Dungeons and Dragons Art Review - Stephan Fabian Owns the Interiors

    Here's a post I wrote, scrapped completely, and wrote again. It's dedicated to Steven Fabian's interior artwork for Dungeons and Dragons. I absolutely love this guy's art, knew nothing about him or his technique other than he an older stalwart of sch-fi and fantasy illustration who worked mostly in black and white. As I wrote the original post, my content continued to balloon as I discovered more and more info about Fabian, then finally had a light bulb go off on how to use his website, which is a trove of art and information. I also discovered that Fabian passed away last year at age 95! 

 One of Stephen Fabian's illustrations for the AD&D Ravenloft module Feast of Goblyns, by Blake Mobley, published by TSR in 1990. It was one of the few Ravenloft products I owned, bought it for the maps and art. It turns out Fabian hated doing these horror themed drawings. 

Stephan Fabian's official website is here: https://fabianartgallery.azurewebsites.net/gallery.  It's clunky, but has hundreds of pieces of his work. Oddly, he has only a handful from his work at TSR. He states directly on his website's TSR pieces that he retained ownership of all the art he did for TSR. Every piece of art Fabian places on his website includes his comments about the assignment. It's worth a look once you get used to the controls. Hint: use the "Back to the Gallery" button near the top of each page. The scale of his images played havoc with formatting for this post. 

Cover to Fantasy Newsletter No. 24. a sci-fi fanzine. Fabian states the published added the blue tone. Published in May, 1980. 

Here is something to bend the curve of the general rule (my rule?) that creativity declines with age. Fabian did not become a become a published artist until the age of 36, and was not a full time artist until the age of 44. He started doing interior art for TSR in the mid-1980s, around the age of 56 or 57. Fabian joined the U.S. Air Force right out of high school, working radios and radar, then becoming an instructor for the Air Force on those same areas. He said his love of sci-fi writing and art stemmed from his picking up smaller circulation sci-fi magazines a the air base PX. 

Cover to Science Fiction Review No. 26, another sci-fi fanzine. Published July, 1978. This is classic Fabian style outside of his TSR work. 

From 1952 to 1974 he worked a range of industrial jobs, finishing those careers as a foreman and engineer of  aircraft instruments at Simmonds. That's a very involved job. To emphasize again, he was not a full time artist, with the bulk of his brain power going to his engineering work. He submitted his first illustration to Twilight Zine in 1966, and other magazines in the sci-fi and fantasy genres through 1971. These were mostly unpaid submissions and the publishers kept his artwork. But he was good. In 1970 and 1971 he was nominated to the Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist. After being laid off by Simmonds in 1974, Fabian went professional as an artist. He had no formal training. But he was good, with nominations to the Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist from 1975 through 1981. He won a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006 from the World Fantasy Convention. 

From the 47-page softcover booklet Guinevere & Lancelot And Others, by Arthur Machen, published in 1986. Fabian did at least four illustrations for this booklet, including this one, which I adore. The illustration at left gives a strong sense of the melee combat scenes Fabian did. The D&D Gazetteers #6 The Dwarves of Rockhome and #13 The Shadow Elves feature several large scale battles involving orcs, dwarves, men, and elves. 

Fabian gives some hints on when and how he learned to paint with the caption to his painting The Cabin. He was 35, studying about color and light, learned that the color of the light in the sky need to be reflected in colors below. In one of six illustrations he did for Robert E. Howard's Queen of the Black Coast, Fabian also explains that he had to study anatomy, writing there is no way to be creative with human form, no way to depart from models or photos without understanding anatomy. He says he had a huge reference library of photos to draw from, but they were references only. He didn't copy them. 

One of at least six illustration plates Fabian did for a run of the Robert E. Howard story Queen of the Black Coast, from the Conan story cycle published by Bortner and Kruse in 1976. Fabian was clearly influenced by Frank Frazetta's work for Conan, as can be seen here, an illustration that takes its que from Frazetta's 1971 Conan the Destroyer painting. 

Fabian's style lends itself to smoothing out the human form, rounded lines, few sharp edges. He worked primarily in black ink and black or gray pencils, did some acrylic painting, which always carried less detail, and focused more on forms and composition. In many ways I can see his art falling into the field of design. While his work spans a wide range of mediums, styles, and genres, it is always distinctively Fabian. About half of his work uses pencil on coquille board to achieve his distinctive, dotted shading patterns. One of the most complex uses of this shading pattern is in the Conan illustration, above. Another interesting and complex example is below.

Illustration of The Hag, from the story collection We are all Legends by Darrel Schweitzer, published in 1981. 

I became an instant fan of Fabian with the D&D Gazetteer series. He did a lot on interior work for the AD&D 2nd Edition Ravenloft setting books, to which he was well suited and which I had little interest. And Fabian wrote that he didn't have an interest in those either, only did it for the pay checks and begged to work on something else. My favorite TSR product of Fabian's bar none was the AD&D 2nd Edition Dragonlance boxed set Time of the Dragon, for which he did all of the interior illustrations. His love of the female form is on display here, oddly with three separate drawings of of mostly nude women being abducted, or maybe rescued? So that was intriguing.  His drawings were so evocative of place. They do so with with style, grace, elevating the mundane, making the dangerous beautiful. Those drawings inspired my twin brother and I to make our own fantastic settings for D&D games. 

