Meh. The interior art in the PHB leaves much to be desired. Art is subjective so each to their own. To me, it's a step backwards. I really, really miss Stacey Longstreet as the Managing Art Director.
The pages in the Player's Handbook that I particularly loath are:
26- the halfling playing the guitar and singing
120- a side burned halfling with children's book feet dancing on a table
132- the face looks like Oliver Platt
158- the pink icing cake
232- bleh
and about the majority of the little art (there's sadly a lot of it) depicting flowers, butterflies, household items and etc...
Art I liked- not much but there were a few good ones-
148 and 253 and the cover.
The Hoard of the Dragon Queen adventure book has better art.
An interesting anedectal bit of information- my FLGS sold 65 PHB in 4 days and not a single customer was under the age of 40. Most we're just curious about the new edition.
To to those who like the PHB art- cool. I'm just not one of them.
hunterian7 wrote:
1E DMG had the best art ever:
Qmark wrote:
Melwick wrote:
Qmark wrote:
I absolutely love the art. The style is down to earth, it's consistent. Mostly, I appreciate the diverse cast shown in the art.
I have difficulty finding the right words sometimes but I cannot say enough how much I appreciate this last part. A big thank you, to everyone involved.
Consistent? I have likes and dislikes in the PHB, but I don't think the art is consistent. Dragonborn to Half Orc art... Blergh. Barbarian to Cleric... Jarring. Personally, feels the same as the 4e art. Mashup of different art styles, some I hate, others I love.
A lot of it seems to have a water-color feel to it, at least to me. It's consistent in that regard. And, unlike in earlier editions, it doesn't flip back-n-forth between color and black and white.
Gotta agree on the whimy thing though, D&D seems to have lost that over the years. 'Course I'm older now, so . . . 
I like the different styles throughout the book. I agree the art is a mixed bag, but don't mind most of it.
I will agree with the OP on the halfling on page 26... That pic is dreadful in so many ways... I don't mind the one on page 120, though the halflings in my world are more hobbit-like and I would consider the happy guy a gnome...
i guess I'm also a little disappointed since I submitted art when they put out the public 'art test'. I think the work I submitted was at least as good as some of the pics in the book...
quindia wrote:
Awesome work, Quindia! I'd not be shocked at all tee see that in a future supplement. It is absolutely every bit as good as the pieces chosen.
I really like the artwork in the PHB. The consistent tone, the variety of settings and scenery, and the ethnic and cultural diversity are all things that immediately impressed me. I also liked the scarcity of cheese-cake artwork.
Artifact wrote:
Brock_Landers wrote:
aleatoric wrote:
Yeah, actually like most of the art in the book. Yes, page 20 is a weak point, but some of the action shots in the spellbook at the end are quite excellent. I like Insect Plague on page 253, Prismatic Spray on page 268, and Burning Hands on page 220. The conditions diagram on pages 290–291 is also amusing and helpful at the same time.
The book has so much art that it can't help but have some weak points. But overall, I think the art makes the book much more attractive.
Far too much re-used art. A lot is from Heroes of the Feywild, which I guess is because that book didn't get seen by a lot of people anyway.
They chose to use the worst possible example of Dragonborn art for the race; there are plenty of William o' Connor pieces they could have gone with!
What irks me most is the removal of artist credit next to each image. What's the deal with that? Now I have to play the guessing game on who did what, and which pieces are Ben Wootten imitating the style of other artists.
I like a lot of the art in the PHB, but there is quite a bit that I could take it or leave it. I wish it was a little nore consistent, but there isn't anything I really dislike.
I like the art, a couple misses throughout but overall solid. The class art is good to great IMO except the wizard art. The wizard art sucks. I'm not talking quality of the art, but it fails at its goal. I pretty much have never seen someone say you know what draws me to being a wizard being a crotchety old dude. Weirdly all women mages are young. You are a adventuring wizard starting on your studies and travels, just like every freaking other piece the character should be of a relatively young adult like teens to 20's even late 20's is fine. 60+ wont make people want to play it.
While the pathfinder wizard was a old dude but at least he looked like a grizzled veteran as opposed to someone ready for the nursing home. So D&D art guys if you imagination absolutely fails and you can't get out of the boring stereotype of old mage at least make him/er look like a bad ass.
I could seriously go through every piece of art in the PHB and say at least one reason I like each piece, or at least one thing I like about the piece or its inclusion (even the cake and the butterfly).
The majority of the art, however, I have difficulty thinking of a single complaint about.
