Jesper Ejsing is a freelance Danish artist, famous for the illustrations he’s been painting of fantasy worlds for the past 15 years.
During his years working as an illustrator, Jesper has worked for many famous companies. Most of his fans know his work for Wizards of the Coast through his Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons artwork, but he also worked for Blizzard Entertainment, League of Legends, Paizo, Fantasy Flight Games, IO Interactive, Valve, etc… producing an incredible amount of wonderful illustrations.
And 2019 is finally the year where all of them get to be reunited in a book. 408 pages of gorgeous illustrations by Jesper Ejsing, as well as some explanations by the author in both French and English.

Today I bring you a little bit of an unconventional review. Although I’ve enjoyed many fantasy (and non-fantasy) art books, this is my very first review of one! Because this is an art book I’m going to talk a bit about the quality of the book itself. This is a tome of an art book, coming in at 408 pages it’s one of the largest and most comprehensive art books I’ve come across for a single artist’s work. The book itself is higher quality than most of the fantasy art books in my collection. The paper is thick and most of the prints are large, taking up a full page.

Now onto the artwork itself. I’ll admit I wasn’t that familiar with the artist before I read the book, but he’s a very well known artist within the fantasy community having completed many pieces for Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons and Dragons books, as well as Magic the Gathering. He’s also done work for Blizzard and Fantasy Flight Games. My husband is a HUGE Dungeons and Dragons fan and when I showed him the book he was very excited and said, and I quote, ‘There are so many iconic pieces of art I recognize!’

In the beginning of the book we learn a little bit about the artist and how he got his start with fantasy art. We also learn about his style and some of the decisions he makes while working on a piece. I always find these kinds of things interesting so I was very happy to read about them. Looking through this book, I’ve really come to enjoy Jesper Ejsing’s style. I love his use of color. As opposed to some artists who use contrasting colors a lot to make their work stand out, Ejsing uses a lot of complimentary colors and a more monochromatic palette often in his work which makes for a bold statement in its own way.

If you’re a fan of fantasy artwork, art books, Dungeons and Dragons, you’re probably going to want to see about adding this one to your collection–it’s a very impressive art book. 5/5 stars.

Many thanks to the publisher for providing me with a copy for review purposes, this did not affect the content of my review in any way.