Holmes Basic metal sign from Ata-Boy

 

Image from the product page

The company Ata-Boy is offering a cool metal sign featuring the Holmes Basic Set cover art, by David Sutherland over on Amazon for $11.99, with their storefront stating that their products are officially licensed. Find it here:

Holmes Basic metal sign from Ata-Boy

The dimensions are 8.25 inches by 11.5 inches, and each corner has a small round hole to aid in hanging. The front faithfully reproduces the actually cover from a later printing of the Holmes Basic set, where the angled banner incldues the words "With Introductory Module", except that the TSR logo in the lower left corner has been replaced with a Wizards of the Coast logo. A bit of the art on each side is clipped off, but at the top there's a bit of extra art from the top side of the box. Compare the image above with a boxed set cover image from the Acaeum:

Holmes Basic set box cover, fourth print. Source: Acaeum

I ordered and received one myself and the quality is good for what it is; i.e., a thin metal sign with the artwork printed on it. The back side is unpainted golden metal (like a cookie tin) and there's a thin lip around the back side edge, so it's not completely flat. I haven't hung mine up yet, but here are photos of the front and back of it:

The Ata-Boy store also has some other items that may be of interest, including a similar metal sign with the AD&D Players Handbook cover artwork and refrigerator magnets with the Holmes Basic set cover and the Players Handbook cover.

Sutherland Dragon mini from Wizkids

 

As part of the 50th anniversary of the publication of D&D occurring this month*, WizKids has announced a Red Dragon mini based on David Sutherland's cover for the Holmes Basic Set, which is available for pre-order now and will be released later this year.

Pre-order it from Amazon here:

WizKids Classic Red Dragon

The full text from the product page reads:

"A fiery peril to adventurers of editions, new and old, the red dragon has remained a mainstay of fantasy villainy. Celebrate this classic D&D threat with our new D&D Icons of the Realms: 50th Anniversary - Classic Red Dragon Boxed Miniature (Set 31)! 

This set includes the red dragon as depicted on the cover of the 1977 Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set. The beast among monsters. The tyrant among kings. The dragon among dragons."

Thanks to Josh and Leroyd20 on Twitter for a heads up on this release.

*Specifically, this upcoming weekend per the Playing at the World blog.

Update:

The Amazon pre-order page indicates that this will be shipping in early August of this year.

Blue Flame, Tiny Stars by Stephen Wendell

 

Arriving in the mail the day before yesterday was my comp copy of Blue Flame, Tiny Stars, a memoir of experiencing D&D for the first time by Stephen Wendell, who blogs over at Donjon Lands. In fact, this book started life as a series of posts over on that blog.

Get your copy here in PDF or POD:

Blue Flame, Tiny Stars at DrivethruRPG

Before publication, Stephen provided me with a copy of the compiled text for review, and here is the blurb that I provided him with after reading it:

“I greatly enjoyed Blue Flame, Tiny Stars, Stephen Wendell’s charming memoir of his discovery of Dungeons & Dragons in the early 1980s. It holds a particular fascination for me, as Stephen starts with the same version of the D&D Basic Set in the same year as myself. I recommend this book not just to fans of ‘Holmes Basic’ but to anyone who enjoys playing Dungeons & Dragons. The author’s clear prose captures the excitement of those early, half-remembered adventures when everything about the game was new and awe-inspiring.”

Now that I have the final product in hand, I can see that the document that I read has been turned into a beautiful book featuring a homage cover to Sutherland's original cover art, and other illustrations within by Stephen. It is about 30 pages long and zine-sized, and I am looking forward to reading again in this format.

Gary Con 2022: Days 3 and 4

 

The view from the window of the Legends of Wargaming hall on Sunday morning. That's not Lake Geneva, but rather a small lake on the grounds of the hotel.

This post covers the gaming highlights of my third and fourth days at Gary Con XIV, Saturday the 25th and Sunday the 26th (of March 2022). If you missed them, the reports for first two days can be found here and here. [I wrote most of this post shortly after those, but didn't finish it until early December 2022]

Saturday

On Saturday morning Demos of the OSR Grimoire continued running the OD&D tournament written by Dave Emigh for Winter War in 1977. On Thursday he had run the first round of the tournament, The Tower of Ullison, which I also played in and covered in my post about the first day of the con. The second round is titled The Sword of Hope, and like the first, was later published as a module by Judges Guild, and which Demos reviewed here on Dragonsfoot; unfortunately, the third round of the tournament was never published. 