   And now I'll turn to some of those childhood favorites with a few pieces from the D&D Gazetteer series, followed by a few pieces from Time of the Dragon. 

Fabian's take on the the Veiled Society in Gazetteer #1 The Grand Duchy of Karameikos.

This secret society was famous in the D&D adventure B6 The Veiled Society by David "Zeb" Cook. Fabian's illustrations for this first Gazetteer mirrors much of the art he did outside of TSR, using coquille board for shading. 

Large interior illustration form one of the very best products TSR ever made, Gazetteer #5 The Elves of Alheim. Fabian packed Elves of Alfeim book full of work, much of it top notch. This Gazetteer made elves feel dangerous and live dangerously. Fabian's style here is what he used for majority of his TSR art - less detailed lines, smooth and rounded inks and gray pencil that capture the essence and feel of a given location, culture, or personality. 

Gazetteer #13 The Republic of Darokin was a little thin on illustrations, but contains my favorite interior illustration from the whole series. Darokin is a nation of merchants, and the book brings in a merchant character class. This illustration makes that merchant character class work as a trope for an adventure game. 

From Gazetteer #14 The Atruaghin Clans. This was the last in the Gazetteer series and as a publication was one of TSR worst examples of jumping the shark. The Gazetteer crammed in five North American indigenous cultures onto a tiny plateau, something like a Lost World. Take individually each Gazetteer was a masterpiece of RPG writing, art, and cartography. Taken as a comprehensive whole setting they were ridiculous. That said, Fabian packs in many wonderfully illustration to this book, and he writes that he enjoyed the change of genre. 

                                                                                                                                                                      

                        

One of only a handful of TSR art Fabian has on his website are two illustrations from Time of the Dragon. The first is above with elves and mind flayers. This is the second., nomadic elves taking easy advantage of the local goblin tribes. 

Fabian's wonderfully atmospheric and frightening illustration from the David "Zeb" Cook's 1989 Dragonlance boxed set Time of the Dragon, detailing a new continent for that setting. Here primitive mind flayers, called the Yaggol, terrorize a group of, well, primitive jungle elves. 

One last Fabian illustration from Time of the Dragon, those bad ass nomadic elves again, this time either taking a captive or rescuing a captive. This image just brings on the setting of these aggressive elves with such gusto. I can feel the mountain air, the thunder of hooves. Minus the woman., this illustration actually reminds me of a scene from a Western movie, maybe Silverado.  Like most of the other TSR illustrations here, I had to take this image as a screen grab from Archive.org. 

Finally, a self portrait Fabian did in 1960s, his coquille board technique on full display. This is followed by an end piece he graphic he did, origin unknown, and a poem a fan wrote to him inspired by his 1974 illustration Ismet. 

"Time, that insidious thief,

robs me of my precious youth,
etching his lines on my canvas
as he quickly passes.
An unappreciated masterpiece
in a gallery of modern art."
- by Kathleen Robson

Mystery of the Cracked Mug Solved

 Memories normally hit me when I am half asleep, either in the early morning, or as I am coming out of an afternoon nap. They jolt me wide awake. The memories are always nice. "Well hello there old friend. I didn't know you were still spending time in these parts." None of these memories have been of bad times or unpleasant experiences. They are bits and pieces of years gone by come back for a visit, connecting me to my past and still building a foundation of who I am. The jolting awake is not pleasant, and once awake I feel old, which is also unpleasant. The years that slipped away out of view coming back to haunt me and remind me of how far I've travelled, how much the roads have taken a slow but steady toll. It yanks me out of bed or off of the couch. Do something. Do it now. Live in the moment. 

What woke me up from my nap earlier today I cannot remember. I did sort out the mystery of the cracked mug. There is a powered ginger drink I have in the office that makes a nice hot drink, somewhat energizing.  After emptying my mug there is a leftover residue. It's that residue that cracks like glass. So, I am not losing my grip on reality. My memory still works. The mug that was all cracked glaze on the inside one day and then perfectly restored the next day was not my memory playing tricks or glimpses into different dimensions. It was powdered ginger drink.  

My older daughter, Solveig, has a birthday soon. She's getting up there in years, leaving childhood behind. I think one of the memories that came back to me was of Solveig when we lived in Virginia. She was still a kid - round faced, big smiles, enjoyed games of tag, chase, dancing around out little house. That was me once too, long ago. It's hard to see in either of us now. 

