What do you find most Magical about 3E/3.5 art?

[The Human Target]

I like a lot of the 3E art. Especially the cool pulpy stuff in the Eberron books.

A big thing for me is the fact that things look a lot less like real world medieval. No more serfs in leggings tunics. It feels a lot more..... I dunno, fantastical.

 

[Cabral]

Magical in art in 3e? Almost nothing. There are some gorgeous pieces here and there, but by and large, it's illustration, not art.

When I think of magical D&D art, I have to go back to the 2nd Ed player's handbook (maybe it was the Player's option series) with those full page color pieces. I still remember one with a wizard turning a womin into a unicorn. Or maybe it was a dragon. I wish there was a gallery of that art. I miss it.

 

[Hussar]

Cabral, IIRC, that was from the Polymorph spell in the 2e PHB where the evil wizard dude is turning the unicorn into some sort of lizard thing.

 

[Cabral]

I may have minced images but I'm fairly certain there was pretty woman involved.

 

[Hussar]

Sigh, Y'know, I've been trying to find a listing of the 2e PHB artists and I cannot come up with anything. Anyone else's Google-fu up to the task?

 

[Cabral]

Larry Elmore and some other people.

You know, that would help 3.xe art a bit; Larry Elmore art.

 

[Hussar]

Oh, hey, I love me the Elmore. Great stuff.

As I said upthread though, there's just SO MUCH 3e art out there, that you can't really make any general statements about it. You can pick and choose different publishers, or maybe even specific periods of a given publisher, but, the stable of fantasy artists doing some really great stuff right now is huge. Like I said, I like to lurk over at the Pen and Paper Database and check out the galleries.

IIRC, there's something like almost a hundred artists over there that have published work for a 3.x book. That's astonishing. Honestly, I think that's one of the biggest differences now. Instead of a small number of artists totally dominating the hobby, like the Dee/Otis/Trampier bunch in 1e or the Elmore and co. of 2e, you have very large numbers of artists working for a number of publishers all attempting to portray a different look and feel.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is a larger chance of finding artists that you don't like in 3e and a larger chance of finding those you do. In earlier editions, if you didn't like a small number of artists, you were SOL for D&D art. However, in 3e, because there are so many artists, it's much more likely that you are going to get smacked with images that you don't like.

Personally, I don't like Bergting and Lukacs. I find their art not to my taste to say the least. However, between the covers of Dragon, I'm also going to find artists like Andrew Hou and Eva Wildman who I really, really do like. So, I ignore the stuff I don't like and focus on what I do.

 

[Ghendar]

I don't find anything "magical" about 3rd ED art. Magical is not the word I would use. However, I do like it generally.

Todd Lockwood might be my favorite. Very clean style.
Wayne Reynolds is okay as well. He can sometime be a bit too angular for me, but some of his stuff is stunning.
I like the use of color in general and having such detailed monster illustrations is quite nice.

Still, nostalgia makes me pine for 1st ED art. Still my first love.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

As with any such discussion, it's all so subjective that anything I mention can be disputed by those who have already decided they dislike 3.x art. Some of the stuff off the top of my head that I can think of: Arnie Swekel's chapter frontispieces for the PHB and DMG; Wayne Reynolds' spot illos for dungeon dressing in the DMG; the size comparison pic in the PHB, the one that shows what the various size classifications look like; the "police lineup" pics in the PHB of the various races, with a male and female "line-up"; most of Wayne Reynolds' art in Sword & Fist and Tome & Blood; Jeremy Jarvis' work on Goliaths in Races of Stone; Wayne Reynolds' pics of the Cloak of Arachnida, Robe of Eyes, and Book of Vile Darkness in the DMG; and the Disciple of Thrym and Frost Giant Tundra Scout in Frostburn. This is just a few. All are evocative in different ways of different things, and are magical to me.

 

[Gez]

If I have to say just one thing, it would be Arnie Swekel's chapterhead art.

I want to add the other sketched illustrations in the PHB, the lineups, and most everything by Todd Lockwood, Sam Wood, Daren Bader, and some others.

D&D really benefitted from Magic: the Gathering in this respect, because it made WotC get in touch with a huge number of artists, many of them awesome, and that really helped give D&D3 high quality art.