I was the only returning player from the first round, but familiarity with it wasn't necessary for this round, and the new players took to the scenario with gusto. There were six pre-gens, and five players, so I ran two characters, a magic-user and a cleric. The first part of the dungeon, which is pictured above, looks quite ordinary, but includes an interesting design feature that makes for fun tournament play: while we quickly found an exit in the south part of the dungeon, we couldn't open it until we had backtracked through the rooms to find and solve several puzzles. Beyond it lay the conclusion of the scenario. 

In the afternoon I ate lunch while watching a screening of a rough cut of The Dreams in Gary's Basement, a forthcoming documentary about Gary Gygax, hosted by the director Pat Kilbane. I backed the kickstarter for this project, and enjoyed watching this cut, which included about 40 minutes of mostly finished footage followed by some shorter excerpts. A few highlights for me were seeing video footage of Gygax talking outside an early Gen Con; a photo of David Sutherland I hadn't seen before; and animations of Sutherland's Dragon from the cover of Holmes Basic (!) and of Trampier's Demon Idol from the cover of the PHB. Afterwards, Kilbane hosted a Q&A, where he explained that progress on the film has been slow because he has been doing the editing himself to make sure it's done properly within the available budget. Later in the hall, Larry from Follow Me and Die! introduced me to Pat, and we had a pleasant chat where I learned that he is a gamer who started with Holmes Basic and still plays and designs RPGs.

In the evening I ran my second game of the convention, a session of In Search of the Brazen Head of Zenopus, which I'd run previously at the most recent in-person Gary Con in 2019, and at other cons. By my count this was the sixth time running it. Surprisingly, I had two players return from 2019; apparently, in the intervening years they'd completely forgotten they had played it in before! The game was fun, and Demos was able to join in near the end to take over Murray after another player had to leave. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures from this game; when I'm DMing I'm often too pre-occupied to remember to take any myself.

Rare image of the wizard Zenopus conversing with other wizards

Afterwards, we relaxed in one of the halls, chatting with Griff of the Secrets of Blackmoor documentary and blog, who took the above photo of me. Still later, I joined my friend Rich of the Circle of Dar Janix at the hotel bar where he was hanging out with the Troll Lords. 

Sunday

Douglas Waltman's large-scale reproduction of the Knights of Camelot board

I didn't register for any games on Sunday morning as my flight out from Milwaukee was midday, and it's a 45-minute drive to the airport. Instead, after eating breakfast I hung out in the Legends of Wargaming for a few hours, watching Demos play TSR's Knights of Camelot refereed by Douglas Waltman. For this game, Waltman constructed a jaw-dropping large-scale reproduction of the original board, over 7 feet long, including a painstaking recreation of the beautiful map work by Darlene, but in relief. Completing the upgrade was an tremendous set of painted Mirliton miniatures representing each of the knights that appear in the game. More photos that I took of the setup can be seen here on Twitter.

Line-up of Mirliton knights for Knights of Camelot.

Renaissance Books store front in the Milwaukeee airport

Finally, one of my post-Gary Con traditions is stopping in Renaissance Books, the used bookstore housed in the the Milwaukee airport, which is apparently the only used bookstore currently in an airport in the US. In the past I discovered that it has a great selection of vintage sci-fi & fantasy paperbacks, including a lot falling under the Appendix N umbrella, and this time I picked out two Robert E. Howard compilations published by Zebra in the 1970s, Worms of the Earth, which is a Bran Mak Morn compilation, and the Second Book of Robert E. Howard, a compilation of various stories. 

When I was paying for my books, the owner saw my Gary Con hat and mentioned that he had written for Dragon Magazine in the 1980s. He introduced himself as Michael Lowry, and specifically mentioned an article on gemstones; which turns out to be "The Many Facets of Gems" in issue #83. He also wrote The Tarot of Many Things for issue #77, a variant of the Deck of Many Things. I suggested that he should come to Gary Con in the future, but he indicated that his focus is on sci-fi conventions these days.

* * * * * 

That's it for my Gary Con 2022 write-up. Looking forward to 2023, and since I'm finishing up this report in December, I can report that I've already got my ticket for Gary Con 2023 and am planning on running two games, a re-run of Expedition to Skull Stack Crater (which I ran for the first time in 2022) and the new Forgotten Smugglers' Cave. 

[I wrote most of this article in April 2022, but didn't finish it until December 2022]

Sutherland Dragon Details

As promised in my earlier post about on the exhibit of the Holmes Basic cover art ⁠— aka the Sutherland Dragon ⁠— here are several close-ups of different portions.

