Is it just me or is the Cover Art terrible

[Jonn]

The most confusing to me is the cover of "The Shadow Rising" because I have no idea who those characters are suposed to be. My best guess is that the two men are Rand and Mat though they seem to have either switched coats or hair color for the day. Whatever the case the beer gut on the one in red is very unbecoming. I also assume that the men in the background are meant to be Aiel though not a single one of them has red hair. Then there is the woman in the forground who is the most confusing of them all. I supose it could be Egwene thought if memory serves she didn't spend alot of time with Rand and Mat while she was in the Waste (not that that would stop the artist mind you) with means that it can only logically be Lanfear. The problem with that is that I don't picture Lanfear ever dishing out soup for anybody, not even herself. I know that she was in disguise at that point but she would still try to manipulate Rand into getting her soup for her just for kicks or worse come to worse she would have made Asmodien get it for her. So any way you slice it the cover of tSR just doesn't work.

 

And that's all I have to say about that.

 

LOL!

Lanfear's soup, anyone?

 

It can't be Lanfear, because she never appears as herself out in the open. She's generally an obese woman by the name of Kielle Shaigo, If my memory serves.

 

Another guess could make the people Rand, Asmodean and Isendre.

 

In that case, that makes it a pretty cool cover.

 

It'd be nice to ask Darrell Sweet about these things. Who are these people? It'd be nice to get an honest impression as to whether he knows what he's even illustrating on these covers.

 

It'd be really cool to commission someone Like Alan Lee to illustrate some of the iconic scenes from the series. I'd love to see his take on Lanfear at the Docks, and some other scenes.

[RobertAlexWillis]

Yeah, Darrell Sweet just paints a picture that is related by implication to the series, not portraying any actual scene. The same is true of his cover art for L E Modesitt's Recluce books. Cover art, is, for the most part, just advertising.

[demonspawn]

I have special anniversary copy of LOTR which has over 50 watercolour illustrations by Alan Lee (who also done the art work for the movie) and I'm sure he would do WoT justice.