Larry Elmore

Early life and education

Elmore was born August 5, 1948, in Louisville, Kentucky, and grew up in Grayson County in midwestern Kentucky. Elmore described his school days by saying, "The rural school I attended didn't have any art program, so I spent my time drawing - and daydreaming. I was a pretty bad student ... I was always getting into trouble for drawing in class. I wish I had a quarter for every drawing of mine a teacher destroyed." He majored in art at Western Kentucky University.

Career

A month after graduating from college, Elmore was drafted into the U.S. Army and stationed in Germany. After leaving the service, Elmore worked as an illustrator for the United States government in the Fort Knox Training Aids Department. Three years later, Elmore turned to freelance work, his art being published in National Lampoon and Heavy Metal magazines.

One of Elmore's friends, a fellow government illustrator, introduced him to the Dungeons & Dragons game while Elmore was freelancing. Elmore joined the staff of TSR, Inc., the producers of Dungeons & Dragons, as its first professional illustrator, in November 1981, and created art work for adventure modules, game books, and novels, as well as paintings for posters and calendars. Elmore created the SnarfQuest comic which appeared in Dragon. During the "Project Overlord" development phase of the Dragonlance setting, Elmore provided the concept artwork which was used to promote Dragonlance to the upper levels of management at TSR. Elmore was in charge of creating a look for the Dragonlance saga, and did many of the early sketches for the series, his first cover appearing on Dragons of Autumn Twilight. British game designer Graeme Davis commented that Elmore "... should get some kind of award for drawing so many dragons and making them all different".

Elmore left TSR in 1987. He has illustrated cards for the Magic: The Gathering collectible card game, and provided cover art for the MMORPG EverQuest. In 1996, Elmore wrote the novel Runes of Autumn with his cousin Robert. Elmore did most of the black-and-white artwork for Marc Miller's role-playing game, Traveller in 1996, published by Imperium Games.

In the late 1990s, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman used Elmore's fantasy world, Loerem, in their Sovereign Stone trilogy. In the early 2000s, Elmore drew Snarfquest comics for the short-lived magazine Games Unplugged, published by Ken Whitman's Dynasties Productions; Whitman later acted as product manager for Elmore Production, Elmore's personal art company. Elmore provided the artwork for the fantasy world in the Sovereign Stone Game System (1999). In 2004, Sovereign Press returned the rights for Sovereign Stone to Elmore, who then relicensed the game to the small press company, White Silver Publishing.

Elmore scaled back his activities in 2006, switching to contract work only, stating, "A friend of mine, Keith Parkinson, who also worked at TSR, died of leukemia three years ago. We shared a studio, and we were always talking about how when we hit 50 we'd be doing our own thing. ... He didn't make it, and I was 57 and still pulling all-nighters. I was tired of it. I was tired of paying dues." His work appears in the book Masters of Dragonlance Art. Elmore released a book of artwork called 20 Years of Elmore in 2005. He has frequently been described as a legend in the fantasy and gaming communities.

In 2013, Elmore raised funding through Kickstarter for a 336-page hardback book of his artwork over his 40-year career.

Personal life

In 1971, before leaving for his Army service in Germany, Elmore married his wife, Betty. He has two children, and currently lives with his wife in Leitchfield, Kentucky. He attends fantasy and science fiction conventions held in the United States and Europe. He has said that inspiring others with his art has often been more rewarding than the money he earns in his profession.