Dungeons & Dragons Art Is Finally Getting the Respect It Deserves

Author: Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy / Source: WIRED

Many people would describe the Dungeons & Dragons art of painters like Jeff Easley and Keith Parkinson as ‘magical.’ But Michael Witwer—who grew up during the so-called “satanic panic“—used to worry that the art was literally magic.

“I remember being afraid to look into the eyes of the wizard from Unearthed Arcana, or the dungeon master that has the big doors open on the Dungeon Master’s Guide,” Witwer says in Episode 331 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “I was afraid that because these books were somehow tied in with Satanism, I might become possessed or immersed within this unholy world.”

Witwer is the co-author of the new book Dungeons & Dragons: Art and Arcana, a visual history of the game that includes hundreds of illustrations and other ephemera. He notes that D&D art helped shaped the imagination of an entire generation, lending widespread recognition to formerly obscure monsters such as gryphons, chimeras, and succubi.

“It was really a revolutionary thing, this notion of D&D creating monsters, in many cases from scratch, or in other cases providing sort of the standard visualization of what they would look like,” Witwer says. “It’s actually one of the biggest things that D&D ever did, was provide us with a standardization of monsters as we understand them.”

Despite the massive cultural impact of the game, D&D art has only recently become highly valued. Brian Stillman, co-director of the new film Eye of the Beholder: The Art of Dungeons & Dragons, notes that many early D&D paintings were discarded as trash, or else sold off for small sums to collectors.

“These artists were selling a lot of it at conventions for 40 bucks, 50 bucks,” he says. “I mean, the most amazing pieces of art—that sell today for thousands—were just set up at conventions and you’d buy them for whatever’s in your wallet.”