This was another cover for the Marvel adventure paperback series. I was given a typewritten blurb instructing me to paint a picture of the ever-lovin’, blue-eyed Thing slugging it out with a robotic version of himself in Reed Richard’s lab. Sounded like fun to me.
All my other Handbook covers had been painted traditionally in acrylic. TSR felt that they were looking too dark and asked me to make this particular cover bright and colorful. I decided to pull out the airbrush and give it a whirl. The results are mixed. Compositionally, the montage fits with most of the other …
What’s going on here? A blond Kato attacking the “Blue” Hornet? And what’s up with the briefcase full of holographic contact lenses? Don’t ask me. I just did the covers! In fact, the story involved the future Kato trying to keep the Hornet from crossing the line between posing as a criminal and actually becoming …
This was the cover for Flint Dille and David Marconi’s Agent 13 graphic novel, which was illustrated by the great Dan Spiegel. I remember finishing this painting in a hotel room in San Diego. I always thought this would make a good Shadow piece… so I eventually repainted the central figure.
Hmm… This is a little like showing your baby pictures. Conan was the first painting I did at TSR… and I wasn’t quite ready for prime time, yet. I was just confident enough to know I could do something, but still very insecure, when comparing my work to the amazing stuff being painted by my …
Here we have another piece from the 1990 Forgotten Realms Calendar. There is no great story behind this, other than the fact that I was intrigued by the rare and fearsome beast of D&D mythology: the Tarrasque. Beyond that, I think I just wanted to paint a giant gorilla. Hey, nobody said this was rocket …
My one-and-only Badger painting! Mike Baron and I created our crazy, little hero back in the early ‘80s. I had long-since been slaving away at TSR, when First Comics asked me to come back to illustrate the cover and an interior story for his 50th issue. How could I decline?
I often wonder how many aspiring artists would be in heaven, getting paid to draw page after page of creature designs. As a kid, I filled reams of bond paper and teletype paper roll-ends my Dad would bring home, full of gruesome and ugly monsters! I have to smile… ‘cause I got to do this …
This was such a fun job. I wish I could showcase even more of these creature illustrations. Some were updates of existing D&D critters and others were new, or creatures that had not been illustrated before. I’ve got an entire portfolio full of these wonderful little monsters!
This character illustration was drawn for a DragonLance game module and eventually showed up as a full page illo in The Art of DragonLance book. There’s something about this guy that have prompted many comments over the years. People especially seem to like his rose encrusted chest armor. He now resides in the personal collection …