Erol Otus was a contributed many illustrations to early Dungeons & Dragons books. If you played D&D during the late 70's to mid 80's, galleries of Otus's work [1] [2] will bring back a lot of memories. Subsequent to his career in fantasy art, Otus went to work in the video game industry, although he has returned to D&D to do a few adventure module covers for Goodman Games in the last couple of years.
As an adult, I've grown to appreciate Otus's work even more than I did as a kid. I find his use of color particularly aesthetically pleasing; it evokes sharp nostalgia for old school gaming. (Peter Mullen's art gives me a similar feeling, and I suspect he is heavily influenced by Erol Otus.)
I haven't found much regarding Erol Otus's working methods, although this thread contains some speculation:
She thought it was probably acrylic paint, possibly with some gouache (for the uniform, flat color in some backgrounds), & perhaps some chalk pencil for highlights. She pointed out that the detail was much to fine to have been done with any kind of pastel. She also pointed out that he appears to frequently use the dry brush technique, causing that grainy look. She said it looked like he painted the background, and then painted his figures over it, although I wonder how he could have done so in some of the pieces, and still get the colors to come out so clear. She also pointed out something about his shading style, how he used a comic-book style. He would paint the object in the middle tone, then add the darker shade, then the highlight, for a 3 tone/comic book look.
In an interesting interview podcast (linked from the thread above) Otis says he uses Liquitex acrylics.
Otus says his goals include:
He names Frank Frizetta, Bernie Wrightson, Barker (empire of the petal throne) as influences.
He says he spends a lot of time before starting a final piece thinking about the content, and then drawing little thumbnails to experiment with composition.
As I mentioned above, Peter Mullen evokes a lot of the same feelings as Erol Otus. Peter Mullen, posting in this thread, says:
I have to say the one thing that helped me improve my work over the years the most is drawing as much as you can in your sketch book. i try to draw something every day. even if its just a sketch of something weird. it will get me thinking and that will usually carry me to something productive... As far as mediums, i've been doing everything non-toxic. with two little boys in the house i'd just as soon be safe than sorry. most of my website stuff is colored pencil and pen and ink, with deviations from that being oil pastels, scratchboard, and even one in crayola crayons. i have a couple of very small acrylics slowly emerging but those take more time and i'm still working out how to get them to scan right. (confounding glossiness!)
He also says that his color stuff is mostly Prisma-color colored pencils on toned board.
© Paul Gorman