Nelson is an accomplished artist and educator, having taught at Northern Illinois University for two decades and worked at Raven Software and Madison Area Technical College. He later served as art director/head concept artist at Pi Studios and now runs Grazing Dinosaur Press with his wife. Nelson has illustrated numerous Dungeons & Dragons books, other games, and comic books for various publishers since the 1980s. Additionally, he has contributed to Eureka Productions' Graphic Classics series and authored an instructional book, Fantasy World-Building: A Guide to Developing Mythic Worlds and Legendary Creatures, published in 2019.