Overall, I think that means that the art has really done it's job - especially the few pieces that are included which can be easily viewed as existing outside binary gender expectations.
I can't pick a favorite piece, I like so many of them so well... but I can list a few that I feel are worth special mention for one reason or another:
Page 51 - Male? Female? Irrelevant - but definitely a rock star bard ready for adventure.
Page 67 - A female character in not a lot of clothes, but with visible reason for her clothing choices (she lives in the jungle with her tiger friend) and a lack of nonsensical "sexy pose".
Page 138 - The elf pictured on this page appears, to me, to be a male elf that likes to wear a nice dress and some make up, and doesn't at all care if you think that is "weird", and I am down with that kind of empowered self imagery. Like Eddie Izzard said, "No, I wear dress. They're not 'women's dresses'. They're my dresses. I buy them. It's like when women wear trousers, they're not cross-dressing, they're not wearing 'men's trousers.'"
Page 148 - Olivia Munn is shield-bashing that skeleton's skull in, and I hope I am not the only one that sees it.
Page 169 - I like to refer to this sort of character with the shorthand "Princess Wizard", and I am very glad to see such a character included in the D&D books. She's pretty, but not at all sexualized, just allowed to be a pretty wizard doing her wizard thing in non-ridiculous attire.
Page 232 - Another "Princess Wizard," which I am absolutely thrilled by the inclusion of.
I hate the depiction of Halflings. No four year old is built like that. (3 feet tall is the average height for a 4 year old human), it's completely implausible to have them that large headed. 
And the Barbarian image. He looks nothing like what a Barbarian should. Too calm, not angry enough. The Black man Fighter looks more like a Barbarian then the woodsman does. On Page 178, the way the redhead man intimidating the poor guard DOES make him seem more Barbarian. The bare shoulders, the heavy furs, the belligerant demeanor, screams savage intimidation. Although, the best image, I find is on page 191, with the topless Dwarven Axeman leaping at the Fire Giant, that's both mechanically representative (after all, Barbs get an unarmoured toughness bonus power at level 1!) and very much the recklessness and yet brutal efficiency a Barbarian brings to a fight. Although, he might just be a short human barbarian, it is just a back shot, hard to tell the details.
However, mechanically, as in composition, perspective, consistency of style among the artists, I will say that this version of the Player Handbook has some of the best art I've seen in a VERY long while, so much kudos to Wizards on that.
CVB wrote:
The_White_Sorcerer wrote:
Halflings are definitely this edition's "miss" for me, at least at this early stage. There isn't really a lot of halfling art in the PHB, and those that are present don't look like PCs, in my opinion (excepting pages172 and 176.)
Those heads look physiologically impossible. They're huge! I'll wait to see more 5E Halflings before giving up on the new look. I can always just refer back to 4E's 3/4-lings or 3E's tiny humans, if I like.
This Player's Handbook has the worst art ever of any D&D publication. That dancing female halfling is the worst offender. It's terrible. The only good picture in all three hundred pages of this PoS is the one of Drizzt in the elf racial section. I thought that maybe an 80-year-old picked this deplorable "art work."
What happened to the amazing art and artists that graced the pages and covers of Dragon and Dungeon the last five years?
Greyson wrote:
tallric_kruush wrote:
CVB wrote:
I've like pretty much all the artwork they've released so far. It's been far more realistic and less absurd than in previous editions. And that Ogre? Best MM Ogre pic I've seen. I even used it as a player handout on Roll20 for when the party had a random Ogre encounter. I got to say to the players, "suddenly you hear a deep voice tell you to stop and drop your weapons, then you turn around and see this *click Show to Players on the Ogre pic* He's twice your size, arms bigger than most of the nearby trees, and holding a massive spiked club."
Then again, I haven't gotten my PHB yet so I haven't seen everything.
tallric_kruush wrote:
I really like the art overall excet for the halflings. They're really awful. But the rest is great. Personally I LOVE the barbarian because it isn't the loin cloth wearing Conan ripoff we're so used to seeing, it evokes the idea of "the woodsman" from fairy tales and I love that. The fighter is awesome too, he looks like a Persian soldier and that's super cool.
tehsquirrely wrote:
One thing I like is that the art is down to earth. So much stuff now days is over the top. Nothing wrong with that, I just prefer the former.
Also, while the laughing halfling is universally derided (and rightly so), I think the Disney-fied halflings are gonna grow on me. This is the Realms new take on the race, yeah? Anyone remember those preview pics of Forgotten Realms hafllings, on-site from a while back? I've never figured out how to post images or I'd google something up.