The Fighter

The greens are more apparent, including in details such as the "emeralds" circling the pommel of the sword poking out from the treasure pile.

In the dragon's chest in the upper portion of this image you can clearly see multi-colored gems encrusted between the belly plates. A few are even gleaming, a detail which doesn't show up well because the gleams are white on a yellow background. 

Note Sutherland's signature, just visible below the shield. This portion of the image appeared on the bottom edge of the box set cover, where a bit more of his name can be seen than here.

The Magic-User

Here we see the wizard unobscured by the TSR logo and the other writing on the box cover.

Sutherland's attention to the lighting is very apparent in the yellow highlights and deep shadows applied to the wizard's blue robe.

The Dragon

Yellow bands of light radiate out from the wizard's torch, a detail that doesn't reproduce well on the boxed set cover. 

The motion lines accentuate the mood that the dragon has just been surprised. Sutherland used motion lines in other illustrations, particularly sword swings, such as on the title page of the Holmes Basic rulebook, as can be seen here.

As a reminder, the exhibit featuring this painting is at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA through Halloween, and then will be at the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, TN from May 20 to September 5, 2022, and then at the Flint Institute of Art in Flint, MI from September 23, 2002 through January 8, 2023.

The Holmes Basic Set Cover Art: Exhibited!

"The Sutherland Dragon" on display, photo by myself

About two weeks ago, while on vacation, I saw a cryptic post on FB implying that the original Holmes Basic Set cover art —  which I often refer to as "The Sutherland Dragon", after the artist — was on display in public ... somewhere. After a bit of searching, I confirmed that it was indeed being exhibited, as part of the show Enchanted: A History of Fantasy Illustration at the Norman Rockwell Museum in the town of Stockbridge in western Massachusetts. I hadn't heard of the show until that moment, but at the time I just happened to be within reasonable driving distance of the museum, and would not be as close again for some time, so a quick decision was made to take a previously unplanned side trip to the museum!

A Painting Rediscovered

Not all original D&D art still exists, but I've known for a while that Sutherland's painting does, because back in 2013 Steve Winter reported on Twitter that it had been found, like the Lost Ark of the Covenant, "in a crate in WotC's warehouse". Steve provided a photo, observing that the "detail is amazing", which showed that the art had slipped inside its framing while in storage:

(As an aside, I joined Twitter for the first time just so I could comment on Steve's tweet, which eventually led to regular usage, and I recently passed 700 followers).

At the time, Steve also wrote on his blog Howling Tower about the find, which he coincidentally posted on Holmes' date of birth.

I also have a vague recollection of hearing later that it was now hanging up at the WOTC offices. I've played in several games with Steve at NTRPG Con and Gary Con over the years since (Gamma World, for example), so I may have asked him about it at one point.

Update: I was reminded on Twitter that on page 394 of Art & Arcana (2018), there is a small inset showing a WOTC employee holding the Sutherland Dragon with the caption: "Wizards employee Curt Gould poses in front of the beast with a red dragon of his own — the original Dave Sutherland basic box painting that he discovered in a Wizards of the Coast warehouse in 2013". The painting is in the same frame as the current exhibit. This may have been the source of my vague recollection mentioned in the paragraph above.

The Exhibit Curator on Sutherland's Illustration

The Enchanted exhibit opened in mid-June, after which the museum held a virtual symposium, which included a keynote talk (archived here on Google) by the exhibition curator, Jesse Kowalski, who at one point shows Sutherland's art (at ~41:00) and says that "it is probably the painting I was most thrilled to have in the exhibit", and that "I believe it is the first time on view to the public. It's on loan from Wizards of the Coast", and while "...it's not the best painting, however, it's such an iconic work that started a whole generation of kids in the basement rolling dice".

Visiting the Museum

After driving several hours we arrived in Stockbridge, where Rockwell had lived, and then at the museum, which is in a beautiful leafy setting with picnic tables and sculptures, which currently includes a complimentary exhibit of contemporary fantasy sculpture, titled Land of Enchantment: A Fantastical Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition. In addition to the museum proper, which counts George Lucas and Steven Spielberg as donors, Rockwell's actual studio is also on the grounds, having been moved there from another location in town. 

Update: Thanks to a user on reddit, I've learned that Stockbridge is also famous as the setting of Arlo Guthrie's song Alice's Restaurant.

