Really Old Old-School Artist Week Day 3:Beatrice Elvery

Welcome to Day 3 of my "Really Old Old-School Artist" week. today I'm featuring Beatrice Elvery. She's an oddity among these types of illustrators, and not because she's a woman. Heretofore, all of the artists featured in this series have been well-known illustrators with a wide body of work. Elvery, on the other hand, is known mostly as a designer of stained glass. And I think if you look at the illustrations below, that will be obvious from the almost stained-glass-like quality in the heavy line work and strong positive and negative spaces. The images below all come from Russell Violet's 1914 book Heroes of the Dawn, a collection of stories of Celtic legend and myth.

Something about the overall quality of Elvery's work makes me think of Dave Billman's work from Lords of Creation. And as I've mentioned before, Billman is one of my favorite artists from the early generations of RPGs.

These Are a Few of My Favorite... Artists! (OSR, of course)

In no particular order...

Russ Nicholson
Loved Russ's stuff in the Fiend Folio, but really started digging his work when I read the book Dicing With Dragons and the Fighting Fantasy game books.

Erol Otus
If there's one artist who typifies old-school art to me, it's E.O. To this day, the AD&D Monster Cards are one of my favorite items in my RPG collection. And just in time for Christmas, the old-school game box adorned with Erol Otus art.

Dave Trampier
It wasn't Wormy that did it for me. (I actually felt like the Wormy strip, while interesting, was space in Dragon that could be used for other stuff more applicable to my gaming; no offense.) It was images like the mouth in the dungeon wall, or the cover of the PHB. Now, he's a 12th level Cabbie. (Does anyone know the prime requisites for that class?)

Jeff Dee
The reason I started playing V&V was because of all those great little ads in Dragon feature J.D.'s art and characters stats. It's an atrocity that TSR threw most of Dee's early D&D work in the trash. But if you're interested, Jeff has already more than doubled his kickstarter goal of $2,500 to recreate the Egyptian Art from Deities & Demigods. And he's got 9 days left to go!

Alan Hunter
Alan's work is an acquired taste. That's probably why he is one of the lesser known names, but I guarantee you remember his work. He's the guy behind the Crabmen, Dire Corby and Hook Horror illustrations from the Fiend Folio. (Please don't hold the actual concepts and content of the FF against Alan. He didn't create the monsters. He just drew them.)

Dave Billman
Billman's another one you might not know as well. He was the guy behind most of the Lords of Creation art from Avalon Hill. Like James over at Grognardia, I regret never playing the game. Billman still does illustration, but in a more commercial/popular children's vein, but also has a full time in-house graphic design gig.

NOTE: I had a really hard time deciding which piece of art to showcase at the top of this page. Out of respect for all of the folks mentioned in this post, this is my first blog post (since I started the page) with no graphic at all.