Sunday, March 21, 2021

Jendart - The Not Review

I've mention how many times I've been sucked into a document because of the artwork. Simon Miles, Todd Leback, and now jendart

Screencap of the artist on Jendart.com

Jenna Lauren Drummond did the cover art for several of Todd Leback's books. And I really love this style of work. It turns out that this doesn't seem to be the style that appears on jendart.com. There is a lot to love over on that website. Go ahead and check it out. Personally, I like the frogmen and the sci-fi stuff. The frogman is insanely animated, but the sci-fi collection is just poses. Nice to see both fluid action and static poses.  

Let me talk about why I love the covers of Todd Laback's series of books, since this style doesn't seem to feature on Jedart.com. 

It's the floating angles and the capture of the hex crawl ideal. The first product I saw was Hexcrawl Basics. I just love that this image is a map and landscape from the air. It's not avant garde or experimental or any other fancy thing, it's simply perfect for the book title. Everything you would wonder about "Hexcrawl Basics" is summarized in the image. Click the link to check it out on DriveThruRPG. There are interesting locals like the focal point keep and the walled town, plain areas and the sky above it all, with no edge to world as everything fades at the horizon. 

That is pretty much "Hexcrawl Basics" in a nutshell. 

The next title is "Filling in the Blanks" and I am sure you can see why I mentioning this one. I'm going to do a review and I want to get my admiration of the cover out of my brain before diving into this book. 

This image I like for a completely different reason. It reminds me of the comic book artist, Pablo Raimondi. Back in the 1990s, he had a quick, savage style which he lent to the covers of X-Factor. He went for impossible angles and clear cut actions. 

Jendart's handling of the image captures nearly everything from the Hexcrawl Basics title while also embracing whimsy. I love the viewing angle above the characters in the foreground. While it isn't a one for one match with Pablo Raimondi's cover art, I can see that sort of see the "capture the moment" aspect in it. Even though we can't see the heroes' faces, there is a clear sense of wonder in their poses. 

Edit - My apologies, I keep editing this post when I recall something that stood out to me. Expect that to happen a lot. We all have deal with crap like that. 

EDIT 2: I have been misspelling the name of the Jendart website in maybe 3-5 posts. I am so sorry and embarrassed. Because of the way blogger works, this mistake shall ever be memorized in the links which cannot be changed. Ugh. 

2 comments:

  1. Glad you like my art! I certainly need to update my portfolio to show some more pen and ink work. I find myself drawn more and more to traditional media these days. It's nice to have a break from staring at a screen and get your hands dirty with some paint and ink! Plus I feel that fantasy art is so dominated by increasingly homogenous digital work lately, people have a real craving for old-school inks without a thousand layers and filters (or at least I do!). Also the sense of humour and fun seems to have been sucked out of it all lately in favour of everything being epic and serious, I miss the silliness and fun from old RPG art, even though most of the stuff I love was drawn before I was even born.

    The site is 'jendart' by the way- just Jen D Art without spaces!

    Cheers!

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    Replies
    1. Doh! Sorry about the misspelling! I have fixed that. Thank you for coming by to share your perspective on art. I really enjoy all of your work and can't wait to see more.

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