dead thieves slumped over a treasure chest with the a caption reading “No honor among thieves.”