Customer Reviews

The Art of Clyde Caldwell

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Since the 1980s, Clyde Caldwell's artwork has been used for books, games and so on. His artwork, dealing with everything from horror, fantasy and sci-fi, is one of the best. The focus seems to be on sexy, lovely ladies and it's even better when you realize he uses real models! A must for any library about art books or fantasy books.

To fans of fantasy role-playing games and fantasy novels, Clyde Caldwell isn't just an artist, he is THE artist! For nearly 30 year's Caldwell's art has been featuring on gaming products, book covers, calendars and more. Caldwell has been the premiere artist for years for TSR/Wizards of the Coast's line of Dungeons & Dragons products. His work has been featured on countless book covers for publishers such as Avon, Baen, Ace, and Zebra and he's provided covers for publications such as Heavy Metal, Dragon, Dungeon, and Epic Illustrated. When it comes to pure fantasy art, it just doesn't get any better than Clyde Caldwell.

SQP presents this over-sized book with 128 pages of Caldwell's outstanding fantasy paintings from over the past 25 years, all in full color and printed on heavy stock, suitable for fans and collectors alike. Long-time gaming fans or fantasy fiction fans will recognize many of the pieces in this collection from some of their favorite books and modules over the years. A comprehensive index in the back lists the title of each painting and the medium in which he worked to complete each piece.

While not necessarily known for his nudes, the book provides several examples done in Acrylic wash from the Savage Hearts portfolio, also for SQP. Pages 20 & 21 feature one of my all-time favorite Caldwell paintings, the darkly gothic castle of Ravenloft with the vampire Count Strahd standing in full regalia on a balcony looking out over his lands. A thoroughly dynamic painting!

"From the Shadows" features a pair of dungeon adventurers fighting off a trio of spectral skeletons. This painting was from a Ravenloft module. Pages 72 & 73 feature two more paintings of the sinister Count Strahd, as they perfectly capture that mist-shrouded, gothic look of old Universal Horror films.

The Caldwell woman always evokes a sense of power and this is demonstrated beautifully in the painting called "Leopard and the Serpent" showing a warrior maiden posing proudly wearing a leopard headdress. Then there is "Amara Wintersword" sitting entrenched in a malignant looking old tree, dressed in red cloak and scantily placed chain mail. "Midnight Snack" and "To Pick a Rose You Ask Your Hands to Bleed" are two wonderful paintings of female vampires, decidedly different in their eras, but both equally foreboding. The latter piece coming from the Vampire: The Masquerade Player's Handbook for White Wolf.

Another of my favorite paintings is "Fiddler Fair" as a female bard plays her fiddle while the grim reaper hovers behind her. This was from a cover to a Mercedes Lackey book for Baen. "Forbidden Embrace" is also a great piece. A raven haired enchantress embraces a foul, tentacled creature that looks like it just walked out of a Lovecraft story. This was from a cover to Inquest Gamer magazine.

I say "favorites" in only the loosest sense of the word as it's literally impossible to pick a favorite from Caldwell's distinguished body of work. He truly is the gold standard when if comes to fantasy artists.

Reviewed by Tim Janson

I was familiar with this artist due to work he did for Wizards of the Coast. His art tends to capture moods of fantasy novels, role playing games, etc. in ways that are, in my opinion, unmatched.

So I got this book. I was not disappointed. Some of the images I was familiar with. Others I was not.

However, one thing needs to be said about this collection's breadth. The material ranges from sci-fi to gothic, and from fantasy to horror. Material is provided from book covers, calendars, inside printed plates, art collections, etc.

Highly recommended.

This is the best art book in my collection, and that's saying a lot, because by now I already have more than 70, and among those there are such names as Vallejo, Royo, Frazetta, Eggleton, Keith Parkinson and Jim Warren to name a few.

The art is detailed, clear and with a great choice of colors. On top of that, almost every page of the book has a full color finished painting, which is very rare in art books (unless the publisher is SQP which is the case)


SPECIFICS:
Page Count: 128
Number of images: 110
Small images: 1
Half page images: 13
Full page images: 91
2-page spreads: 5
BW images: 7

TEXT:
1 page foreword
1 page biography
2 page extended biography (by the author)
5 page index with the title, year, real size and medium used for each painting

ART:
47 images: 5 stars
42 images: 4 stars
19 images: 3 stars
2 images: 2 stars
0 images: 1 star

Overall: 4,5 stars

...and even if you are not a huge fan of Clyde Caldwell this beautiful book contains some very nice fantasy artworks and it is a great addition to my collection of books from prominent artists in this genre.

The front contains a biography about Clyde which was good because apart from having 2 large posters of his on my walls for many years I did not know anything about him. As well as English the text is in another language which at a guess i think might be Dutch, possibly German.

There is a good variety of works in this book too, again great for me to get to know what this artist is capable of. Works range from full colour paintings of dragons, women posing (Clyde seems to like big breasted women), action scenes, D&D module covers containing all those sorts of creatures, and book covers, to some acrylic wash images of women posing, which was a nice touch.