The Fights of Grades 7 and 8 in Valdosta, Georgia

 I moved from Alpine, Texas to Valdosta, Georgia, in the summer of 1988. I was 13 years old.  We drove a big Dodge van and a U-Haul moving truck, and I think towed a car behind the moving truck. The van had two bench seats behind the cab area, with a majority of the back as rough, open space. In Alpine we had used the van for four years like a work truck. We moved construction materials from Alpine to Terlingua Ranch, where we built a small cabin in the desert below the Chisos Mountains. We used it to move construction materials for a car port, barn, and fence we put into the empty lot next to our house, and to move hay bales and feed for our horse, Painted Lynx. It was a utilitarian beater van and we piled it full of belongings, two dogs, and a cat for that long drive to Valdosta, Georgia. The horse stayed behind. We drove Interstate 10 most of the way, crossing desert, dried out hill country with scrub oak, pine barrens, cypress swamps, and more pine barrens. The geography went from flat where we hit I-10 near Fort Stockton in west Texas to flatter by the time we reached Valdosta, leaving I-10 somewhere in the Florida panhandle. I'm not sure even the Texas hill country displayed any remarkable elevation. We reached Valdosta near the end of August, pulling into a large half circle driveway flanked by slash pines and dark green azalea bushes, at the back of which was a white ranch style home which looked rather elegant and formal compared to the simple ranch house we moved away from in Texas. Our Dodge van looked out of place. I remember opening the side door of the van and some plastic bags full of clothes tumbled out onto the asphalt driveway.  I had a ceramic painting of a battle from the England's War of the Roses wrapped in clothes in one the of the plastic bags that fell out of the van. It broke into pieces. It reflected me perfectly. 

I tell my daughters about how awkward I was in my teens. To illustrate this best, I tell them how my twin brother, Leif, and I started seventh grade in Valdosta, Georgia, at Valwood School.  During lunch breaks we stood behind a large bush next to the entrance of the cafeteria and slowly plucked leaves off, tearing each one into tiny little fragments. No talking, just plucking and tearing leaves. That's what we did on our lunch breaks for the opening several months of seventh grade, probably well into 1989. We were not hiding. We were in plain view of everyone walking in and out of the cafeteria. The teachers must have been worried. I can only imagine what our classmates thought of us. 

Leif and I had a hard time fitting in with the other kids. Valwood was a private school. Valdosta, population 50,000, was a large city compared to Alpine, which had under 5,000 people. The public schools in Valdosta were huge. The idea of moving away from Alpine had traumatized my twin and I so much that my parents agreed to send us to the small private school called Valwood where they felt we would feel more comfortable. With our older brother, Tor, there were three of us, so the school gave my parents a tuition break. Tor was going into 10th grade, played football and so had a scholarship for that. My grandma paid the remainder of the tuition. There were a handful of kids at the school like us, not well off and needing scholarships to attend. Most of the kids came from wealthy families. Leif and I didn't have a stitch of name brand clothing. We had generic shoes from who knows where. We had to bring our lunches from home rather that buying food from the rather well appointed cafeteria. I suppose we could have fit in if we tried, but that had never been our modus operandi. We were born shy, as our mom loved to tell us. We were built in friends of sorts, generally happy in each others company and could go comfortably for hours without talking.  

Among the boys in our grade there were two popular activities - hanging out at lakes on boats and hunting. The class nerd, Matt, perhaps also on a scholarship, liked to play with Legos. We just couldn't bring ourselves to do any of that with them. Tor did well. He was a hunter in Texas and could fish on the lakes in Georgia.  

A painful memory from that first year in Valdosta. My mom made a girl friend who had a younger daughter, probably five years younger than us. Leif and I had been awesome baby sitters for the three kids of family friends back in Alpine, so mom said we would make great baby sitters for her new friend's daughter. We sat down and watched TV with her for three hours, never saying a single word. At one point she started singing along to a bouncy Publix grocery store commercial, "...bring it all together at Publix..." We glared at her and she stopped singing. After her mom picked her up she broke into tears. Our mom lost a new friend. Yes, we were awkward. We were shell shocked into silence. Seventh grade was the worst year of my life. Several times we broke down in tears as my parents got ready to drop us at school. We refused to go, collapsed to the ground. We were 13 years old. 

Over the course of three years in Alpine, Texas, we had battled our way into acceptance and even to the margins of the popular crowd. I didn't get into any fights in seventh grade in Valdosta. My classmates had never seen fights. The concept of a school fight at Valwood seemed inconceivable to them. The boys often played touch football during morning class breaks. Leif and I enjoyed football and joined in with sixth and seventh graders. My mom had bought me a new cotton jacket, mint colored with a brass zipper, that looked rather preppy. I wore it everyday in the mild winter of 88/89. We were trying to fit in. (My mom also bought me my first pair of name brand shoes, leather deck shoes, and a t-shirt from Banana Republic.) During these touch football games one of my classmates, Micah, liked to grab and yank my jacket instead of doing a standard, simple touch. One day he started yanking on my jacket just to pull me out of plays and laughed derisively each time.  Then I was running a ball back, weaving, dodging, and Micah caught my jacket, pulled it over my head, and dragged me off the grass and onto the sidewalk that way, jacket over head, still on my feet, but unable to see. I stood up and kicked him in the balls so hard his nuts could have ended up in Scotland on dinner plates. Micah limped, doubled over, back into the school, tears streaming down his face. No one knew what to so say or do. They'd never seen anything like it. Micah shuffled around in pain for the remainder of the day. I still wonder if I caused him permanent damage. He never bothered me again. He never told the teachers what I'd done. I don't know why. That was my "fight" from seventh grade. 

Eighth grade was marginally better. We has several news students, none who seemed to be from wealthy backgrounds and may also have been on scholarships or reduced tuition. One, Becky, is without doubt the most award person I've ever been around. She always hid her face behind a screen of long hair, spoke in painful whispers that were normally inaudible, was hunched over, and wore Punky Brewster shoes. Another, Alex, vied for the position of class nerd, wore thick glasses, had an Afro and mustache, and occasionally did spontaneous ballet maneuvers on top of the picknick tables. The previous year, our classmate Eric, aka Rudy Booty, told me that no one like me. I still hear his words; "Why are you even here? No one likes you." Eric had his own struggles with being accepted and fitting in, and apologized to me later that day for his words. In eight grade I could imagine someone saying the same thing to Becky or Alex. 