Seeing The Sutherland Dragon

After paying our entry fee and applying my sticker, I zipped through the rooms of the exhibit until I found what I was there for, which was hung next to another classic from the same era, David Trampier's Pseudo-dragon from the AD&D Monster Manual:

It was stunning to finally see the Sutherland Dragon in the person. The colors in the original are *much* brighter than the published image on the box cover, and many details are more apparent, such as the colorful, glinting gems stuck in the crevices between the dragon's belly scales, like Smaug in the Hobbit. I'll make a follow-up post with a few closer photos of details of the painting, so here I'll just talk about some overall impressions of the painting as it is on display in the exhibition.

The painting, which the wall text indicates is "acrylic on board", has been re-framed since 2013, and now includes triple matting (see the picture at the top of this blog). I imagine this was done by Wizards of the Coast, who the wall text indicates are still the owners. The catalog for the exhibit (see below for more on this) lists the size as 24 5/8" x 22", which I believe refers to the entire framing, or perhaps just the painted board inside. The new matting is more aggressive than in the earlier frame, limiting the visible portion of the painting to about 10" by 12", which is just a bit larger than the original box cover, which is about 9" by 11". I can guess why this was done, as it has the effect of focusing the presentation on the action of the scene: the wizard and warrior confronting the looming red dragon. And it also emphasizes that Sutherland was painting something just a bit larger in scale than what was needed for the product as published. 

Unfortunately, WOTC's new matting covers up some significant details from Sutherland's original painting. Like other TSR boxed games from this era, the cover art was printed not just on the top of the box lid, but also wraps around to the sides. In the case of the Holmes Basic Set, the left, top and right sides each show the blocks of dungeon walls, which were all part of Sutherland's painting. Since this is an exhibition focusing on illustration, I would have preferred to see the entire painting, along with discussion of how Sutherland arranged a composition that was intended for a wrap-around box top. 

The matting also shifts the "visible portion" of the painting downward from the published box cover, which covers up most of a significant detail that is visible at the top of the published box cover: the archway that connects the top of the columns and frames the dragon. As a positive, this shift keeps uncovered most of what was shown on the bottom box edge, allowing for an fuller unobstructed view of the two adventurers, which I enjoyed seeing.

 

For a visualization of what the entire painting might look like if the current matting was removed, here is a mock-up of the original art posted on the Xeveninti blog back in 2010. It was made by scanning the entirety of the original box (cover and all four sides), editing these together, and editing out the graphics:

I hope I don't sound too negative here; this was simply an observation I made while viewing the painting and thinking about it. My overall experience at the museum was terrific, I was thrilled to see the painting in person, and it is wonderful that it has been preserved ("it belongs in a museum!") and has been made available for public showing by WOTC.

Exhibition Catalog

I bought a copy of this at the gift shop, and you can purchase it online here. It's nicely done, edited by the curator of the exhibit, and lavishly filled with color images from the exhibit, plus other images not in the exhibit. There's an 11-page section called "Gaming", which includes a ~1/3-page image of the Sutherland painting — I, of course, wish they made this one full page like some of the other illustrations in the book — and a really nice large scan of Trampier's Pseudo-dragon, as well as other gaming art, including an Elmore and an Easley that were also in the show.

Thy Deadline

If you want to see the exhibit in person in Stockbridge, get there by October 31st of this year!

Update: Mike S. on FB found info here on where the show will later move to:

• May 20 to September 5, 2022: Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, TN
• September 23, 2022 to January 8, 2023: Flint Institute of Art in Flint, MI

Future Posts

I plan to make a few follow-up posts with some closer shots of the Sutherland Dragon, and also a few of the other artworks in the exhibition, including Trampier's Pseudo-Dragon. I'll update this section with the links once they are up.

See also:

Smaug versus the Sutherland Dragon

David Sutherland Day

Sutherland Dragon in Lego

Dragon+ 5 Wallpaper inspired by Sutherland Dragon

Smaug vs the Sutherland Red Dragon

Left: Smaug by Tim Kirk (1975). Right: the cover of the Holmes Basic Set (July 1977). 
Click on the image for a larger view

David Sutherland painted a cover for the Holmes Basic Set that remains one of the most iconic early D&D illustrations. It literalized the title of Dungeons & Dragons, showing a dragon in a dungeon. The viewpoint is as if we are members of the party of adventurers who have just entered the chamber and disturbed the huge red dragon resting on its seemingly endless bed of gold and treasures.

This image has influenced the cover art of many successor sets ranging from later TSR D&D Basic Sets to the Pathfinder Beginner Box. Sutherland's take on the Red Dragon appeared in other D&D products of the era, including the Monster Manual and Monster Cards.

