D&D 5E (2014) Opening Page of the PHB

[Lalato]

In a FB post Chris Sims says the guy in the image is a Turami (person from Turmish) warrior

 

[Iosue]

Found the story! It's in the 40 years of GenCon book.

LARRY ELMORE: We finally got together to get us a guest to come to Gen Con. We got them to actually pay to have a guest artist. We pushed it a while and got Tim Hildebrandt to come. We were all fans of his -- especially Keith [Parkinson]. (We wanted Frazetta but couldn't get a hold of him.)

Tim Hildebrandt had done the Tolkien calendars, which had influenced us all in different ways. He was really great, him and his wife. We went out with him, thinking, "We can't believe we get to eat dinner with Tim Hildebrandt!"

The next day, he was in the art show, and we wanted him to critique one of our pieces of art. And he says, no, he does not do that.

We all thought we were pretty hot, and we were doing some of our best paintings. Dragonlance was out and popular and selling great. We were getting our names on the map. We kept bugging him.

"Okay, okay, I'll critique one painting."

So we all got together -- Keith and Clyde Caldwell and Jeff Easley and Jeff Butler. Which one do we want him to critique? Which one piece?

I'd just finished a painting that was a Dragonlance book cover. It was Caramon going up some steps, and his son was almost atop of the steps. At the very top was Dalamar, and this shadow guardian of the door. I'd just finished this piece, and I loved it, man. A lot of people in the art department thought it was a good painting. I'd done some tricky lighting, and shadows, and perspective. We thought that would be a good one. We decided he was going to critique mine.

So we all gathered around. He walks up to it. We say, "This is the one we want you to critique."

He looked at it and said, "Well..."

We said, "Do you see anything wrong?" Especially me: "Do you see anything wrong?"

"Well, yes, there is..." [trails off abashedly.]

God, what? We all had our noses up looking at it.

He said, "Well, it's something pretty big..."

Oh God! Of course, I was ready to puke by this time. There's something really bad and wrong with this painting.

We were all looking, trying to figure out what it was.

He said, "It's so obvious, when I bring it to your attention ... and you know better what you did wrong. You know better. But this is something that young artists do. You forget things sometimes."

I said, "Well, tell me! Tell me!"

"No, if I tell you, you'll never look at this painting the same way again."

Oh God, Oh God, it's so bad. "You've got to tell us!"

He said, "The young magic user atop the steps with the white robe on .. that is a white robe, right?"

"Yup."

"And this whole scene is lit by one torch the guy's holding in his hand, right? There's no other lighting in it?"

"That's right." Everything is bathed in the yellow light of the torch, with all the shadows working off that torch.

"And the robe is white."

"Yup."

"That's your problem. The robe is white. Does the robe glow?"

"No..."

"How can your robe be brighter and whiter than your light source, unless it's glowing white?"

It can't be. That's impossible. the robe can't be whiter and brighter than the light source.

Oh my God...

They all looked at me like, Oh, you've messed up, Larry!

Oh my God, I hate this painting!

And he apologized, and I said, "Critique somebody else's!"

"No, no, no, no, no! I can't critique any more! Critique's over!"

He went back and sat down and we all stood there. Oh my God! Everybody's looking at their own art, thinking, What did I do wrong? [Laughs]

That just destroyed me for a while; it's a lesson I've never forgotten -- and a good lesson.

Eventually I put that painting away, and never look at it any more. There was a good quality to that painting, but that just always bothered me.

Well, I sold that painting last year. But before I sold it, I went back and repainted the robe.

 

[Zaukrie]

I guess I do no understand, given centuries of art, why it has to be realistic, and not stylistic. It looks cool. Why does it matter of it accurately reflects reality?

 

[Dausuul]

I guess I do no understand, given centuries of art, why it has to be realistic, and not stylistic. It looks cool. Why does it matter of it accurately reflects reality?

Because if your image doesn't accurately reflect reality, people's brains are going to interpret it in odd ways, and if you aren't thinking about that, the result is unlikely to be good. I look at this image and I see a guy with a blue face (and other people had similar reactions). I don't go "What a cool image!" because it doesn't look cool to me, it looks bizarre.

There is a difference between deliberately violating realism to produce a desired effect, and just ignoring reality.

 

[evileeyore]

I guess I do no understand, given centuries of art, why it has to be realistic, and not stylistic. It looks cool. Why does it matter of it accurately reflects reality?

It's simple and complicated at the same time.

It's like motion sickness; everyone will get motion sick, some can't even handle a slow car ride, some can handle being in rocket getting pushed and shaken into orbit. But even those "tough" astronauts can be shaken until they puke.

It's the same with style. Some people will look at Elmore's painting and go "Oh Hell Yeah!" and be wowed with how cool it is. Some people will immediately spot the lighting "error" and be turned off.

And some people will fight about how their way is the right and only way.

 

[Thaumaturge]

It's simple and complicated at the same time.

It's like motion sickness; everyone will get motion sick, some can't even handle a slow car ride, some can handle being in rocket getting pushed and shaken into orbit. But even those "tough" astronauts can be shaken until they puke.

It's the same with style. Some people will look at Elmore's painting and go "Oh Hell Yeah!" and be wowed with how cool it is. Some people will immediately spot the lighting "error" and be turned off.

And some people will fight about how their way is the right and only way.

See also: all creative endeavours.

Thaumaturge.

 

[Dausuul]

It's simple and complicated at the same time.

It's like motion sickness; everyone will get motion sick, some can't even handle a slow car ride, some can handle being in rocket getting pushed and shaken into orbit. But even those "tough" astronauts can be shaken until they puke.

It's the same with style. Some people will look at Elmore's painting and go "Oh Hell Yeah!" and be wowed with how cool it is. Some people will immediately spot the lighting "error" and be turned off.

And some people will fight about how their way is the right and only way.

The thing is that if the lighting error were fixed, I can't imagine many of those in the "Hell yeah!" group would switch to "Eh, sucks now." But plenty of those in the "turned off" group would migrate to "Hell yeah!"

And what's with the scare quotes on "error?" It was an error. We have Elmore's own word for that. It wasn't a stylistic choice on his part; it was a mistake, plain and simple, and Elmore himself went from "Hell yeah!" to "turned off" as soon as it was pointed out to him.

(And am I the only one who would really, really like to see the piece with the re-painted robe?)

 

[Iosue]

(And am I the only one who would really, really like to see the piece with the re-painted robe?)

Google "Palin's Test", and I think some images will pop up. Certainly some of them look like they have much lower contrast than the image I posted earlier in the thread.

 

[Dausuul]

Google "Palin's Test", and I think some images will pop up. Certainly some of them look like they have much lower contrast than the image I posted earlier in the thread.

Apparently I spend too much time following politics for this to work. No image results, mostly just stuff about Sarah Palin.

 

[evileeyore]

And what's with the scare quotes on "error?" It was an error.

Scare quotes are used to signify a word may have it's original intent or meaning in the use to which it is being presented.

In this case I don't think there is an error, many who view the picture don't see an error, the artist and his buddies didn't see an error until Hildebrandt pointed one out to them.


Was Elmore aiming for a stylistic rendering? Obviously not. Did he achieve one? Yes. Is the work diminished? Art is in the eye of the beholder.




Just not it's main eye, that one only removes magic from what it perceives...