In eight grade I got into one fight. It was with our PE teacher, Coach P. 

Coach Platania arrived in eight grade as our new PE teacher. He had a daughter who attended the lower school on a full scholarship. Coach P drove a small two door Honda or Toyota hatchback. He was bigger than the car. He was massive. He had a very obvious bump on one shoulder that was a fat deposit. We called it Freddy the Fat Deposit. He was bald, but always had a stubble of spiky hair on his shiny bald head. He had a beard, which was unusual in Valdosta in the 1980s. We wore glasses. He looked and moved something like a bald gorilla in glasses. Coach P was a nice man. For someone so large and overweight he was a very dedicated PE teacher. He coached the middle school basketball team. I don't know anything about his life before coming to Valwood except that at some point in the past he had been a bar bouncer. 

One beautiful spring afternoon Coach P had us in a combined class with the 9th graders, co-ed. It was a small school so boys and girls were always together in PE. We were playing baseball. Let's say the azaleas were blooming because I remember it was a beautiful day. Baseball frustrates me. I can't hit, throw, or catch. I'm sure I'd struck out once or twice this class already. But is was a beautiful day. My next at bat I hit a double, first time ever. It was so exciting. Kevin, brother to fraternal twin Geoff and sons of the middle school English teacher and dean, was playing first base.  Kevin and Geoff were also reduced tuition guys. As I rounded first base Kevin laughed and hit me in the face with his glove. Why? No idea. We were on good terms. As I ran on towards second base a rage filled in me. Kevin was still laughing. My face hurt. I turned around and sprinted right back into him. I was broken, almost two years of frustration with my life in Georgia pouring out as fists into Kevin's body and face. 

I have a vague sensation of Coach P yelling, then grabbing me off Kevin. He was yelling and pushing me backwards. When coach P was mad his whole head turned bright red. He was mad. "What the hell are you doing! You can't do that to people!" What are you thinking!" and pushing me. I was screaming back at him then; "I'm so fucking tired of this school, of these people! They never leave me alone!" I was screaming something along those lines, tears streaming down, and then charged at Coach P, shoved him backwards. I remember his next words exactly. "If you ever touch me again you will wake up in a hospital." 

Things came back into clear focus. There Coach P and I were squared off against each other, Kevin still in a heap on the ground not far away, Leif and Geoff standing nearby, the five of us surrounded by the rest of the 8th and 9th grades, all of the popular kids laughing and pointing. I had another realization as sharp as the one I'd had after chasing David to the top of a stranger's roof in sixth grade back in Alpine, Texas, a gang of classmates surrounding the corner of the house yelling at me to kick David's ass. Then I realized I was a bully. I had fought so hard to be left alone by kids being kids that I'd become the bully. Now here I was two years later, my soul in anguish, Kevin hurt, Coach P threating to put me in a hospital and lose his job, Leif and Geoff ready to intervene one way or another, and all those rich, well put together, popular kids laughing at the spectacle. We were always the losers. Fighting achieved nothing except to make us, the leftover losers, an entertaining sport for those rich people who always stayed clean, always had an easy time way up high above the fray.  

Coach P said we were going to the Principal's office, now. It was a hard edged order.  We set off, Leif right behind us. Soon all of our classmates were following. Halfway to the classroom buildings Coach P stopped. He looked at me, Leif, then all those other students. "I have a better idea. Let's just check on Kevin." That was the end of it. I think he decided that taking me to the Principal was a bad idea. The Principal would have heard that he'd been pushing me and had threatened to put me in the hospital. But I never would have told the principal that. I felt worse for Coach P than anyone else out there. We were the losers. I wanted to tell him him everything and never did. What was everything? That we were cut from the same cloth, Kevin and Geoff too, all the same. We were all fighting the wrong people. We were all fighting each other when there was no reason for us to be fighting. Fuck those rich people. Fuck this place, this school, this city, the endless rows of slash pines, the root bear colored water that stunk like turpentine, the mosquitos, sand fleas and no see'ems, the steamy air that sucks away the will to move, the extra boat houses on private lakes, tanned girls in their bikinis, gun clubs and country clubs, luxury cars, houses with five to ten bathrooms, and perfect hair. Fuck it all.  

I never said anything to Coach P. We stayed quiet, remained on decent terms without ever mentioning what happened that day. He left Valwood two years later. Leif and I became decent friends with Kevin and Geoff, who graduated from Valwood one year before we did. Leif and I stuck it out, graduating in 1994. The school, located on Gornto Road and surrounded by woods on three sides, is gone. It move to the countryside two or three years after we graduated to become a proper prep academy. Where the old school stood there is now a cinema complex. The woods have been completely replaced by neighborhood houses. 

That spring day in 1989, playing baseball on Valwood's football field, that was the last time I ever struck someone in anger. My last "fight", in other words. I hit people playing football throughout high school, and playing stickball in college, but that was all sanctioned violence in good fun without any of the deep, horribly raw emotions. The few remaining times in high school when I was tempted by anger to fight someone I stopped myself. I had reached the conclusion through experience that fighting ends badly even when you win. 

