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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BronzeDragon" data-source="post: 8214170" data-attributes="member: 873">It's pretty much a done deal that the list comes out as:1 - Elmore2 - Otus3 - EasleyThe question asked in the topic of the poll does bias the responses toward the earlier artists, since you probably can't call someone "Quintessential" if his influence is that of a latecomer instead of a foundational member. I don't think it's a coincidence that the first full page art piece you see in the Player's Handbook (other than the cover, obviously)  for AD&D 2E is Elmore's depiction of the party celebrating their success against a (very) young green dragon. It's iconic in ways that many other illustrations of these masters seemed to be prone to being. Full page art tended to tell a story, while smaller pieces were more focused on action or portrait.Otus is pretty much synonym with AD&D 1E art, but also featured heavily in Basic and previous sets. He's as close to being a surrealist as you can get. Easley did some of the greatest covers (Ruppel and Fields also featured prominently in product cover history) ever, and also had plenty of art sprinkled throughout the books.Tramp, Caldwell and Parkinson form the next group, and it's also easy to see why. Tramp's cover for the PHB is arguably the most iconic D&D image ever and the MM is full of his art as well. Caldwell was responsible, along with Elmore, for the bulk of the wildly popular Dragonlance art. Parkinson is just the best. Fight me. <img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="💪" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f4aa.png" title="Flexed biceps    :muscle:" data-shortname=":muscle:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" /></blockquote>

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