The 1975 Tolkien Calendar

Sutherland's dragon was in turn possibly influenced by an earlier image of red dragon on a pile of gold that was published about two years before Holmes Basic. This was a stunning depiction of Smaug by Tim Kirk that appeared in the 1975 Tolkien Calendar, which included works done as part of his MFA from Cal State. In particular, note the similar (but not identical) poses of the dragons, the head "whiskers" of the dragons, and the wide ventral neck scales. There are also similarities in the treasures embedded in the pile of gold, including urns, chests and embedded swords. There's even an arching shape over the head of each Dragon (vaulted ceiling for Smaug, entrance archway for the Sutherland Dragon).

Source: The Complete Guide to Tolkien Calendars

Kirk's illustration in turn appears to be a modernization of Tolkien's own "Conversations with Smaug", which appears in the Hobbit itself. Note how Tolkien has placed skulls on the floor around the pile of gold and compare this with the skulls in Kirk's pile of gold:

Source: The One Ring

Additional Evidence: Pig-Faced Orcs

By the mid-70s, Tolkien's Middle-Earth books had grown extremely popular and the 1975 calendar was the first to feature art from an artist other than Tolkien himself. It's easy to imagine that a fantasy artist such as Sutherland would have encountered this calendar. But there is one other bit of evidence that Sutherland was familiar with the Tolkien Calendars. The 1976 Tolkien Calendar (which would have been published in mid-to-late 1975) included art by the Brothers Hildebrandt, including this image of very pig-faced orcs: 

And Sutherland was the one who slightly thereafter introduced pig-faced orcs into D&D, via his illustrations in Swords & Spells (July 1976, per the Acaeum), Holmes Basic & the AD&D Monster Manual.

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

See also:

David Sutherland Day

Dungeoneers Syndicate: Sutherland Dragon Mini

Where's my humongous pile of gold?

The latest post at the Dungeoneers Syndicate blog showcases a number of photos of the author's newly painted Sutherland Dragon, posing with the Holmes Basic rulebook and a bunch of '70s rulebooks and dice:

My David C. Sutherland III inspired Dragon miniature

I happened upon this Reaper Bones "Great Dragon" a while back...cool looking mini! Then the wheels started turning...I could paint this dragon to look like the one on the Holmes Blue Basic Box set cover! I had to hone my painting skills first...bought a bunch of smaller minis & studied the interwebs for tips & "how to" videos on Youtube.

Wayne's Books: Sutherland Dragons

Now that G+ is gone, I'm going to post more quick re-shares of links of interest here.

Wayne's Books has a nice pic (with commentary) showing the Sutherland Dragon in three different sources side-by-side, with a link back to an earlier post here:

D&D: David C. Sutherland's Red Dragon

Photo shows David C. Sutherland's Red Dragon on the Holmes Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (1978), AD&D Monster Manual (1978) entry, and AD&D Monster Card (1981). Zenopus Archives says that the Monster Card art was redone by Jim Roslof. TSR was hit-n-miss when it came to artistic consistency in monster depictions.

1977 Gen Con X Souvenir Program

Gen Con X Souvenir Program, 1977. Source: Gen Con Guru

The Holmes Basic Set debuted in the summer of 1977, with TSR selling it at Origins in July, and then at Gen Con X in August. In this year Gen Con was held at the Playboy Resort in Lake Geneva for the first and only time, a site that is now the Grand Geneva Resort where Gary Con has now been held for a number of years.

I'd seen the covers of the 1977 Souvenir Program before, for example at the Gen Con Guru, but Demos Sachlas (editor of the B1 and B4 fan sourcebooks) just sent me a few photos of the interior that he took of a display copy at Gary Con last March. Page 19 is an ad for the Basic Set, which is now the earliest ad for it that I've seen:

Basic Set advertisement from the Gen Con X Souvenir Program. Source: Demos Sachlas

This advertisement is similar to the first one that ran in Dragon magazine, the next month in issue #9. Of note, these ads use a black and white excerpt of the original artwork rather than a picture of the actual box set cover.