Book Review - The Patchwork Cloak of Kamal Bey

Feeling fuzzy on memories, it's time to do a book review. The Patchwork Cloak of Kamal Bey is written by a friend of mine, journalist, writer, and poet John Zada.  We were flat mates in Cairo, Egypt for about one year in the the middle 1990s. One chapter of the book deals with a horrifying episode we passed through together in Cairo. That event is in a book. John's version is not exactly as I remember it. However, it is there, a shared memory. It happened in some form or another. 

John told me about four years ago that he was working on this book, a memoir of his life in the Middle East. At the time I was living in Virginia. Last year he told me he told me he'd done it, finished his labor. I won't call it a labor of love. I think it was a sort of catharsis. It's not that the act of writing itself was laborious or cathartic. John is a writer by profession and has two other books published prior to this one. I believe this book was a challenge for him because it was so personal, was an attempt to unveil who he is, and it was a failed attempt. The book itself is very good. It's his attempt at self discovery that seems to have failed. John is from Toronto, Canada. His parents migrated their from Cairo, Egypt. But they were refugees from southeastern Turkey, part of the Christian communities purged from that country in a genocide at the close of World War One. John felt out of place growing up in an Arab Christian household in largely Jewish suburb of Toronto. He went off to find himself after starting college, thinking that the Middle East held the key to unlocking who he truly is. So, this book is about his travels through the Middle East, from Morocco to Turkey, over several decades. 

This book is not what I expected. I was actually a scared it might be a tell all of John's life in Cairo, of which I was a not insignificant part, and which included the first women with whom I truly fell in love, one of whom was John's deep love interest for a time, regularly spending nights with him in his room, just a wall and a door between us. This was not an amorous love I felt, but Plutonic love, a new respect for the opposite sex who taught me how to be emotionally normal. Still the jealousy was there, especially on those nights and the mornings after. It felt like a Leonard Cohen song. I thought this book would be John's Alexandria Quartet with a Cairo spin. But this book is not that. 

I've read several adventure/cultural collections from journalists recounting their travels and travails in the Middle East. This book is that to some degree, but so much more, woven together as an homage to John's mentor, Kamal Bey.  That was a surprise. I expected Kamal Bey to be a fictional character. John had never mentioned Kamal to me before. Beyond homage and travelogue, the book is that deepening identity crisis, a search for lost roots, a critique on tribalism, and a brief but meaningful history of genocide on the upper Tigris River. The arc of Kamal Bey's journey is very poignant. The arc of John's search is increasingly manic, and in many ways without resolution. 

The language in The Patchwork Cloak of Kamal Bey can be challenging. It is often lyrical and sometimes ornate. Maybe it strays too far from prose in places and tries for poetry where it should not. I love John's poetry. He used to sit up late into the dark of night in Cairo, our flat over the Corniche El Nil, the Nile River just beyond that, only a candle burning reflected off crystal chandeliers, writing hunched over a notebook pouring out poems sometimes until the first calls to prayer broke the stillness. He read them to us later the following day, or saved them until Fridays, when the city's rhythm slowed to a languid crawl. So many memories coming back. 

If I did not know John and had not lived one chapter of this book with him, would I have enjoyed reading it? Would I recommend it? Yes. For those who love travel or for those who are lost, this is a wonderful book. It works on so many higher levels than typical tales of travel to distant places. Take Fred Birchmore's Around the World on a Bicycle, for example, which I wrote about in an a earlier post. John's book is not passing through on an adventure and experiencing the exotic. It's a search for a part of him that was lost. It's a return. It's a rejection. In the end  The Patchwork Cloak of Kamal Bey left me with a haunted feeling, a longing feeling, which I believe most people who read it will identify with in some way. 

Cracked Memory

Large ceramic mug featuring a hand-painted cow with butterfly wings, cost over $30 USD. Very nice, but I'm cheap. I bought the mug a month ago because we had a free visit to a tourist trap highland cow farm with the opportunity to bottle feed some calves. My nephew works there pushing cows and shoveling cow shit. Because the visit was free for me, my wife, and our two daughters, I bought the pricey mug to support the my nephew. I use it at work. I was upset this week when I saw the interior glaze of the mug had cracked into a kaleidoscopic pattern, wondered if I was going to be drinking glaze flakes with my tea and die. I saw those cracks all week long, staring at me with every sip of tea. Today, the cracks were gone. The glaze appears completely whole. What happened? 

It gave me pause because I had another thought tickling my brain this week. Am I who I think I am? I saw a picture of eight-year-old me. It's old, the colors faded, looks like it could be from a 1960s photo album of my parents' rather than a photo of me in the mid-1980s. Is that me? These memories I have, are they real? At age 51, I finally feel detached from the me of childhood. There seems to be no relation between the two. My daughters are now much closes to the age of 23 than I am, the age when I met my wife. I feel divorced even from the me of my 20s. This week doing online interviews with foreign service officers bidding on my current position, I found myself fascinated by my own image staring back at me from the computer screen. That old man doesn't look like me. But that is me. Is the kid from my memories me? The man who fell in love with my wife, is that me, or some trick? 

