After Cynthia finished grad school, the couple moved to
Massachusetts with some friends, where Easley began his career as a professional artist. "I did freelance work for
Warren Publications, including covers and comic strips for
Creepy,
Eerie, and
Vampirella, and for
Marvel Comics magazines, including covers for
Savage Sword of Conan and
Bizarre Adventures. But my real income came from my job at the
Okey-Doke Popcorn Company." 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. In 2014, Scott Taylor of
Black Gate, named Jeff Easley as #5 in a list of The Top 10 RPG Artists of the Past 40 Years, saying "His work covered every single
AD&D 1E hardcover core book as well as the ''AD&D 2E Player's Handbook
and DMG''. He has also done countless b/w illustrations and there is no artist out there who has filled more RPG pages with artwork than Jeff." ==References==