Differences between these two ads include:
-the earlier ad is two-tone black/red, like the rest of the program, later ad is just black
-the later ad adds the subtitle "Swords & Sorcery..."
-the later ad revises "dungeon geomorphs" to "full set of dungeon geomorphs"; "polyhedra dice" to "set of five polyhedra dice"; "revised D&D booklet" to "revised D&D rules book".
-the later ad adds "*T.M. Reg. App. For", although the earlier ad includes the asterisk to which this refers, so perhaps it was removed during the program book layout
-the later ad adds the price, $9.95 plus $1.00 postage and handling
-the later ad replaces the "Other Recent Releases from TSR" and Booth information with a mail-order form

The program also includes a hand-drawn maps of the "Lake Geneva Area", which Demos suggests are by David Sutherland:

Maps of the Lake Geneva Area by David Sutherland. Source: Demos Sachlas

Of particular note is the drawing of the lake monster confronting a galley in Geneva Lake (confusingly, the town is Lake Geneva, but the lake is properly Geneva Lake):

Compare this with his lake monster from the cover the World of Greyhawk Folio (1980):

Detail from the cover of the World of Greyhawk Folio (1980). Source: TSR Archive

See this post for another Lake Monster, attacking a Rhennee barge, by Sutherland from the interior of the Folio.

Perhaps surprisingly, the advertisement for Holmes Basic is on page 19, and not on the back cover of the program, page 32, which instead advertises another new TSR game, Warlocks & Warriors, designed by Gardner Fox:

Warlocks & Warriors ad, back cover of Gen Con X Souvenir Program (1977). Source: Gen Con Guru

The illustration here is also by David Sutherland, and also appears in the Warlocks & Warriors game instructions. The wizard wears a conical "stars & moons" hat, much like the one on the cover of Basic, and the warrior has a helm with an especially realistic-looking dragon:

Elmore's take on the Sutherland Dragon

This illustration by Larry Elmore is from a fairly obscure product, the manual for the 1982 adaptation of TSR's boardgame DUNGEON! for the Apple II+. It's on the last page, and is the only illustration in the manual other than the cover, which shows a B&W version of the box cover art by Jeff Easley. It may have appeared in another TSR product, but a Google Image search didn't turn anything up.

While much smaller --- perhaps a Sub-adult? --- Easley's dragon clearly shares many details with David Sutherland's Red Dragon on the cover of the Holmes Basic Set (July 1977), particularly the head - triangular, heavy brow, cheek "whiskers". Also note the V-shaped scales down the ventral portion of the neck, the slightly curved spikes down the back, even the shapes of the scales. 

Sutherland drew a similar B&W version of this same Red Dragon for the monster entry in the AD&D Monster Manual (Dec 1977) ---

Which was redone in color by Jim Roslof for the AD&D Monster Cards (1981) ---

A Red Dragon does appear as one of the monsters in Dungeon!, so Elmore may have been using one of these as a guide in order keep the look consistent between TSR products.

If you'd like to see the entire game manual, it can be found here at the Museum of Computer Adventure Game History.


You can also watch a 10-minute play-through of the game here --- Dungeon! for the Apple II

It had graphics like this screenshot, showing a Superhero versus a jolly Purple Worm ---

Update: As pointed out by John L in the comments, here is Bill Willingham's take on a similarly styled dragon, from the Moldvay Basic Set rulebook (1981). 

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.

Mentzer Basic Cover Art Prototype

Mentzer Basic cover art prototype.

Above is Larry Elmore's original idea for the cover art of Mentzer Basic. Frank Mentzer posted about it over on Facebook recently, with a photo of the original art taken by Jon Peterson. Here's part of what Frank wrote about it:

"Initial cover concepts were similar to the previous edition, portraying a group of adventurers with a dragon. That was almost used, but it bothered Gary [Gygax]. After the color images were ready to be finalized in oils, after a lot of plans were made, Gary changed course. He asked Larry to focus the action on just one fighter and one dragon ... and the world-famous Red Box cover emerged."

This version has more elements in common with the Holmes Basic cover art painted by David Sutherland. In addition to the huge red dragon on a pile of gold, there is a block stone archway in the background, and a wizard framing the left side of the composition, both casting a spell and providing an upraised light source (here a glowing staff, in Sutherland's a torch). 

Larry Elmore is currently offering a limited edition print of this original concept via his website. Thanks to Gus Landt for bringing this offer to my attention via a post on the Acaeum. Note that above I cropped the blank margins off the original image to focus on the painting, but that the print being offered includes the margins, which have production notes.

Update: Here's a mock-up of the Mentzer Players Manual with this artwork that Frank posted in the comments to his Facebook post:

Update #2: Over on the Acaeum, misterspock posted an auction photo of a TSR Companion Rules box mock-up. IIRC a photo of this mock-up appeared in a TSR catalog prior to the release of the set. This cover has prototype art showing the same party of adventurers - wizard in red with staff, halfling in green, fighter with the same boots and shield.