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Wednesday, April 4, 2018

David Sutherland Day 2018



Sutherland's art from the title page of the Basic rulebook

2018 update:

It's once again David Sutherland Day so I've bumped this post (previously bumped last year). David would have been 69 today. Feel free to add a new comment below about his work.

Of note, there is now a Sutherland appreciation group on Facebook called:

The Scaly Sacrarium of Sutherland

And did you know that David Sutherland made his own customized lizard warriors that resemble his drawing from the Foreword of Holmes Basic? The one at the top of this blog? See this 2013 post on the Zenopus Archives for more on this:

DCSIII Customized Saurians

Original post from 2013

Today marks the birthday of my favorite TSR artist, the late David C. Sutherland III (aka DCSIII), who passed away too young (age 56) in 2005. I've designated April 4th as "David Sutherland Day". Dave's work defines the look of D&D in 1977, when his art graced the cover of the Holmes Basic Set and first AD&D hardback, The Monster Manual. His work also defined the look of Holmes Basic, being used for the both the cover, the title page (posted above) and foreword (the lizard rider that graces the title of my blog). He was also responsible for most of the artwork for the first Basic module, B1 In Search of the Unknown.

Tome of Treasures has a page with an extensive listing of his TSR credits.

In 2012 his Basic Set artwork was featured in a line of retro t-shirts from WOTC. And in 2013 his original painting was recovered from a crate at the WOTC offices.

Please post a comment on what your favorite work(s) of his.

Here are a few somewhat obscure pieces from Swords & Spells (1976) that are very much in the same style as the Holmes title page piece:



This illustration is spread across two pages in Swords & Spells. Source.