Larry Elmore’s fame came in the 1980s and a series of illustrations and book covers for Dungeons & Dragons, including the very well-known Dragonlance series. These days his work is in les…
There are things he did that were amazing. Death of Sturm is hyper realistic and is literally the only thing that ever made me care about that character. His Dragonlance Chronicles covers struck a balance between selling a book and being too detailed. His red box stuff was toned way down on realism and perfect for the simpler rules. His line drawings are just as good as his paintings.
Compositions are efficient and grand at the same time.
But there are times like that Dragons of Norrath work. It looks like it was assembled from clip art and focus groups. Composition goes out the window. Different characters are painted in a non-unified color palette and in different levels of detail despite them all being on the same plane.
No one is perfect all the time. Deadlines mess things up. If he has the time he can rival the masters.
There are things he did that were amazing. Death of Sturm is hyper realistic and is literally the only thing that ever made me care about that character. His Dragonlance Chronicles covers struck a balance between selling a book and being too detailed. His red box stuff was toned way down on realism and perfect for the simpler rules. His line drawings are just as good as his paintings.
Compositions are efficient and grand at the same time.
But there are times like that Dragons of Norrath work. It looks like it was assembled from clip art and focus groups. Composition goes out the window. Different characters are painted in a non-unified color palette and in different levels of detail despite them all being on the same plane.
No one is perfect all the time. Deadlines mess things up. If he has the time he can rival the masters.