Artificial intelligence and the risks it may pose to humanity finally captured headlines this week. Finally. Is that what got my brain so twisted, wondering if any of this is real or just an artificial creation?

Seven or eight years old, driving across Wyoming around 1983

First Time Commemorating 9/11, because I was in Singapore in 2001

 On September 11, 2001, I was in Singapore. It was early in the night. My wife, at the time girl friend, and I had just gotten into a banger of a fight. I can't recall about what. We were out on a date in a part of Singapore known as Clark Quay. I only recall that we had been admiring the Old Hill Street Police Station, a British colonial building now painted white while the shutters and window frames were  painted in a rainbow of other colors. Not long after that the argument began and we split in different directions, screaming at each other. I don't normally drink alcohol and had a pittance of an English teacher's salary, but made my way to the Raffles Hotel Long Bar and ordered a Singapore Sling. Underwhelming. I made my way out to our HTB flat on Upper Serangoon Road, which we shared with two other flat mates. Shin was there. The TV was on. World Trade One had been hit and was smoking. We forgot our fight and watched the remainder of the events of September 11, 2001 unfold. 

I remember seeing footage of all the first responders - EMTs, police, fire fighters and their sea of vehicles with flashing lights surrounding the World Trade Center and thinking it was too much response in one spot, something terrible was going to happen. It did. I heard an NYC fire fighter address the issue this week on the 25th anniversary of the attacks. He said they could have pulled everyone out earlier, saving the lives of dozens, maybe hundreds of first responders; saved NYC Fire Department from their most tragic day in history. Then he countered by saying with no reservations that if had they pulled back and left regular people to die in the World Trade Center, that would have been the most tragic day in NYC Fire Department History, far beyond the loss of life of more than 300 first responders. They had a job to do. They understood it meant risking their own lives, loosing their own. They did it. 

I was far away from America on 9/11. I have never marked the anniversary and never paid much attention to it until this year. It's not that I didn't care. I did. I quit my job and returned to America. Rather, it's that I felt disconnected. That's why I returned. This year I did the stair climb in our Embassy with the Marine Security Guard detachment to commemorate the sacrifice of the first responders at the World Trade Center. After the climb I watched videos, hours of them for three days straight, about the attacks, the people who lost their lives and the people who survived. It was the first time I heard that counter argument to my fear 25 years ago in Singapore that the the first responders needed to pull people back, have resources to respond elsewhere. Now I can better appreciate what they went through and why they had to try, stood their ground in the face that looming, hellish catastrophe. 

Old Hill Street Police Station, Singapore

September 11 Memorial in NYC

Dungeons and Dragons Art Review - Top Tier Works from Jeff Easley and Keith Parkinson

Part two of my posts dedicated to the oil painters of TSR's the Pit - the Four Greats of Elmore, Easley, Parkinson, and Caldwell. Here I am covering Jeff Easley and Keith Parkinson. Where possible I have taken images directly from their websites. 

https://jeffeasleyart.com/

https://www.keithparkinson.com/

As a kid, Parkinson was my favorite of the group after Larry Elmore. I gravitated towards the natural world in many of Parkinson's paintings, especially his trees and decaying autumn foliage. Another bonus for Parkinson was that he made time to play Dungeons and Dragons, where as his peers did not. One of the painting's on my list for Parkinson is certainly inspired by playing the game. Keith Parkinson passed away from cancer at a early age of 47. With respect to Easley, I appreciated his work less because his human figures lack realism and their hair tends towards a big 1970s feel. Easley was by far the most prolific of the Four Greats, came to TSR's Pit first and left latest. Over time I've grown to appreciate his style far more. He departs the real word and becomes the most magical. His mix of dark against vibrant color is amazing. 

Jeff Easley's iconic 1983 second cover to the original AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. 

In my previous post I included the cover to TRR's book The Art of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Fantasy Game. That was the book that first gave me real insights into these four oil painters with author/editor Stephanie Tabat providing little vinnettes into each of the artists, while each artist individually contributed a page of writing to their likes, influences, approach to painting, and more. It was fascinating for a teenage kid and made their art feel more approachable and real. The pencil portraits Easley and Parkinson come from that book.  My twin brother and I managed to convince our parents to buy two TSR art books at the same time. Below is the cover to my favorite of the two in terms of subject matter, The Art of the Dragonlance Saga. Unfortunately it had far less to say about the painters themselves. The cover to the book is one of my very favorite Keith Parkinson paintings. 

The Art of the Dragonlance Saga, published in 1987

Jeff Easley 

Top 3 paintings covered in prior posts:

1. The Magister, cover to the 1988 AD&D Forgotten Realms sourcebook 

2. The Wilderness Survival Guide, cover to AD&D source book 

3. Wizard and Dragon - cover to the AD&D 2nd edition Dungeon master's Guide 

Top 3 and an some honorable mentions yet to be covered in this blog:

Honorable Mention: Lords of Darkness, cover to 1988 AD&D Forgotten Realms Accessory

No one does skeletons like Easley. His are rotting, covered in growths, disgusting things. Easley has many memorable drawings and paintings that include skeletons. Dymark Dread is the creepiest, but Lords of Darkness is his best. It's the bending trees, dried leaves blowing in the wind, autumn welcoming Halloween. The effect of the skeletons echoing the trees in the movement and coloration is brilliant, and the movement of both is palpable, emphasized further by the leaves blowing through the air. Just brilliant. The subdued color pallet of fall really speaks to me. I'm not a fan of horror dead things come back to haunt the living, but I love this painting. 

