Post ONE AND ONLY favorite d&d artwork!

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This isn't a great copy of the image but I always loved this one. It isn't even how I liked doing vampires in the setting or in general but the look of the wing-like cape always stuck with me:

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Yeah, I also think that was supposed to be Strad, which didn't look like how I'd picture him at all. But the image itself was awesome as a pic. One of the better covers from all the Van Richten's guides.
 
I think this image speaks for itself.


Edit: for actual content, my two favorite D&D covers of all time:

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That's not a bad homage, but that ain't Russ.
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Here is a game. Post your one and only favorite D&D cover artwork. No runner ups or notable mentions. For all the marblessings, gun to your head, which is your favorite?

For the sake of this thread, qualifying cover artwork is any from official d&d products (hardback, modules, box sets).

I'll go with the ad&d dungeoneer survival guide. To me this just captured the feel of the game for me at that time. The hero just looks like he's having a fucken shitty day! Lol This seemed to be a recurring theme back then. Definitely contrasts with today's cover art where heros are clearly dishing out anass kicking to whatever crossed their path.

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You posted mine in the first post, so I'm covered. :smile: LOVE that image.
 
Ok since we are streching the rules of this thread I'd like to point out that none of you have posted the best Dark Sun cover yet. The colors and composition of this image is just incredible.

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And since we are going beyond covers, my 15 year old self would like to point out that this is the single greates piece of art:


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I think I disagree on this point. I thought 3e Art was really good at conveying life. I loved how an art piece from one page could carry over to another and retain it's relevance. For me, the art in 3e was amazing... at least in the core books... and it was one of the things that brought me on board and to switch editions to it.
I was an enormous fan of Todd Lockwood's 3e art. The later stuff when it was mostly Reynolds, not so much (not at all, actually). Too many spikes.

As for my favourite cover:
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and seeing as people are being naughty, another of my favourite pieces of D&D art:
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and finally, probably my favourite piece of D&D art ever, from the original Fiend Folio:
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EDIT: And ninjaed on that last, which is what I get for not reading the whole thread first.
 
Though I had played D&D a year earlier but didn't know what it was (long story), this dragon magazine arrived in my school library on my 12th birthday:
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Dragon June 1989. I had seen He-Man, Voltron, & Robotech TV but this spoke to me on a different level. It was like I was looking at some sort of baroque art in the museums that my mother dragged me to since I was a wee wipper snapper. The anger, the rage, the absolute animalistic voracity that encapsulated my feelings of middle school. It wasn't something I had seen since I was a very young child watching an animated Smaug turn an entire town to cinders on a lake. It didn't call me to adventure, it roared me to it. Face death. Face fire. And if you survive, then you will drink the boiling blood of your fallen.
From this picture, I took my first step into a larger, unimmaginable world.

To this day when I look at the cartoony or cute art that is out I weep for those that pine over it. I see much of those pictures as background art or something to emoji on. This is like Gentileschi's Judith Beheading Holofernes, it blazes with an unfathomable godlike power.

Some had bar mitzvahs, some went on their first hunt. I had Dragon, June 1989.
 
I find some of Erol Otus's stuff charming, and some of it crude, but none of it offends my aesthetic sensibilities

Unless he did tha Monster Manual cover - that thing is godawful
 
I'm not sure who here was or wasn't around to appreciate it when the ADnD monster manual first dropped, in 77, but it was cool as shit and changed the hobby forever. Before that, rpg materials were grubby pamphlets with art consisting of line drawing that looked like something out of Napoleon Dynamite's notebook (except for a few Liz Danforth line drawings from the first couple of editions of T&T; those were fantastic and remain classics). And then suddenly there was a big, beautifully bound hardback with a full color wrap-around cut-away landscape, created collaboratively by Napoleon Dynamite and some actual artist capable of depicting figures of living things (yes, I know it's all the same person, but the end result is a peculiar mix of hits and misses). And when you open it you see the interior art was totally off the charts better than anything you'd seen before. And of course it contained hundreds of monsters that remain staples of the creative content of DnD and most other fantasy games nearly 50 years later. So, don't diss the MM - it's probably the most impactful single book in rpg history, and a big part of that was its shelf appeal.
 
I'm not sure who here was or wasn't around to appreciate it when the ADnD monster manual first dropped, in 77, but it was cool as shit and changed the hobby forever. Before that, rpg materials were grubby pamphlets with art consisting of line drawing that looked like something out of Napoleon Dynamite's notebook (except for a few Liz Danforth line drawings from the first couple of editions of T&T; those were fantastic and remain classics). And then suddenly there was a big, beautifully bound hardback with a full color wrap-around cut-away landscape, created collaboratively by Napoleon Dynamite and some actual artist capable of depicting figures of living things (yes, I know it's all the same person, but the end result is a peculiar mix of hits and misses). And when you open it you see the interior art was totally off the charts better than anything you'd seen before. And of course it contained hundreds of monsters that remain staples of the creative content of DnD and most other fantasy games nearly 50 years later. So, don't diss the MM - it's probably the most impactful single book in rpg history, and a big part of that was its shelf appeal.

I love the MM but the original cover art is shit. For 1e only the PHB's original cover is any good.
 
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