Friday Art Attack

I can't remember what this is supposed to be exactly, but I'm pretty sure I found it on a Duckduckgogo search for either Yeti or Sasquatch.

Maybe it's just because we live in a hateful gynarcho-tyranny, but I find the notion of Dark Lord's less frightening than that of Dark Queens.

These two have an interesting side by side comparison quality to them that I quite like.  Now, granted, Graz'zt and Iggwilv as presented by Wayne Reynolds is quite the iconic D&D character set by now, while whoever that big ogre-looking dude and that blond nearly naked chick are by Luis Royo look like pretty standard naked Luis Royo chicks and her monster.  But given how incredibly talented an artist he is, that's OK.

The iconic Strigoi image; the most bestial and ghoulish of vampires, who eventually evolved into the whole Flesh-Eater Courts concept.  Funny; at the time Vampire Counts first introduced this split, I didn't really think that the Strigoi concept was a popular one.  It must have been if it later evolved into an entire army, I suppose.

A Crusader undead.  Nothing special, just a cool piece of art.

Speaking of the Flesh-Eater Courts, here's an image from that army book.

In Contrast, here's a very iconic vampire.  Seriously; why do vampires always have to be wearing a lacy neckerchief, anyway?  In spite of the obvious technical skill of this art, I do have that particular detail.

Because one of the new Warhammer armies is basically an Aquaman or Little Mermaid elf force, they have a lot of models of elves (sorry, ...aelves.  How totally gay) who are riding on sharks and stuff.  Apparently, when fighting any other army that doesn't live in the ocean, these sharks either fly around or jump or something.  I'm not quite sure how that's supposed to work.  It's actually one of the weirder things in the new, much less compelling Warhammer world.

Another fantasy version of a vampire... and he's got a lacy neckerchief.  Sigh.

5e Vrock, I believe.  I think Sam Wood's illustration for 3e was still the best one, though.

Another basic yet well done undead illustration. 

And another horned yeti.  I wonder when horns started to become common on fantasy yeti illustrations, because there's obviously nothing in the folklore source material that suggests horns. 

Maybe it all started with The Empire Strikes Back.

An interesting take on a weird, humanoid yet serpentine demon or something.  Quite a fascinating concept, whatever it is.

While I actually found the books unreadable, I was really excited about the concept of C.J. Cherryh's Russian mythology/folklore fantasy.  As is often the case, she went too far into making it historical rather than fantastical.  Not the best approach for fantasy, and one that tends to bog down many works that otherwise have a lot of promise, in my opinion. 

Or maybe I just am kinda weird and prefer my historical swashbuckling romances and my fantasy to have a clean break in terms of the secondary world concept.

Dresden Files style modern urban fantasy, I guess, excepted.

Yet another concept on vampires.  As I've said several times this week, I prefer vampires who aren't overtly sexy and have some kind of inhuman, monstrous visual tic to them.

Because it's now no longer available, here's the necrosphinx model from the old Tomb Kings army list.  Not sure what I think about this still, many years after first seeing it.  Is it really cool, or just a little too... I dunno, out there?  I still can't decide.

A very fairytale like illustration, which I think is a classic mode of fantasy that is too often either ignored or poorly done.  I never would have thought that this would be one of the better sources of this kind of fantasy, but the Dresden Files books that feature the faeries do faeries better than most sources I've otherwise seen.