Honorable Mention: Astral Encounter, cover to 1987 AD&D source book Manual of the Planes

Choosing between Astral Encounter and Easley's space-themed Spell Jammer cover painting wasn't easy. I enjoy looking at the characters in Spell Jammer more, but it also takes Frank Frazetta as a very strong reference. Astral Encounter is far more inventive and features Easley's wild colors, strange shapes and patterns. In this one the blue tunnel in the upper right corner is very interesting, as are the strings of planets and the polyhedral structures in the upper left. Seeing the human materialize out if the black void of space is a nice touch. The focal point of the paintings is clearly the monstrosity at center. It's fairly disturbing, which is why I prefer Spell Jammer. The barbed wire like spirals are odd. I'm such a softy, looking for trees and leaves. Overall there is a strong sense of forward movement. Well done. Astral Encounter's techniques and colors are so different from Lords Of Darkness. At first glance one might not think they were done by the same artist. This speaks well of Easley's talent. 

Number Three: Darkwell, 1988 Forgotten Realms novel cover  

It's challenging to find a decent copy of this painting. It was done as the cover for the third book in a relatively obscure trilogy of Forgotten Realms novels set in the Moonshae Isles. I think I am only aware of it because the painting was included in the AD&D fantasy art book. It's a wonderful example of Easley moving between extremely bright, vivid colors and dark shadow. The whitish light emerging from the well with the demon is the painting's core, and serves to highlight one of the demon's eyes. This is a painting I would love to see in person to get the full effect of that sparking eye. Also at play here are Easley's weird magical effects, that blue, viscus energy flowing off the demon. Very cool. So that's all lit, up causing everything else to be seen as dark silhouettes - the sky and trees in the background, most of the middle ground figures, the figures and vines in the foreground. This painting really works with Easley's strengths, emphasizing the demonic figure in the odd light with massive scale while the human figures are much smaller and in shadow.  

Number Two: Evil Tide, 1997 AD&D adventure module cover 

This number two spot was also challenging, both to find a decent image and also to pick the rank. I was tempted to place Easley's cover painting for AD&D's Monster Manual II here. It's a true classic. But looking through his vast collection of cover paintings for TSR for this post, I came across four or five beauties I had never seen or heard of before. Evil Tide is one. The tide rushing down the rocks in the background, weird lighting, and the person peeking over the bow of the boat moved this one ahead of the rest. A Hero's Tale, Combat and Tactics, Spells and Magic, and Heroes of Defiance were other candidates, plus the epic and more well-known painting Bloodstone Wars. In the end this one is more interesting, overall very well done, and ambitious. Oceans are always ambitious. What Easley does here is simply crazy. His figure wielding the chomped oar is better than many of his others, though those arm muscles are out of control. The face peering over the bow in utter fear, right in front of the viewer is a great touch. Placing Evil Tide in the number two spot is a shocker for me, but there it is.  

Number One: Legends and Lore, 1984 AD&D source book cover 

Back to the basics here. Legends and Lore is just beautiful. Easley did 13 cover paintings for AD&D core rule books and source books. This was one. All had orange spines and the new TSR and AD&D trade dress with the fire breathing dragon as the ampersand. I believe the D&D Gazetteers were the best designed series of books from TSR cover-to-cover, but these 13 books come close. I think Easley does a poor job with the human figure in general, but here he strikes gold. He takes easy liberties with musculature as the figure is a god, Odin. Still, Odin's pose and positioning on the mythical flying horse Sleipnir are excellent. And he certainly comes off looking like a god. The arrangement of the sky leads the viewer to the face of the Sleipnir, then to the magical spear Grugnir, and then to the face of Odin and his resplendent beard.  That sky is pure beauty. Easley fits in almost all of Odin's core imagery with his wolf and raven companions, flying steed, spear, and magical ring. What is difficult to see without viewing the painting in-person is whether Easley accounted for Odin's missing eye. I would love to see this painting up close to discover what Easley did with that eye. In summary of Legends and Lore: This is one of Easley's more technically accomplished works, and it is his most tasteful, classical, and beautiful. After looking through so many of his paintings, it was easy to place this as my number one.

Keith Parkinson  

Top 3 paintings covered in prior posts:

1. Horseman Near Lake, cover to the 1987 AD&D Forgotten Realms boxed set

2. Dragons of Desolation, cover to the Dragonlance adventure module

3. Queen of the Spiders, cover to 1988 AD&D adventure module 

Honorable Mention: Creature Catalogue, 1986 D&D monster source book

This is another piece of art that is hard to find on the internet, and unfortunately the copy is very poor. I have very fond memories of this painting and the book it accompanied, The Creature Catalogue, which, for my money, was the most useful book on AD&D or D&D monsters out there save for the original Monster Manual. This is the painting that shows Parkinson played D&D. I can see this scene playing out with many a gaming group. The gear on human and the dwarf also comes from a time when RPGs focused on resources and equipment. Being well supplied and prepared was half of the adventure. People generally don't go in for that sort of thing now days, and I've only ever seen snickers and snide remarks about this painting on the internet. I really enjoy this painting because of the transition from Parkinson's earthy natural woodland to that horrific tunnel glowing red. 

