Jeff Easley

Jeff Easley (born 1954) is an oil painter who creates fantasy artwork for role-playing games, comics, and magazines, as well as non-fantasy commercial art.

Early life Easley was born in Nicholasville, Kentucky in 1954. He spent time drawing as a child, particularly creatures such as ghosts and monsters. "I watched lots of monster movies on the late show, and built every monster model kit I could get my hands on," he said.

Easley met fellow Kentucky native and artist Larry Elmore through a mutual friend. "When I heard that Larry was planning to leave Fort Knox to join TSR, I got in touch with him and discovered that there might be other job opportunities there." His first published cover for TSR was the cover to the Revenge of the Rainbow Dragons Endless Quest book.

He went on to do much of the front cover artwork for the popular series of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons hardback rulebooks of the 1980s and 1990s. Some of his artwork from the period was featured on the covers of book such as the AD&D Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master Guide, Tome of Magic, the Monstrous Manual book, and over a dozen Monstrous Compendium supplements, as well several editions of the basic D&D box. Some of his notable works include the cover art of the 1st edition incarnations of the Monster Manual, Monster Manual II, Legends & Lore, Unearthed Arcana, Oriental Adventures, and Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, as well as the 2nd edition core books (the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monstrous Manual). He also painted the first edition Battlesystem cover, the revised Gamma World cover, and numerous modules and Endless Quest book covers and a Dragonlance Calendar cover. One of his pieces of artwork, "Red Dragon", was featured on the cover of the AD&D book, Monster Manual, from 1983 to 1989. With the acquisition of TSR by Wizards of the Coast, Easley provided illustrations for forty-nine cards for the Magic: The Gathering game sets from Mercadian Masques through Eventide. While working freelance, Easley designed gold-and-ivory dragon inlays for deluxe limited-edition guitars.