Dragonlance "The Women of Dragonlance" -- Larry Elmore's New Dragonlance Painting

Iconic D&D artist Larry Elmore has been working on a new Dragonlance painting. He has been sharing progress pictures over recent weeks. This is apparently a commission for a client, and is entitled "The Women of Dragonlance".

There's a new trilogy of Dragonlance novels coming from authors Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman featuring "classic Dragonlance" branding.

 

[Bagpuss]

Yes, left quite an impression on my young self as well... sigh.

My biggest complaint of art of the period (and still) is the scantly clad women and over sexualization of them.

Doesn't seem your young self minded that much. Or was that a different sort of sigh.

 

[Bagpuss]

There are plenty of other Elmore illustrations that feature women wearing what we'd think of as more appropriate attire. The one below is probably my favorite Elmore work. But I hear ya, some of those old fantasy illustrations just look plain silly with their bikini armor.

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Well the elf on the left is wearing a mini-skirt, but to be fair it was off it's time. Also the female fighters pants are skin tight unlike the males. Still D&D was clearly aimed at young males in those days, even if it actually had a much wider audience back then. Plus Elmore grew up in the '60s where mini skirts were popular, you draw what you know and like, ie: the culture you grew up in. Nothing wrong with a bit of skin showing, especially if the character is clearly not a front line fighter.

Still to give you an idea of how far we have come and IMHO daft some things are getting I heard that picture got taken down in one of the D&D Facebook groups, not because of the bare legs but because it was accused of being racist.

 

[Bagpuss]

A lot of artists at the time had clearly never really seen a woman.

I have to disagree this was the time of Boris Vallejo, and Frank Frazetta if anything they had seen a little "too much" of real women.

 

[NaturalZero]

Vallejo was THE fantasy artist to me, as a kid. Brom was the best in 2e. WAR has been one of my favorites since 3.5 but I feel like we have guys like Tyler Jacobson in the game now who are blowing away pretty much all of those old 2e guys. Just the technical level of contrast, color, lighting, depth, etc., is on another level.

 

[Necrozius]

Vallejo was THE fantasy artist to me, as a kid. Brom was the best in 2e. WAR has been one of my favorites since 3.5 but I feel like we have guys like Tyler Jacobson in the game now who are blowing away pretty much all of those old 2e guys. Just the technical level of contrast, color, lighting, depth, etc., is on another level.
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Modern artists have the luxury of digital paint for endless experimentation and exploration. The old school artists were much more limited in terms of material. Also modern artists have plenty of inspiration and reference thanks to social networks and, well the internet in general. You hardly need to pay people to model when millions of stock art photos are constantly within your reach.

 

[NaturalZero]

Modern artists have the luxury of digital paint for endless experimentation and exploration. The old school artists were much more limited in terms of material. Also modern artists have plenty of inspiration and reference thanks to social networks and, well the internet in general. You hardly need to pay people to model when millions of stock art photos are constantly within your reach.

I guarantee you that Elmore's stuff would still look like a group of average folks posing for a photo in their cosplay if he was a fresh 30 year old working in digital medium. All of the color decisions, composition, naturalistic rendering, etc, is the artist. There's no magic button that you push to make the internet paint for you.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

My first contact with Elmore's work was the covers of the gamebooks "Endless Quest".

I have got a book a Dragonlance art. I bought it in the first middle of the 90's, this means more 25 years ago.

I wonder how Dragonlance would look with a style of Disney cartoon, or a CGI cinematic trailer of Magic: the Gathering.

* Do you know digital algoritm allows to imitate a painter's style?

This algorithm can create an imitation Van Gogh in 60 minutes

Researchers in Germany have developed an algorithm that can mimic the styles of some of history's greatest painters

www.wired.co.uk

 

[DND_Reborn]

Doesn't seem your young self minded that much. Or was that a different sort of sigh.

LOL, honestly it is both!

Being older (and hopefully wiser and more sensitive to such issues) I understand how such exposure to over-sexualized material affected my development, but in my youth and eagerness it was exciting (understandably) to me.

 

[Dausuul]

Tika's pose looks weird and unnatural--she's doing the "brokeback" thing--but otherwise I like the look of this one. With any luck Tika gets fixed in the final version.

 

[Dragonhelm]

Which begs the question of whether or not Goldmoon will be wearing pants in this picture when it's finished.

Likely she will.

Back in the day, Margaret saw an image with Goldmoon not wearing pants. She marched down to the art department in tears. From that moment on, Goldmoon was drawn with pants.