Honorable mention: The Savage Coast, cover to 1985 D&D adventure module 

We played this adventure module exactly one time as kids, probably ten years old. It baffled us.  We couldn't figure out how to have our characters overcome villages of natives who could muster one hundred warriors at a time. The point was to negotiate or become allies, but we were too thick to go that way. Look at that cover. It screams "Charge!" That's what we did. But I do love this cover. The faults are the lead white horse being too small, and feet. Parkinson always struggled with feet. Leave those aside, and this is a very fun painting that spoke to the way my twin brother and I approached the D&D game, which was through the lens of medieval English history. Here English type knights of the 12th century are thrown into a wildly different environment. The sailing ship abandoned on a desert cliff is so whimsical. How did it get there? What really makes this painting jump out for me is the charging horses, stones and dust flying.  Parkinson does it especially well with the second horse. The knight there with the flail is the strongest figure in the group. The movement in the flail's chain is impressive. I also enjoy the wizard type figure in purple robes carry a staff as a nice reversal from armed warriors. 

Honorable mention: Great Red Dragon, cover to 1986 Dungeon Magazine #1 

A third honorable mention! Yes, and I explain why when I reach my number one painting for Parkinson. So, Great Red Dragon is not one of my favorites, but it is iconic. The detail in the dragon and its treasure hoard is astounding and special. Maybe Parkinson put the extra effort and pure attention to detail because he knew this was the cover for the first issue of Dungeon Magazine? Who knows. But professional artists generally don't paint this way; it's not worth the money. This work of art is just pure dedication, fascination, borderline manic. The painting generally achieves balance through the dragon. Head slightly off center for interest, then tail, wings, and arms not only balancing the dragon but filling up the space in a nice balanced way, all leading to those crazy eyes.  So, there's that. The dragon is more gold in color, not red at all, and the cave is orange. That's cool. We know it's a red dragon because it looks evil and vicious as hell, but there is essentially no red in the painting. So, there's also that. Then there is the detail. The detail. Remember the ship from Savage Coast giving a sense of scale? Here we have a ship sans sails. So, there it is, Great Red Dragon. 

Number Three: Lord Soth's Charge, 1987 AD&D Dragonlance calendar plate

Parkinson's own words: "There is something romantic, something cool, something we all love about “the bad guys”.  Lord Soth is a bad guy!  I wanted to illustrate him and his band of merry men from the first moment I read about them.  I also wanted to do it in such a way that maximized visual impact.  This is not a scene that I invite the viewer into.  In this case, I wanted the horsemen to come right out of the frame and demand attention.  I’ve always thought that undead should be somewhat jerky and awkward at first glance too, so I was careful to put them in poses that brought that type of movement to mind." I think the painting mostly achieves Parkinson's vision. I do think the charging horse in Savage Coast has a greater forward force of movement, but the overall arrangement here of the riders is wonderfully wide angle cinematic.

Number Two: The North Watch,  cover to 1988 Dragon Magazine #137
 

This painting appears so static against the previous three. That's fine with me, because I love it! I feel the icy cold north. I feel the breeze lifting the pennant and chilling the bone. The landscape is so stark and simple. The positions of the rider and reptilian creature are static and simple. That's what makes this painting genius. It achieves such a strong sense of mission and of place with very little. I can't explain it more than that, except to compare it with The Great Red Dragon. The viewer can become unintentionally lost in the details of that painting and miss the overall feel, theme, story, etc. More does not mean better. The maxim is true in all media. Compare The North Watch and Great Red Dragon and I think this is obvious. We didn't have many Dragon Magazine issues, bought this one for The North Watch cover alone. 

Number One: Arcane Summons,  1989 cover to Palladium's Adventures in the Northern Wilderness

So with this painting, Arcane Summons, I broke my rules and went outside of TSR, thus the three honorable mentions earlier. Parkinson left TSR in the late 1980s, going freelance. Of TSR's Four Greats, I think Parkinson was the only one who really improved his painting technique after going freelance. Arcane Summons is a perfect example. In my previous post on Parkinson there are other post-TSR paintings that easily compete for spots on this list: Desert Wings, Demorgan's First Spell, and The Minions of Splewgorth. Here, Arcane Summons shows not only Parkin's fine attention to detail, technical adroitness with paint, and vision for composition, it also displays his imagination. Parkinson said of this painting: 

I had the publisher ask me how elaborate my modeling set up was on this project. They thought I had set up skeletons in costume then photographed them. Actually, I made up all the figures with no        reference shot for any of it. Ordinarily, I like to shoot as much reference as possible. On this project,    though, the images came from my imagination.

I think there is something strong to be learned from painting via internal vision and imagination as opposed to models and photo references. Strongly referencing models, especially human figure models, very often seems to block imaginative creativity and artistry. These four painters - Parkinson, Elmore, Easley, Caldwell -  struck gold when they let loose and left models behind, as did Frank Frazetta. I won't say much else about Arcane Summons. The reflective water is exceptionally well done, and is as central to the painting as the red-garbed wolf creature due to the strong tree form leading there twice. It can't be ignored. I also love the barren trees. They fit so well with the summoned skeletons.  

Goodbye to TSR's Four Greats!