About

E.M. Gist began his formal study of art with Jeff Watts in 1996, three years later he began to teach and has done so for the last eleven years. Gist has been a working professional artist since 1998, he began his career designing video games for Gratuitous Games. When the opportunity to teach at the school where he was trained presented itself, he took it. This allowed him the spare time to follow his dream of becoming a storyteller, that the rigors of a video game career did not. To date he has painted numerous illustrations for book covers and games, including work on several Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, and Eberron series of novels, as well as Magic the Gathering, The Phantom, and Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Erik's clients include TOR, Wizards of the Coast, Upperdeck Entertainment, Blizzard Ent., DC Comics, Boom! Studios, Moonstone Books, Radical Publishing, Night Shade Books, Palladium Books, Blizzard Entertainment, Viking Childrens Books, Monkey Brain Books, Moebius Models, Quarto Publishing, and Chiat-Day. His work can be seen in Spectrum: the best in contemporary fantastic art 11-17 and Aphrodesia: art of the female form 1. Gist shares his life with his lovely and talented wife, dog, two cats, three rats, and a bird. The rest of the time he paints and teaches at Watts Atelier of the Arts in Encinitas.